Allied Command Transformation Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023

Summary

The Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 (SFA23) assesses the major drivers and implications of the evolving security environment up to 2043 to support NATO’s warfare development, defence planning, and strategic decision-making. Focusing on a risk-oriented trajectory of pervasive competition and fragmentation, it explores seven key drivers of change—including climate breakdown, resource scarcity, emerging technologies/AI, geoeconomics, human networks, the scramble for global commons, and a transitioning international order—and outlines strategic implications across NATO’s Instruments of Power.

Cover

ALLIED COMMAND TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIC FORESIGHT ANALYSIS 2023

Executive Baseline & Context

The futures thinking of various nations and stakeholders within the Alliance do not align by default. Therefore, systemic efforts are necessary to create a shared baseline and understanding of relevant trends and trajectories which affect the transformation of the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power.

The Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 (SFA23) updates assumptions and extends the focus of the previous Strategic Foresight Analysis (SFA17) to assess the major drivers and most relevant implications of the Alliance’s Evolving Security Environment until 2043. SFA23 assumes that present attitudes of strategic competitors will remain enduring amidst increasing global challenges and disruption in the forthcoming period, thus it is a decidedly risk-oriented foresight study. This analysis provides a solid baseline for the Future Operating Environment Study 2024, which will assess the evolving characteristics of actors, the battlespace and the modern warfare.

Even though the knowledge generated by strategic foresight is not scientific, this Strategic Foresight Analysis is the result of extensive research, robust collaboration with Allies and Partners and input from other future-oriented work strands within the Allied Command Transformation.

The SFA23 research was closed on 15 November 2023.

Table of Contents

STRATEGIC FORESIGHT TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword from the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation - 3 Executive Summary - 4 Main Findings - 7 Initial Implications - 9 Introduction - 11 AIM - 11 SCOPE - 11 BACKGROUND - 12 METHODOLOGY - 12 SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT - 14 The Evolving Security Environment - 15 Pathways of Evolution - 16 Characteristics of the Evolving Security Environment - 19 Drivers of Change - 21 Climate Breakdown and Loss of Biodiversity - 22 Resource Scarcity Driving Instabilities - 28 The Age of AI: Emerging and Disruptive Technologies Converging - 35 Geoeconomics Fuelling Polarization - 44 Human Networks Empowered - 49 Scramble for the Commons - 57 International Order in Transition - 66 Implications to the Alliance - 75 DIPLOMATIC - 79 INFORMATION - 81 ECONOMIC - 83 MILITARY - 85 Appendix A – Scenarios - 91

1. ‘Four Worlds’ Model: A fragmenting world deteriorating further - 91 Bibliography - 93

Foreword from the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation

FOREWORD FROM THE SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER TRANSFORMATION

PHILIPPE LAVIGNE General, French Air and Space Force Supreme Allied Commander Transformation

Few can doubt we are living in dangerous times. Our great Alliance, as it prepares to celebrate 75 years shielding Allied territory from the ravages of armed conflict, is now confronted with challenges on multiple fronts, including from those unwilling to abide by the set of rules that have allowed much of Europe and North America to live in peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War.

Providing for the defence of over a billion people requires we come together, as Allies, to develop common solutions and capabilities. To do so, we need to have a clear and - just as importantly - shared understanding of what those threats and challenges might be.

By harnessing our combined and diverse intelligence, ACT’s Strategic Foresight Analysis can point to the characteristics of our changed and evolving security environment and help NATO make the right long-term strategic decisions for the next 75 years!

Executive Summary

The SFA23 provides a shared understanding of the Evolving Security Environment to 2043, thus establishing the context for Allied futures thinking. Based on this context, the Future Operating Environment 2024 (FOE24) will address the military problem sets for Allied Warfare Development. FOE24 will also serve as a baseline for further conceptual and strategic thinking. The renewed foresight cycle, consisting of SFA23, FOE24 and deployable foresight analytics capacities, will facilitate collective futures thinking within the Alliance, as well as augment individual Ally’s foresight capabilities.

Since the publication of SFA17, the security environment has been gravely altered, profoundly shaped by the systemic shocks posed by the COVID pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The years ahead will be most likely characterized by further strategic shocks and structural disruptions, driven by actors and structural forces alike. The international order is in transition and will become increasingly multipolar amidst intensifying great power competition and fragmentation at all levels. Pervasive competition is unfolding and spreading into new domains through all dimensions at all times. Strategic competitors will engage across a blurred continuum of competition at the global, regional and sub-regional, state as well as non-state levels.

SFA23 concludes that the competition and adversarial intent of major state actors and terrorist non-state actors will endure amidst disruptions, and will aim to shape and contest the Alliance, as well as challenge the rules-based international order (RBIO). These actors will continue attempting to accumulate their own power and expand influence through exploiting instabilities and leveraging alternative digital, socio-economic and hybrid means.

The report presents its research findings in three main areas: the Evolving Security Environment, the seven drivers of change, and initial implications to the Alliance for the Instruments of Power. Additionally, its research context is established in the ‘Four Worlds’ model scenarios. Essentially, the report focuses on the overall trajectories and confluence of the key drivers of change, identifying potential strategic shocks for each, and determines the Alliance’s Evolving Security Environment in relation to its Instruments of Power (IoP). The seven interconnected drivers shaping the Evolving Security Environment are depicted in Figure 1.

Trend Radar and Methodology Overview

The findings of this report were developed by 800 participants in a series of workshops with Allies and Partners. The research utilized extensive scenario development and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted horizon scanning tools, and relied on expansive collaborative dialogue with Allied and Partner nations as well as external actors in academia and industry. The research identified 170 trends, and their confluences were assessed with a view to the most demanding outcomes and reduced to the most relevant trajectories, as shown in Figure 2 (Trend radar for the Strategic Foresight Analysis).

Executive Summary - Instruments of Power

The SFA23 also examines the impact of these drivers against the future utility and effectiveness of the Instruments of Power (Diplomatic, Information, Economic and Military):

• The Allied Diplomatic Instrument of Power will be challenged by a rapidly increasing variety of actors, behaviours and attitudes, as well as competing narratives, complexity, contestation and confusion.

• The Allied Information Instrument of Power will face an increasingly congested and confused information environment facing challenges due to the abundance of narratives, AI, and automation, thus complicating detection. Cognitive warfare will play a critical role in shaping public perception and decision-making, requiring countermeasures.

• The Allied Economic Instrument of Power shall be used to retain advantage and will become a key objective for strategic competitors of the Alliance seeking to enhance their power and influence. Retaining an economic advantage for Allied nations will be fundamental to create resilience against a confused future security environment.

• The Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power may become constrained by a wide range of challenges to states, including the costs of climate adaptation and green energy transition. It must keep pace with rapidly changing technology and address economic, financial and technology limitations. Additional factors include the necessity to re-allocate spending to welfare and domestic challenges; ageing societies and the shortage of a skilled workforce; and an increasing defence cost escalation for development, maintenance and stockpiling. Demand for military capabilities is likely set to increase in a rapidly changing, complex, contested and confused security environment.

Allied warfighting development should be informed by the main findings and initial implications of this foresight research. Incorporating these insights will improve NATO’s understanding of future challenges and aid in its long-term strategic designs.

Main Findings

1. Climate breakdown and loss of biodiversity is the most consequential and, in the long-term, the most likely existential challenge. It will prompt significant changes in attitudes and behaviours of both state and non-state actors.

