This article is part of a series featuring Atlantic Council experts’ analysis and recommendations on the key challenges facing allies at the upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, and beyond.
WASHINGTON and VILNIUS—“Resilience is everyone’s responsibility,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently observed. The 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague translated that principle into policy by committing allies to dedicate 1.5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to resilience and security-related investments, in addition to 3.5 percent of GDP for defense spending, by 2035. The political decision was important. The strategic challenge begins now.
NATO has long known how to define, measure, and generate military capability. It has yet to develop equally clear standards for resilience. That gap is becoming increasingly consequential. Modern warfare targets not only armed forces but also the civilian infrastructure that enables them to fight. If NATO expects allies to invest 1.5 percent of their GDP in resilience, it must now define what resilience actually means, how it should be measured, and which investments genuinely strengthen collective defense.
The upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara should therefore focus not only on spending more, but also on spending better. Three priorities stand out: First, NATO should establish clearer criteria for resilience spending and align them more closely with the European Union (EU). Second, the Alliance should integrate Nordic, Baltic, and Ukrainian experience more systematically into defense planning. Third, NATO should recognize that resilience extends beyond infrastructure to include public preparedness, trusted institutions, and societal readiness.
The challenge
Russia’s war against Ukraine demonstrates why this matters. Energy grids, transport networks, logistics hubs, digital infrastructure, communications systems, and public administration have all become relevant targets. Increasingly, the objective is not destruction alone, but disruption that hinders the country’s ability to sustain both civilian life and military operations. Cyber operations have followed the same logic, as the battlefield increasingly extends far beyond the front line. Russian strikes against Ukraine, for example, have repeatedly targeted power generation, substations, distribution networks, railways, ports, logistics infrastructure, and communications systems.
The challenge, however, is not limited to Ukraine. Across NATO territory, allies face hybrid threats combining cyber operations, sabotage, disinformation, economic coercion, and attacks against critical infrastructure. Albania, for example, has experienced large-scale cyberattacks against government systems, showing how hostile actors can disrupt public services and undermine trust in state institutions without crossing a border or firing a shot.
Drone proliferation adds another dimension. Modern drones can threaten ports, airports, rail hubs, energy infrastructure, logistics centers, government facilities, and military mobility corridors hundreds, even thousands of kilometers away from any battlefield. Distance from Russia or Belarus no longer guarantees distance from the threat. Increasingly sophisticated jamming and spoofing efforts by adversaries further complicate the challenge. Much as intermediate-range missile systems compressed geography during the Cold War, drones increasingly challenge traditional assumptions about strategic depth. Even seemingly unsophisticated technologies, such as commercial drones and meteorological balloons, can create operational, political, and security dilemmas disproportionate to their cost.
The strategic relevance of resilience
NATO recognized the strategic importance of resilience long before the current phase of the war in Ukraine. Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty commits allies to strengthen their individual and collective capacity to resist attack. At the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO leaders adopted seven baseline requirements for national resilience, covering continuity of government, secure energy supplies, resilient communications, reliable transport infrastructure, food and water security, preparedness for mass casualties, and the management of population movements.
The strategic relevance of those requirements has only grown. During the Cold War, resilience was often associated with ensuring that societies could survive disruption. Today, resilience is increasingly about ensuring that NATO can continue to operate despite disruption. Civilian infrastructure has become part of the Alliance’s operational backbone. If it fails, military plans become harder to execute regardless of how many forces are available on paper.
Frameworks for resilience
The Nordic-Baltic region offers useful lessons in how resilience can be organized to deter and defend against such threats. Finland, for example, relies on its long-established Security Committee, which brings together ministries, industry, and other stakeholders under a comprehensive security framework. Sweden and Denmark have elevated resilience, civil preparedness, and societal security to cabinet-level portfolios, supported by dedicated ministers and institutions responsible for coordinating efforts across government and society. While the institutional arrangements differ, the underlying principle is remarkably similar: Resilience is treated as a whole-of-government and whole-of-society responsibility rather than the task of any single ministry or agency.
Lithuania has chosen a path through the National Comprehensive Defense Coordination Council. Far from being another bureaucratic exercise, it represents a deliberate effort to operationalize resilience by bringing together ministries, municipalities, critical infrastructure operators, businesses, and civil society around a common understanding of risk and preparedness.
Lithuania’s experience also illustrates how quickly the distinction between resilience and defense begins to blur. Cooperation between the Ministries of National Defence and Transport on military mobility has demonstrated how railways, roads, ports, airports, and logistics corridors, which serve economic purposes in peacetime, can become critical defense assets during crises and conflict. Lithuanian Railways is a case in point: Its role is no longer limited to moving passengers and cargo. The question is therefore not whether such assets belong to the resilience or defense category. The question is whether they can perform when the Alliance needs them most.
Three steps forward
The same logic applies across the Alliance. What once appeared to be purely civilian infrastructure is becoming part of NATO’s ability to reinforce allies, sustain operations, and project credible deterrence. The distinction between resilience and defense is therefore becoming progressively less clear-cut.
Three priorities should guide NATO’s discussions on resilience at the upcoming Ankara summit and beyond:
First, NATO should establish clearer and more standardized criteria for resilience-related spending. Common benchmarks would enhance transparency and help ensure that resilience targets generate measurable strategic outcomes rather than accounting exercises. Eligible spending should be linked to demonstrable improvements in resilience, whether in energy security, communications, healthcare surge capacity, transportation continuity, or military mobility.
This is where a common NATO-EU understanding becomes increasingly important. Both organizations place growing emphasis on resilience, critical infrastructure protection, military mobility, energy security, and societal preparedness. Yet they do not always use identical definitions, methodologies, or assessment criteria. Before budgets can be aligned, concepts need to be aligned first.
This is not merely a technical issue. Much of what NATO increasingly considers resilience—military mobility, transportation infrastructure, energy security, critical supply chains, and strategic communications—falls within areas where the EU possesses significant regulatory, financial, and policy tools. NATO and the EU therefore cannot afford to develop separate understandings of resilience.
Second, the Alliance should integrate Nordic, Baltic, and Ukrainian “total defense” principles more systematically into NATO planning and exercises. The objective should not be to replicate national models, but to identify transferable practices: clear legal responsibilities, public-private coordination, reserve capacity, citizen preparedness, and regular testing through exercises. Strategic enterprises should form part of this effort. Transportation and communication providers are no longer merely commercial entities. During crises and conflict, they become critical enablers of national defense. NATO members should view Ukraine not only as a beneficiary of allied resilience efforts, but also as one of the most experienced practitioners of this approach to “total defense.”
Third, resilience ultimately rests on trust. Societies that trust public institutions, understand risks, and are prepared to act during crises are inherently more resilient. Building such resilience requires more than investment. It requires leadership, public engagement, and a common understanding of the challenges allies face. Allied and national leadership should prioritize fostering this trust and explaining potential threats to the public before a crisis occurs.
As the war in Ukraine continues to reshape Europe’s security environment, NATO’s credibility will depend not only on military capability, but also on the ability of allied societies to absorb shocks, maintain essential services, and continue functioning under pressure.