2. Resource scarcity is expected to increase and drive further instability, competition and conflict. The green energy transition is emerging as a central tenet for the future of international and domestic affairs.

3. The Age of AI and the convergence of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) will reshape states, societies and armed forces as well as the character of competition and warfare with unprecedented speed. Competition is extending to virtual and cognitive dimensions and increasingly taking shape in the non-geographical space and cyber domains with new converging effects. Diffusion of technology will empower a wide range of actors (primarily non-state actors), including both commercial and terrorist organizations, to pursue their autonomous objectives more effectively and increasingly challenge traditional state power. Additionally, accelerating technology development and changing public-private nexus will profoundly impact security and military matters. Converging effects across operational domains as well as physical and non-physical dimensions will expand the scope and profoundly shape the character of competition.

4. Security and reliance concerns, strategic competition and technology are driving a shift towards geoeconomic blocs and fragmentation with significant implications for trade, technology, demographics, and the global financial system, potentially weakening globalization. The emergence of geoeconomic blocs fuelling polarization is driven by the securitization of supply chains, intensifying strategic competition, and alternative digital, economic and financial ecosystems. Adapting to this Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e. rapid technological advancements of the 21st century) will pose significant challenges and exert disruptions to most states, societies and armed forces, as well as impact the geostrategic balance.

5. The rise of networked non-state actors, technological empowerment, urbanization challenges, changing values, and information/disinformation overload is highly certain. Societal and commercial capabilities emerge as indispensable elements of modern competition and warfare. These human network trends will profoundly affect international relations, security, and governance, creating both opportunities and risks in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Notably, cities will emerge as the most critical nodes for future military operations, with sub-state actors becoming more agile, adaptable and scalable. Human networks will be empowered by technology diffusion and increasingly impact international and intra-state affairs. Commercial entities emerge as decisive actors and drive both energy and industrial transition, changing the character of warfare. These changes occur while strategic competition intensifies.

6. A scramble for the insufficiently regulated global commons expands due to resource needs, strategic competition and the rapid advancement of technology. Competition into new theatres, from the seabed to the outer space, dramatically increases congestion of actors around critical trade and resource nodes as well as positions of strategic advantage. The commercial sector will drive and lead the scramble with new EDTs, research and autonomous actions. All actors will pursue their own strategic advantage for resources. The ensuing pervasive competition, extending into the virtual and cognitive dimensions, will continue to challenge the RBIO. It will increase the likelihood of fragmented responses to strategic shocks and have profound implications for the global economy, international trade and socio-demographics, thus potentially weakening globalization.

7. Accelerating changes, strategic shocks, pervasive instability and autocratic states will substantially challenge and further fragment the RBIO, intensify strategic competition as well as the emergence of new forms of security cooperation and military alliances. A pathway of pervasive competition across all domains, dimensions and in all times is a most likely scenario. This environment will be complex, congested, commercialized, contested, and inadvertently confused. It is where strategic competitors will attempt to effectively achieve coordination across their instruments of power with an aim to limit the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power in peacetime, through shaping, contesting, exploiting disruptions and instabilities, and confronting from a position of strategic advantage.

Initial Implications

1. Climate breakdown poses significant challenges across all sectors and armed forces, leading to attrition and higher costs.

2. Adaptation of military concepts and capabilities to green energy sources and EDTs is crucial.

3. The protection of trade routes and supply chains may become a priority.

4. EDTs will transform the character of warfare increasing the speed, range and scale of threats as well as their damage potential. EDTs will pose novel ethical, moral, conceptual and governance dilemmas and likely increase chances of strategic surprise as well as unintended escalation.

5. Military capabilities will become more intelligent and interconnected, increasingly relying on the commercial sector.

6. Human networks play a critical role in modern warfare, necessitating a new approach to national and human security and private-public partnerships.

7. Cities become critical nodes for military operations and human networks. Urban warfare is becoming the prevalent physical operating environment.

8. The scramble for global commons increases demands for readiness and range of military capabilities, including on the seabed and in the outer space. An increase of operations in the commons will rely on commercial and non-governmental service providers.

9. Adversaries will aim to limit the Alliance’s ability to generate fighting power in peacetime through convergent effects and coordinated use of diplomatic, information and economic capacities.

10. The increasing scale and cost of modern warfare makes it increasingly prohibitive for most nations to conduct it alone, thus fostering new security, economic and digital arrangements and military alliances.

11. Effective and efficient management of the aggregation of capabilities through operations and defence planning will remain fundamental to generating future fighting power and preserving NATO’s military advantage across all operational domains and effect dimensions. Defence planners must continue to adjust future requirements to the Evolving Security Environment of the Alliance and subsequent futures concept and warfare development strategies.

Introduction: Aim and Scope

AIM The aim of the SFA23 is to anticipate the Evolving Security Environment until 2043, providing an assessment of the driving forces and potential strategic shocks that are shaping it. Additionally, this report draws implications for the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power (MIoP) as well as provides assumptions on further impacts on the utility and effectiveness of Diplomatic, Information and Economic instruments. The SFA23 focuses on trends that are the most relevant for the future security of the Alliance. The assessment is decidedly risk-oriented to assist, inform and inspire NATO’s warfighting development, defence planning and wargaming communities.

SCOPE The SFA23 provides information for future-oriented strategic considerations (futures thinking) at NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT). Its military aspects are being further developed in the FOE24 and support additional classified analyses.

The SFA23 also enables the futures thinking of a wide range of customers and partners in the Allied futures’ community with up-to-date and robust baseline foresight research. These include Allied and Partner nations, the NATO Military Authorities, International Staff, the Science and Technology Organization, and the Wargaming Community. The findings of this report are in synergy with the NATO Science and Technology Organization’s trend analysis. This report is designed to support many users, including the warfighting development and concept development community, defence planners and wargamers, to augment and revise existing assumptions and develop new scenarios.

Introduction: Background and Methodology

BACKGROUND The previous SFA reports (2013, 2015 and 2017) informed both the collective and Allied defence planning processes as foundational documents on futures. Utilizing general trend assessments from the SFA series, the Future Framework of Allied Operations 2018 identified characteristics and abilities of the forces the Alliance needs to retain its military edge.

Built on these foundations, the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept (NWCC) was approved by Heads of State and governments in 2021, detailing how NATO and Partners must develop their MIoP to maintain the advantage for the next twenty years.

In 2022, the Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation (SACT) revived the Strategic Foresight process, with three objectives:

1. Create a new, biennial foresight cycle, after six years of hiatus, with a general trends assessment document as a baseline for futures thinking (SFA23). Create a subsequent analysis of the Future Operating Environment of the Alliance (FOE24) to expand and update existing assumptions on the future operating environments, as set out in the NWCC. Enable the transformation of the Alliance’s MIoP and Warfighting Development efforts by providing a shared futures baseline and initial implications.
2. Develop subsequent foresight studies to analyse long-term challenges, as identified in the SFA23 research.
3. Establish a foresight community and modernize foresight practices to enhance collaborative foresight research and Allied and Partner interactions, as well as provide support to Allied and Partner foresight efforts, upon request.

The SFA23 research was designed and conducted in line with SACT tasking to establish: • General trends and implications assessment as a baseline for FOE24. • Employ novel analytic models and introduce new problem sets to support further foresight analysis. • Establish means and platforms to revive the Allied foresight community.

METHODOLOGY The SFA23 identifies and assesses drivers of change (‘7 Drivers Model’), which are shaping the characteristics of the evolving security environment (see Figure 1). This report examines the impact of these drivers against the future utility and effectiveness of the Instruments of power (IoPs). This analysis provides insights into the nature of security threats, challenges, and opportunities that the Alliance and Allied nations may encounter.

The decision to overhaul the existing STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political factors) with the ‘Driving Forces Model’ was based on the appreciation of the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of the most relevant trends in the security environment. Additionally, the six-year gap between the SFA17 and SFA23 also encouraged a complete re-assessment of the trends landscape, intending to create a flexible methodology. Renewed focus on practical implications on the IoPs, introduced by the NATO Military Strategy in 2019 and followed by the NWCC further reinforced the need for a novel approach.

The ‘Driving Forces Model’ focuses on the underlying causes and dynamics of change. It encourages practitioners to explore the root drivers behind emerging trends, enabling the standardized research of a wide range of complex issues and the development of plausible scenarios with a more robust assessment of their potential implications. By understanding the fundamental forces at play, the Alliance can better anticipate and adapt to disruptions and capitalize on opportunities.

The SFA23 methodology is based on the Framework Foresight Model (Figure 3), tailored to the objectives of ACT. The research has also utilized extensive scenario development and AI-assisted horizon scanning tools, and relied on expansive collaborative dialogue with Allied and Partner nations and external actors in academia and industry. The SFA23 research started in October 2022 and included seven workshops, one conference and one seminar with an overall involvement of 800 participants. Findings on trends and initial implications have been developed as an iterative process between internal research, collaborative thinking and external advice.

Methodology: Model Definitions and Workshops

Based on this model, the SFA23 team adopted the following definitions and parameters to fit the scope of its objectives:

Past: Assessment of recent strategic shocks. The Domain of Research: The Evolving Security Environment of the Alliance. Current (Baseline) Assessment: Strategic shocks and emerging changes are transforming the character of the evolving security environment, creating novel challenges to the Alliance. The extent and frequency of structural disruptions will likely increase, while strategic competitors of the Alliance will seek opportunities to exploit changes. The Alliance’s effort to transform the Military Instrument of Power needs to draw on extensive futures thinking to remain fit for the future. Scanning and mapping trends: 170 trends identified and confluences assessed with a view to the most demanding outcomes and reduced to the most relevant trajectories (see the trend radar at Figure 2, with the most relevant trends for Alliance’s security environment). Identifying drivers: Drivers of change have been identified by an impact analysis of major trends. Primary drivers shaping the evolution of the security environment are climate change, resource scarcity, disruptive technology development, securitization of economics, human networks empowered, the exploitation of the global commons and an international order in transition. Drawing implications: The assessment of trends and ultimately of major drivers allowed analysts to identify likely characteristics of the evolving security environment and draw implications for the future utility and effectiveness of the Military as well as Diplomatic, Information and Economic Influences of Power. Options and integrated approach: The Future Operating Environment Study will be built on the foundations of the generic trends assessment provided by the SFA23 to provide an impact assessment to the transformation process, led by the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept and the Warfare Development Agenda.

List of Workshops: I. Washington, DC (USA): initial assessment of the evolution of the security environment, including discussions of potential drivers and multiple scenarios. II. Norfolk (USA): NATO ACT’s internal discussion on emerging trends and potential implications. III. Berlin (DEU): discussion with Allies on the three horizons, including critical drivers and uncertainties as well as conditions of transitions. IV. Helsinki (FIN): assessment of long-term implications of the Russian War of Aggression to future security environment, across first and second horizons. V. Riga (LAT): assessment of the impact on the future utility and effectiveness of Allied Instruments of Power. VI. Bucharest (ROU): testing of the ‘7 drivers’ framework and discussion with Allies on the implications of primary drivers. VII. Norfolk (USA): testing of the ‘Four Wars’ framework with the future warfighting community at ACT. VIII. Washington, DC (USA): closing symposium on the major challenges in the first two horizons, scenarios, drivers and uncertainties. (Although it is not counted as a workshop, due to its significance it is reported here.) IX. Brussels (BEL): additional test of ‘7 drivers’ and ‘Four Wars’ scenario was applied in the assessment of implications with industrial actors.

Scenario Development

To reduce complexity and enable collaborative futures thinking with Allies and Partners, four archetypical (‘Four Worlds’) scenario model was developed to explore generic futures, allowing implications to be drawn through the framework of the ‘seven drivers’. This model was used to assess subsequent future trends and initial implications with Allies, Partners and the Warfare Development community (during the Workshops in Bucharest, Norfolk, Washington DC and Brussels in 2023).

In addition to the generic future scenarios, a war-gaming model was developed to improve the understanding of potential new strategies by strategic competitors and the effective capability to combine their national instruments. The ‘Four Wars’ scenario model serves to assess military implications to the Alliance as well as to draw assessment to the utility and effectiveness of Allied IoPs in the evolving security environment. These scenarios were tested in two workshops (Norfolk and Brussels) with the warfighting development community and industrial experts.

Appendix A contains in-depth scenarios description and diagram of the ‘Four Worlds’ Model.

These initial framing discussions established that the security environment is in overall decline as a result of a pessimistic outlook for two significant variables: structural disruptions and international cooperation. Disruptions are driven by climate breakdown, increasing scarcity and unequal distribution of resources and the effects of accelerating technology development. Within this context, behaviour of state and non-state actors was assessed as increasingly competitive and in some cases outright aggressive in a rapidly transitioning international order, in pursuit of securing strategic advantages and resources, as well as hedging against or coping with fragmentation and instability on short and mid-term. In such a security environment, preferences for strategic cooperation will remain limited, with detrimental effects on the efficiency of responses to global challenges and likely undermining international stability. Unfolding fragmentation is manifested in increasing attempts by strategic competitors to undermine the RBIO and challenge the Alliance, or instability caused by non-state actors, and increasing levels of violence on a global scale. In this framework, the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been considered as systemic shocks.

The Evolving Security Environment: Pathways of Evolution

A negative pathway of limited global cooperation and outright competition, resulting in a trajectory from a fragmenting world to pervasive competition, is the most likely and most demanding pathway for the Alliance.

As introduced in the Methodology chapter, the ‘Four Worlds’ (Annex A) model was used to explore generic futures, out of which the Strategic Foresight team discarded the low disruption, high cooperation scenario as not probable. As a result, three generic futures have been assessed against workshop findings, with the ‘Fragmenting world’ (the Alliance’s Strategic Environment as defined in the Strategic Concept 2022) as a baseline, ‘Global cooperation’ as the positive scenario and ‘Pervasive competition’ as the negative scenario. During the workshops and engagements with Allies and Partners, the overwhelming opinion was consistently negative regarding the short and midterm outlook of the Alliance’s security environment. Additionally, the SFA23 has decidedly taken a risk-oriented approach to inform ongoing considerations in warfighting development and defence planning. As a result, the ‘Pervasive competition’ [high disruption, low cooperation scenario] pathway has been explored in detail and constitutes the core assessment of the SFA23.

Fragmenting world: The starting point is defined by heads of states and governments in the Strategic Concept 2022 (SC22) and reinforced in the Vilnius Communique by Heads of States and Governments in 2023. It portrays an already fragmenting security environment where the European security order is violated by the Russian Federation. Authoritarian actors are challenging Allied interests and values through contestation in space and cyber domains, as well as through hybrid means, while undermining multilateral norms and institutions. Terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, is the most direct asymmetrical threat and non-state armed groups are exploiting conflict and weak governance. For example, conflict, fragility, and instability in North Africa, the sub-Saharan region, and the Middle East affect NATO’s security and enables destabilizing interference by external actors. Likewise, the development of the processes in the Black Sea region is of crucial importance for the Euro-Atlantic area. In addition, China employs a wide range of political, economic, and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power. Furthermore, erosion of arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation negatively impacts strategic stability. Climate change is also a defining challenge and a threat multiplier with profound impact on Allied security, armed forces operations, and infrastructures. As recognized in the SC22, pervasive instability results in violence against civilians, including conflict-related sexual violence, and these trends pose serious transnational and humanitarian challenges.

Pathways of the Future: Global Cooperation vs Pervasive Competition

Pathways of the Future. The SFA23 assesses two possible pathways for the evolution of a baseline security environment as defined in the SC22: Global Cooperation and Pervasive Competition. Changes are primarily driven by increasing disruptions posed by climate breakdown, resource scarcity, technology transformation, and transitions in the international order. Actors (state and non-state alike) respond to these changes through changing attitudes and behaviour. As a key variable, cooperative behaviour in critical areas leads to a more benign scenario, whereas less cooperation leads to a higher level of disruptions and competition.

GLOBAL COOPERATION The positive pathway of the Alliance’s Evolving Security Environment assumes changing attitudes of potential adversaries and actors. It drives an enhanced level of cooperation on a global scale to address increasing disruptions and global challenges. It entails global coordination to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to provide to fragile and developing states financial assistance and access to technology. This will support their efforts to green energy transition, to reinforce or build critical infrastructure, and to tackle poverty, gender-based inequality and uneven access to resources. In addition, it requires governance on EDTs and in the global commons, for example space traffic management, as well as shared efforts to provide freedom of navigation, to counter violent extremist organizations and to promote international stability. Arms control agreements for conventional, nuclear, and emerging and disruptive technologies and systems would further assure strategic stability and enhance cooperation and dialogue. However, such a development is unlikely while the Russian Federation continues to violate the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, and maintains its hybrid activities, which precludes greater cooperation. Additionally, potential adversaries of the Alliance or Allied states maintain assertive postures and influence to promote alternative norms and regimes. Additionally, strategic competitors of the Alliance can be expected to continue exploiting vulnerabilities in the international system, abstaining from global efforts to provide credible response to global challenges and from establishing new frameworks to promote strategic stability.

PERVASIVE COMPETITION Accordingly, a negative pathway of limited global cooperation and outright competition, resulting in a trajectory from a fragmenting world to pervasive competition, is more likely. In such a scenario, the green energy transition remains disorderly, the extent of disruptions remains unbounded, multiplying challenges to states, societies, institutions and international norms. Strategic competitors, in anticipation of a degrading security environment, will likely expand operations to gain strategic advantage, to include dominance in the non-traditional and non-geographic domains, such as space and cyber. They will compete with the Alliance in a multi-dimension theatre of physical, cognitive and virtual dimensions, at all times. Pervasive competition will likely exacerbate the impact of disruptive developments, instabilities, and shocks. Potential adversaries will attempt to exploit these disruptive changes as opportunities to expand influence, shape and contest to ultimately confront the Alliance. Hence, it is of key importance to anticipate and understand such changes along with their implications to the Allied instruments of power.

Characteristics of the Evolving Security Environment

In the most likely pathway, the Evolving Security Environment of the Alliance will continue fragmenting, leading to pervasive competition with potential adversaries in all domains and across all dimensions. Such an environment will exhibit increasing complexity, congestion, commercialization, contestation and confusion.

Complexity: Interdependence and shared vulnerability of economies will continue to grow in space, digital services, and critical resource supply chains. High levels of interconnectivity and interdependence, coupled with heightened competition will continue to complicate international affairs amidst increasing frequency and extent of disruptions. Global strategic competitors will attempt to promote alternative economic, digital and security systems and expand their influence through diffusion of investment, technology, and power projection. Simultaneously they will likely seek for limited cooperation and retain dialogue, thereby increasing ambiguity of their objectives. States and empowered non-state actors will scramble for critical resources while simultaneously they will also need to cooperate in providing global responses to global challenges. Despite the imperative for international collaboration to address these challenges, there is an observable diminishing willingness and effectiveness in such collective endeavours. Cooperation and competition will thus likely take place simultaneously. The variety of actors, attitudes, behaviours, and disputes will increase significantly with empowered human networks and an increasing number of state actors acquiring advanced technologies. This will impact the balance of power generated on the inter- and intra-state levels. Novel frameworks of security cooperation may form as the cost and complexity of warfare increases. This will likely introduce an environment consisting of multiple military alliances. Boundaries between cooperation, rivalry, and confrontation are already eroded, and technology will further enhance this process. The proliferation of actors and activities in largely ungoverned domains will further increase complexity. Technology advancement and the emerging centrality of non-geographic domains will increase in scale, speed, and distance of actions and effects. Differing rule sets related to advanced technologies and international affairs will further complicate cooperation. Infinite alternative worlds may emerge in the virtual dimension, unbounded by physical limitations, and eventually the convergence of physical and non-physical (virtual) realities fused into metaverses will further increase variations of realities and perceptions. The expansion of competition from the physical to virtual and cognitive dimensions significantly impacts the continuum and character of conflict. This will likely shape the attitude and behaviour of actors towards more focus on resilience and on the increased exploration of pre-emptive measures.

Congestion: Climate breakdown as well as inequitable and diminishing access to resources will drive actors into new theatres. Changing climate conditions and expanding instabilities will accelerate shifts in both behaviour, attitude and actions of populations, especially in the most severely impacted areas. Migration, regular and irregular alike, will be a major driver for increased population densities likely in the Northern Hemisphere. Cities will continue to expand by absorbing rural populations. Congestion will also significantly increase in the global commons, with an increasing number of commercial actors in space, cyber, atmosphere, the High Seas and the Poles. Both state and non-state actors will attempt to secure access and dominance within these domains. Accordingly, populations will congest in and around urban areas, critical resources, trade routes and infrastructures. Competition and confrontation may frequently arise to access and dominate these nodes of human networks. Climate degradation will further contribute to competition for habitable areas and exploitable sea areas. The capabilities of actors will increase, enabling them to explore, exploit, and manoeuvre in all domains. Development and proliferation of sensors and autonomous systems will further increase congestion, but also interdiction, fire, lethality and attrition.

Commercialization: Limits of state power will increase dependence on more agile, scalable, and adaptable commercial service providers. Innovation is already led by the private sector and the gap between the state and private sector’s potential will likely increase further. Commercial actors will continue to act as distributed and effective networks, with better economies of scale and efficiency than state actors. Additionally, states’ economic power will likely be impacted by series of shocks, the need to balance societal needs, adapt to the green energy and industrial revolution as well as provide for defence spending. Increasing commercialization will likely proliferate into services in space, cyber, logistics, and telecommunication. The commercialization of security is extending to the military domain, with the expanding role of private military and security companies and violent non-state armed groups. Innovation in most EDTs will be driven by commercial non-state actors, and this surge is revolutionizing warfare. The commercialization of AI, biotechnology, and quantum technologies augments both the potential for innovation and the risk of misuse.

Contestation: Geopolitical rivalry will become more prevalent in a multipolar world. The erosion of RBIO would incentivize actors to resolve contradictions by challenging established rules. Emerging and revisionist powers may pursue strategic campaigns through novel combinations of power, exploitation of EDTs, or triggered by the perceived weakness of targeted states. Non-state actors will play an increasing role. Strategic competitors of the Alliance will be actively shaping, contesting, and confronting state and non-state actors in specific regions. Strategic competitors will attempt to shape and contest the Alliance’s MIoP across all domains, as well as through the combination of IoPs to limit the effectiveness of the Allied fighting power. Such efforts will take place along the entire continuum of conflict, including in peacetime and may escalate into confrontation.

Confusion: The non-linear and non-gradual erosion of RBIO will incentivize actors to ignore or challenge established rules. EDTs will expand in both variability and usability, possibly incentivizing actors to pursue strategic surprise. The expansion of competition from the physical to virtual and cognitive dimensions will blur the continuum and character of conflict. Simultaneous actions for both cooperation and competition will further complicate anticipation, assessment, attribution, and response. Enhanced concealment of intent and capacities will defy physical limitations and increasingly confuse boundaries between traditional and non-kinetic forms of conflict, also challenging the traditional notion of state sovereignty. The changing character of competition, boundary, signal density, simultaneous manoeuvres, and converging effects will challenge the understanding of an actor’s attitude and behaviour and various perceptions of competition. Aggression may take place in a distributed manner encompassing all domains, even in times of peace.

The likely pathway of the Evolving Security Environment supports the assessment of the NWCC which understands the changing character of war as persistent, simultaneous and boundless. This will also have enduring impact on the moral, conceptual and physical aspects of the Alliance’s fighting power and as such, needs to be analysed with a view to adapt the Alliance’s MIoP to remain fit for the future.

Drivers of Change: Overview

This chapter describes the most relevant strategic trends, organized into drivers of change which will significantly affect the Evolving Security Environment of the Alliance. Major disruptive change is caused by the Climate Breakdown and Loss of Biodiversity, Resource Scarcity Driving Instabilities, The Age of AI and EDTs converging, Geoeconomics Enabling Polarization, Human Networks Empowered, Scramble for the Commons and, as a result, International Order in Transition, all underlined by the detrimental effects of pervasive competition.

Climate breakdown and loss of biodiversity should be considered as the primary structural force that will have a profound impact on every aspect of the Evolving Security Environment. If unchecked, it will act as a threat multiplier, accelerating disruption and pervasive competition and causing further fragmentation. Societal instability, displacement and essential resource insecurity will pose a significant challenge to military operations across all domains as impacts escalate. This is an existential challenge for humanity.

Driver 1: Climate Breakdown and Loss of Biodiversity

Climate change will continue to enhance devastating extreme weather and climate events (hereafter climate extremes) with increasing frequency and severity. There is unequivocal evidence that the impact of climate change is reshaping living conditions on Earth and poses existential threats driven by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Rising global surface temperatures due to increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) can lead to the increased frequency and volatility of extreme atmospheric conditions, weather events, rising sea levels, and heat stress.

Extreme terrestrial and marine heat waves will continue to challenge the most vulnerable population’s groups, diminish agricultural production and threaten vital terrestrial and maritime ecosystems. Heat waves and drought will further exacerbate water and food insecurity. Coastal cities will become more vulnerable to natural disasters due to rising sea levels, the changing characteristics of compounding climate extremes such as the increasing frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones and associated storm surge combined with rising sea levels. Impacts on human environment will likely relate not only to mass migration of people, increasing organized crime such as human trafficking and gender-based violence, but also transforming national population demographics, leading to a shift in societal behaviours, values, resiliency and cultural norms as well as decreasing trust in state.

Risks and projected adverse impacts, as well as related losses and damages from climate change will escalate with every increment of global warming. Climatic and non-climatic risks will increasingly interact, creating compound and cascading risks that are more complex and difficult to manage.

Human and ecosystem vulnerability are interdependent. Climate degradation and disruption, the loss of biodiversity and rising temperatures are driving the shifting patterns in weather extremes with increasing frequency and duration affecting human systems and vital ecosystems. As temperatures rise, species are at high risk of becoming endangered or extinct, as ecosystems continue to decline. In the extreme case, the collapse of multiple ecosystems will adversely impact the natural balance of our planet. As a result, even slight incremental upticks in temperature will increasingly affect marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems and services such as water and food security, settlements and infrastructure, health, economies, and culture. Climate breakdown and the loss of biodiversity have cascading effects on food production, water supply and other critical ecosystem services that are essential for human well-being.

The water and food insecurity will likely exacerbate mass displacement and shifts in human migration patterns, leading to increased regional economic and social instability. Climatic impact-drivers such as drought, wildfires, flooding, extreme weather events, accelerated thawing, glacier retreat, global sea level rise, ocean acidification, and heatwaves are attributed to human influence. Migration will also continue to be instrumentalized by authoritarian states as done by Russia and Belarus in recent years. Climate breakdown affects states’ resources and may lead to social unrest, increased instability, radical movements, and terrorism.

Geoengineering is the deliberate manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract the effects of global warming or achieve other goals. Worsening climate conditions will induce considerations for the use of multiple geoengineering technologies, which will have several short-term benefits for the global climate, but may also introduce serious ramifications as a result, thus causing international debate. The scalability of these technologies to address global warming is under debate due to the uncertainty of whether these technologies will impact the climate in unpredictable ways. Significant regulatory and governance challenges are to be anticipated, as the severity of climate breakdown will induce stakeholders to experiment with geoengineering without regards to effects on third countries.

Along with geoengineering, climate terrorism through ecocide, i.e. human induced disasters to enact purposeful attrition, may also become a pervasive new phenomenon in the security environment. Besides the destruction caused by cascading effects of climate breakdown, human-induced catastrophes will also emerge more frequently as new technologies outpace safety considerations. EDTs will likely enable novel strategies to exert pressure on a state or on a population’s capacity, capability and will to employ the MIoP. Conventional tools may also be employed with increasing frequency to devastate vital commodities, such as arable soil, mines, plants and livestock, causing severe and/or irreversible damage to the environment. Hence, novel types of ecocide strategies may emerge as a new tool of state coercion. This was recently exemplified by the conscious destruction of croplands, mines, critical infrastructure and agricultural cargo by the Russian Federation as part of their war against Ukraine.

Potential Strategic Shocks for Climate Breakdown and Loss of Biodiversity:

1. Unexpected climate collapse in multiple countries, severely changing weather patterns and enduring life-threatening conditions, with little to no warning.
2. Increased risks from crop disease and failure in shrinking temperate zones, as extreme weather and loss of biodiversity harm legacy crops and devastate less resilient ones.
3. Sudden emergence of pandemics or collapse of biodiversity as a result of natural causes or human-induced ecocide creating lasting global crisis.
4. Activation of geoengineering of the atmosphere to create disruptive cross-border weather patterns, potentially enabling instrumentalization of the atmosphere and prompting possible pre-emptive responses or conflict.

Driver 2: Resource Scarcity Driving Instabilities

As climate breakdown further degrades vital ecosystems and interrupts the services they provide, the demand for renewable and non-renewable resources and critical raw materials is set to increase, while the competition and dependencies for these resources become more acute. The high demand and scarcity of resources may cause a tipping point whereby competition turns into confrontation.

Emerging resource scarcity of both renewable and non-renewable resources and critical raw materials combined with other climate-extreme events will increase the adverse impacts across all sectors such as the agricultural, energy, social, and economic sectors and regions. This will create inequitable, compounding effects globally. As a result, detrimental effects on nature, people, and materials will continue to increase. This will instigate internal challenges such as displacement and migration, food and water insecurities, conflicts, competition, and violence. Resource scarcity will also drive deepening competition and may lead to conflict around the access to and control of these resources through indirect involvement of states in developing countries, and direct confrontation along critical supply routes or in the global commons.

While agricultural production on a global level is increasing, access remains uneven and exploited as a lever of coercion while it also continues to cause lasting challenges to human security. Increased agricultural production ensued by expanding land use, through deforestation, are causing considerable land degradation. It is highly likely that the levels of land degradation and deforestation will continue to increase within states that lack funding or the capacity to develop sustainable agriculture and forestry. Enhanced climate-extreme disruptions and land degradation will increase instability in affected regions and will negatively impact water scarcity and lead to acute food insecurity, primarily in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, small islands, and the Arctic.

High water stress levels (i.e. the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand) will continue to severely impact sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Scarcity will be most severe in already arid climate conditions and urban areas of low-income countries, where water quality will pose an additional challenge. Urbanization, industrialization, electricity generation, exponential use of AI-driven computation, and reliance on large quantities of freshwater for cooling will further exacerbate water stress conditions. Water stressors will also likely affect most of the global population, driving instability, inequalities, discrimination, and marginalization, as well as poverty. This will create favourable conditions for external influence, transnational organized crime, gender-based violence, political violence and terrorism to emerge. Water could become the “the oil of the 21st century”, as drinking water shortages become more prevalent, together with the existing political frictions between states.

Non-renewable resources will continue to deplete, exacerbating dependencies as well as vulnerabilities of states, which are not sufficiently transitioning toward alternative energy sources. Geopolitical rivalries and pervasive instability, particularly in Africa, will also shape mining patterns and access to critical resources. This will likely invite strategic competitors of the Alliance to shape the political conditions to favourably expand influence in these regions.

The Green Energy Transition (GET) will challenge nation states’ ability to design, develop and implement this transition as well as their capacity to afford both financial and material resources. The success of this transition will also remain dependent on open and equitable access to critical rare earth materials and technology. Equally, the GET will likely induce the enablement and emergence of powerful commercial actors with oversight on the GET supply chains and processing capacities and as a result, become a significant political influence.

Potential Strategic Shocks for Resource Scarcity:

1. Confrontation over limited resources (‘resource wars’) expanding to regional and global levels, attracting major powers or security coalitions with further unintended or calculated escalations.
2. Popular movements revolting against fragile governments as a result of deteriorating environmental conditions, prompting internal conflicts, coups and regional escalation as well as major humanitarian crises.
3. The sudden emergence of vast market asymmetries, as a result of instability or export control disrupting the continuity of resource supply chains, undermining efforts of green energy transition and enhancing competition or confrontation with potential adversaries.
4. Human-induced or natural disasters leading to disruptions to electric grids, on a global scale.

Driver 3: The Age of AI - Emerging & Disruptive Technologies Converging

The pace of technology transformation will continue unabated. Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) will present opportunities and challenges in an age where effects and enhancements will converge across multi-dimensional environments. Convergence of technology will not only be transformative on a societal level in the next 20 years but will also change the character of warfare where military capabilities are increasingly autonomous, networked, multi-domain and precise, and empowering an increasing number of actors.

The current age of innovation is marked by an unprecedented pace of change and transformation across the entire spectrum of human activities. Over the last few decades technology has rapidly evolved, while costs of entry for accessing technologies have rapidly decreased. The speed, breadth, and depth of the parallel digital transformations across multiple sectors and in multiple regions are shaping new ways of development and value creation and changing the role of state and non-state actors. Within two decades, an overwhelming majority of the population will have access to the internet and mobile devices, along with virtually a limitless amount of information, while the distinction between the physical and virtual dimensions will decrease. Technology will thus enable and enhance converging effects in an emerging multi-dimensional environment (physical, cognitive and virtual domain).

At the same time, the speed of evolving technologies is also broadening attack surfaces, including critical infrastructures and societies’ beliefs and values. As a result, new state and non-state behaviours will emerge and additionally, new tools of competition and confrontation will enhance manoeuvres and effects in the non-physical dimensions, to wage cognitive warfare with the objective of achieving physical effects with increased efficiency and impact.

EDTs such as AI, data, robotics, human-machine interfaces, autonomous systems, quantum technology, space technology, biotechnology, human enhancement technology, novel materials, renewable and directed energy technology, new propulsion technology, and others bring both opportunities and risks. In the next 20 years, advanced military technologies will have four defining characteristics: they will be intelligent, interconnected, decentralized, and digital.

AI will confer prime advantage to countries incorporating AI into their existing military weapons and defence systems, while counter-AI techniques will likely emerge but struggle to keep pace. Additive manufacturing will likely converge with advances in AI and machine learning, big data, and advanced robotics to enable integrated manufacturing systems that respond in real-time to ad hoc challenges on demand. Quantum sensors will be capable of providing unparalleled precision and accuracy, including detecting specific locations of a missile launch or identifying a nuclear weapon signature. However, a quantum supercomputer will likely boost the capacity to disrupt and decrypt public key cryptography and classified information.

Economic espionage will likely intensify in a pervasive competition, enabled in the virtual dimension by increasing computational capacities, and broadened attack surfaces on Allied governance and academic information infrastructure. Diffusion of EDT technologies will empower non-state actors, including terrorist and ethnic rebel groups. Recruitment propaganda will focus on exploiting young people. Long-distance strike capabilities are becoming more cost-effective and accessible.

Potential Strategic Shocks for The Age of AI & EDTs:

1. Significant political or social unrest triggered by the uncontrolled spread of misinformation, disinformation as a result of AI, big data, and advanced language models.
2. The lack of human oversight and the speed of highly interconnected and automated systems triggering escalation or unintended crises due to highly interconnected systems, operating in a confused security environment.
3. Unanticipated use of any Emerging or Disruptive Technology (EDT) to gain strategic advantage in anticipation of imminent confrontation.
4. Enduring and successfully concealed employment of any EDT with effects of mass destruction.

Driver 4: Geoeconomics Fuelling Polarization

Economic activity across the globe continues to shift towards Asia whilst established economic systems and global division of labour is still transforming, due to security concerns, digital transformation and rapidly evolving manufacturing and production innovations. Pervasive competition is unfolding amidst major shocks to the global economy. This fuels an increasing level of polarization when both states and the private sector face global decoupling, with weaker states choosing or being coerced between systems, while states authority is being challenged with trust issues that become harder to address.

Over the next 20 years, several geoeconomic trends are expected to shape the global landscape. In a fragmented world, the erosion of the RBIO, heightened geopolitical rivalries, trade and supply re-shoring, technological competition and economic interests will likely drive regionalization and the solidification of geoeconomic blocs with significant implications. Firstly, it will weaken globalization, resulting in slower economic growth, increasing costs to supply chain security and reducing economy of scale for innovation. Secondly, assertive powers will strive to internationalize currency to mitigate potential risks associated with the dominance of the US dollar. Thirdly, major strategic competitors will increase attempts to establish norms and technological standards that might lead divergence from western standards. Fourthly, developing countries may be compelled to take sides to gain market access, foreign direct investment, technology transfer and aid, leading to alignment of their financial systems with their respective protectors.

The world is thus witnessing the emergence of geoeconomic blocs further fuelling polarization. This shift is driven by security concerns as democracies aim to cut reliance on autocratic countries’ supply chains, while autocracies fear democratic influences. China aims to become self-reliant in critical areas, creating the capacity to function independently, particularly in times of crisis and confrontation. Russia is decoupled from Allied countries to a large extent, but shows intent and capacity to re-enter global economics through Chinese and other state markets.

New achievements of the fourth industrial revolution (additive manufacturing, smart agriculture, space tech, digital transformation) will shape economic power. Negative demographic trends of an unskilled workforce and ageing populations will impact high- and middle-income countries, limiting economic output and competing with defence spending.

Potential Strategic Shocks for Geoeconomics:

1. Major supply chain shock resulting from regional conflict, denied access to resource nodes, or severe trade prohibitions.
2. Actors introducing an export ban on critical rare earth materials or energy resources in a concerted and coordinated fashion.
3. Isolated states conducting disruptive strikes against digital and economic global systems causing global shock in telecommunication, supply flows and industrial activity.
4. Alternative financial systems emerging and gathering increasing support.

Driver 5: Human Networks Empowered

Technology accelerates interconnectivity within groups and individuals increasing their influence in the security environment. It empowers them to pursue their objectives independently from and sometimes in contradiction with state actors. Human networks’ ability to adapt rapidly, makes them formidable allies, or foes in the future security environment.

Human networks (i.e. a complex set of interconnected relationships that facilitate information exchange, collaboration and resource-sharing) will continue to transform in both the digital and physical realms, achieving new scales of efficiency but also new behavioural patterns as a result of technology enablement. The role of AI assistance may transform inter-personal trust and patterns of reliance. Non-state actors’ capacities and influence will grow as private and illicit networks and social groups adapt better. The commercial sector will play a crucial role in supporting state security and building resilience within society, but may also challenge state monopolies on power.

As advanced technology offers expanding solutions for remote violence, it will enhance deniability in congested physical and boundless non-physical dimensions. The wealthiest 1% of the population will continue to accumulate wealth, power, and influence, with technology-enabled super-wealthy individuals contesting state responsibilities.

Human networks will continue to concentrate in urban areas. Megacities will grow as global hubs, but face compounding risks from climate breakdown, resource scarcity, and disease. Africa will likely surpass other continents in urbanization, often resulting in slummification and empowerment of illicit networks in the absence of sustainable growth. The urban-rural divide will further exacerbate intra-state tensions.

Cognitive warfare involves weaponizing public opinion, narratives, and emotions. States and non-state actors will strive to create confusion and ambiguity between fact and fiction using generative AI and social media platforms. Trust in governments shows signs of decreasing and will be actively targeted in the cognitive and virtual dimensions.

Potential Strategic Shocks for Human Networks:

1. Non-state actors openly and declaratively contesting and challenging state authority, or replacing state responsibility in critical services, or acting in the state’s stead in international affairs.
2. Winning a conflict without fighting through successfully shaping and contesting within the cognitive and virtual dimensions, collapsing national cohesion and severing the military instrument from the society.
3. The exponential spread of any emerging norm, belief, idea, technology or disease across the global human networks.
4. Collapse of a megacity.

Driver 6: Scramble for the Commons

Pervasive competition as well as depletion and uneven access of existing resources will drive actors towards the insufficiently governed global commons. Actors will explore and exploit these commons to gain strategic advantage, control or deny access to contest and, if needed, confront. This scramble will require stronger reliance on non-state actors and will be driven by commercial capacities.

Structural forces will make global commons (Arctic, Antarctica, High Seas, Atmosphere, Outer Space, Cyberspace) more accessible. In the absence of efficient global cooperation, these ‘new frontiers’ will remain insufficiently governed and ripe for competition.

• High Seas and Oceans: Contestation over trade routes, fisheries, and subsea resources. Threats to critical undersea infrastructure (such as communication cables and energy pipelines) from cutting, mine-laying, and cyberattacks at landing stations. • Polar Regions (Arctic and Antarctica): Melting ice will open new shipping routes (North-West Passage, Northern Sea Route, Trans Arctic Route) and access to natural resources, turning the poles into strategic focal points. • Atmosphere: Rapid proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles, high-altitude balloons, and potential cross-border geoengineering operations creating new vulnerabilities and traffic management challenges. • Outer Space: Congestion and commercialization of space, space-based mining (e.g. Helium-3, precious metals), anti-satellite weapons, and loitering munitions in orbit challenging space constellations. • Cyberspace: Essential for communication and critical infrastructure, yet remaining mostly ungoverned and unstable. Malicious cyber activities, anonymity, and deniable operations will blur boundaries between peace and war.

Potential Strategic Shocks for Scramble for the Commons:

1. Unintended escalation from confrontation of state or state-sponsored commercial actors in scrambling for exploration and exploitation beyond national jurisdiction, in the insufficiently governed global commons.
2. Interdiction of naval trade, air traffic, satellite orbits and critical undersea infrastructure in critical nodes or locations with global effects.
3. Autonomous actors imposing paralysis in physical and digital infrastructure by creating strategic disruptions in cyber space, driven by alternative ideologies or beliefs.
4. Any form of kinetic or non-kinetic attack against Allied and major commercial satellite constellations.

Driver 7: International Order in Transition

Across all aspects of the Evolving Security Environment, pervasive competition will accelerate as strategic competitors of the Alliance adapt to increasing levels of global fragmentation and the erosion of the current international systems. As a result of increasing uncertainty and instability, rivals will position themselves to undermine international norms, shape and contest in peacetime and prepare for confrontation. The relationship between Russia and China is likely to strengthen and smaller states may be exposed to coercion as pervasive competition gathers pace. Formation and solidification of new forms of regional security cooperation and military alliances may become more prevalent.

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine have acted as primary disruptors amplifying negative trends. The war in Ukraine has cost over 3 trillion dollars in lost global GDP and exacerbated global food and energy crises.

Russia’s economy is expected to sustain a protracted conflict at daunting long-term costs while reconstituting conventional forces with lower quality or imported dual-use EDTs and relying on hybrid/asymmetric toolboxes. It is unlikely Russia could sustain conflict on more than one front.

China is emerging as the only actor possessing dominant capacities across all instruments of power to promote alternative governance systems, driving military-civil fusion, expanding its nuclear arsenal toward a tripolar nuclear order (US, Russia, China), and dominating green tech supply chains.

Global nuclear risks are increasing due to the erosion of arms control treaties, nuclear modernization, and potential integration of AI and cyber into nuclear command and control.

Potential Strategic Shocks for International Order in Transition:

1. A Russian attack against Allied countries or assets or any action by actors to violate territorial sovereignty with overt or covert confrontation.
2. Formation of a military alliance, openly adversarial to NATO.
3. Major war expanding to multiple regions leading to instability, prompting humanitarian crisis and mass migration.
4. Surprise employment of massed autonomous weapons to create an asymmetrical advantage against high-value targets.
5. Nuclear exchange between states.

Implications to the Alliance: Diplomatic Instrument of Power

The Diplomatic Instrument of Power (DIoP) will be challenged by a great variety of actors, behaviours and attitudes, as well as competing narratives and increasing complexity.

Allies will use DIoP to enhance security through partnerships, improve resilience, support arms control, and reinforce the rules-based international order. However, diplomatic engagement will occur in a degraded environment where adversaries actively undermine norms using information campaigns, cyber disruption, and legal operations (lawfare).

Key challenges to the effective use of DIoP:

1. Strategic designs by state actors to undermine the credibility of diplomatic efforts and the RBIO through the exploitation of the information environment in the cognitive dimension;
2. Employment of cyber capacities to shape, contest, and disrupt diplomatic efforts and operations in the virtual dimensions;
3. Diffusion of dual usable EDTs enabling concealment of intent and capacities in the physical dimension to undermine effective arms control regimes;
4. Employment of legal operations, corruption, and promotion of alternative standards and norms in pervasive competition or exploitation of the global commons’ insufficient regulation.

Implications to the Alliance: Information Instrument of Power

Allied actions in a congested information environment will face challenges due to the abundance of narratives, AI, and automation complicating detection. Cognitive warfare will play a critical role in shaping public perception and decision-making, requiring countermeasures in pervasive competition.

The Information Instrument of Power (IIoP) must address the weaponization of public opinion, where the human mind becomes the battlefield. AI and large language models will enhance signal density, noise, deep fakes, and synthetic media.

Key challenges to the efficient use of IIoP:

1. State actors using disinformation and alternative narratives will undermine the credibility of the RBIO and the core values of the Alliance, discredit collective and Allied actions to Partners, and erode Allied cohesion and the will to act in the cognitive dimension.
2. Adversaries may choose to use influence campaigns by leveraging AI-enabled data analysis, extended reality spaces, and digital platforms to infiltrate digital infrastructure and launch deception operations.
3. The IIoP will be extensively used to shape and contest resilience, cohesion, and support of Allied actions in the physical battlespace through personalized digital campaigns and disposable social movements.
4. Promoting alternative rules and standards in the normative battlespace to polarize society and weaken the RBIO.
5. Lacking clarity on the ownership and posture within the IIoP across the continuum of competition will enable adversaries to maintain initiatives in the cognitive dimension.

Implications to the Alliance: Economic Instrument of Power

Gaining an economic advantage over competitors will become a key objective for nations seeking to enhance their power and influence, while retaining an economic advantage will be fundamental to creating resilience against a chaotic future security environment.

The Economic Instrument of Power (EIoP) will encompass non-financial sanctions, export controls on critical technologies, supply chain securitization, and countering parallel financial systems/digital currencies.

Key challenges to the effective use of EIoP:

1. NATO as a military Alliance will not be able to fully exploit its economic advantage of scale. Potential adversaries may be able to mobilize and employ the economic instrument without the need to consult or manage relations with other actors in the international system to the same extent.
2. National interest remains a fundamental pillar of state policies, so it may limit the economy of scale of actions on the Alliance level.
3. The impact of accelerated changes remains unclear in many areas, thus decreasing resilience against external interference.
4. The securitization and decoupling of economic and digital ecosystems, as well as scientific research, will negatively affect the scale and efficiency of global economic cooperation.

Implications to the Alliance: Military Instrument of Power

National ability to generate fighting power may become constrained by a wide range of challenges to states, including costs of climate adaptation and green energy transition; keeping pace with accelerating technology changes; and economic, financial and technology limitations. In addition, social dynamics (ageing societies, shortage of skilled workforce) and cost escalation in the defence sector will pose further demands.

Key challenges to the effective use of MIoP:

1. Accelerating changes in technology shaping the character of warfare (intelligent, interconnected, distributed, and digital systems; compressed decision-making cycles; ubiquitous autonomous systems; hypersonic and swarming capabilities).
2. Active shaping and contesting in virtual and cognitive dimensions disrupting the moral component of fighting power.
3. Challenges across physical dimensions:
   • Personnel Element: Ageing demographics, skill shortages, rising personnel costs.
   • Equipment Element: Rapid technological obsolescence, inadequate industrial base for enduring conflict, cost escalation, interoperability gaps.
   • Training Element: High costs of training for extreme environments, multi-domain operations, and advanced EDTs.
   • Readiness Element: Stockpile shortages, long strategic distances, high attrition rates.
4. Adversaries targeting Allied social cohesion in peacetime, shifting actions to ungoverned commons, hybrid warfare, and proxy engagements.
5. Adapting to climate breakdown, operating in austere conditions, and mitigating climate-induced attrition on military hardware.
6. Adapting force designs to resource scarcity, accelerating the transition to green energy in defence, and protecting trade routes and critical nodes.
7. Integrating commercial/private sector capabilities across space, cyber, logistics, and communications while addressing trust, reliability, and legal attribution.
8. Specific operational requirements across the commons:
   • High Seas: Securing trade routes, countering piracy, defending subsea cables, deploying naval unmanned systems.
   • Polar Regions: Enhancing situational awareness, monitoring Arctic/Antarctic routes, asserting international law.
   • Atmosphere: Enhancing air traffic management, countering drone swarms, protecting against electromagnetic jamming.
   • Outer Space: Protecting satellites, addressing space debris and orbital congestion, countering anti-satellite weapons.
   • Cyberspace: Defending against advanced persistent threats, strengthening private sector partnerships, addressing regulatory gaps.

Appendix A: Scenarios - ‘Four Worlds’ Model

To reduce complexity and enable collaborative futures thinking with Allies and Partners, four archetypical scenarios were developed based on two axes: level of structural disruption and level of international cooperation.

1. Low disruption, low cooperation (‘Fragmenting world’): Baseline environment based on SC22 evolving without major shocks. Assessed as low probability due to accelerating climate and technology disruptions.
2. High disruption, low cooperation (‘Pervasive competition’): The most likely and demanding scenario. Structural disruptions and strategic shocks escalate while strategic competitors impede collective solutions and contest the RBIO across all domains and IoPs.
3. High disruption, high cooperation (‘Global cooperation’): Positive pathway where strategic competitors and global actors collaborate to manage disruptions, climate change, and technology governance. Discarded as improbable in the near/mid-term due to ongoing Russian aggression and Chinese assertiveness.
4. Low disruption, high cooperation (‘Better angels of our nature’): Discarded after initial testing as not probable given the reality of accelerating global disruptions and geopolitical rivalries.

Credits and Project Team

ACT STRATEGIC FORESIGHT TEAM

Leadership & Points of Contact: • Gergely Nemeth - Head of Strategic Foresight • Andreas Wangberg - Deputy Head of Strategic Foresight • Heiko Bauer - Information Management Officer • Major General Joseph D’Costa, USA Army - Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Policy

Contributors & Core Team: • Anca Agachi, Jordan Becker, Jason Brown, Katy Lindqvist, Cho Kong • Andy Hines, Gibbs McKinley, Fiona Butcher, Jason Pogacnik, Florence Gaub • Joseph Voros, Benedetta Berti, Ruben Diaz-Plaja, Matt Levinger, Lauranne Bureau • Sinikukka Saari, Toni Ahlqvist, Alexander Lanoszka, Mathew Burrows, Nathan Berrick • Yuval Weber, Sanna Ahvenharju, Richard Sherburne, Erika Ricci, John Rafter • Gabriele Rizzo, Daniel Bayless

Editors: • Maureen Archer, Cristal Armijo, Klaus Dodds, Olivier Schmitt, Erwan Lagadec

Graphic Designer: • Tamara Vaughn