Foreword
It is time for something new.
The international security landscape is changing rapidly. Great power politics and the unabashed pursuit of spheres of influence return, while technological innovation, a wave of illiberalism and open as well as hybrid warfare disrupt assumptions of stability and attainable democratic peace.
For Germany, in particular, this requires a new approach to security, a new seriousness. After three unique decades—unified, at peace with its neighbors, in an ever-deeper integrated European Union, benefitting from a globalized system of increasingly free trade and international rule of law—Germany is going through a sea-change. From a consumer to a provider of existential security, for herself and the continent.
The key task is creating a credible deterrence against all threats, and fast. It requires a revised allocation of resources—in money, manpower, political weight, and strategic brainpower. The re-building of the armed forces is at premium, but so is the industrial ramp-up and the resilience of critical infrastructure and society as a whole.
Security, it turns out, is a complex matter. Especially if a nation has not expended thought and energy on it for a long time. In the urgency of now, decision-makers need to assess how well current efforts succeed and where they are lacking.
This is the driving motivation behind PwC’s and DGAP’s development of the National Security & Resiliency Index (NSRI). It is a fresh answer to an old, almost forgotten concern: How do the military, the economic, and the societal strength of a state combine to ensure its security? By finding ways to measure—to actually quantify, aggregate, and compare—various aspects of national security and resilience, it is a unique undertaking, without precedence anywhere.
At this early stage already, it provides a number of insights. Key among them is that the three major elements—military capability, industrial capacity, societal readiness—are so closely interlinked that each will fail without the success of the other. That is, while military power is essential, a focus on the Bundeswehr alone will not suffice. It is crucial to strengthen the interplay between all three major elements.
To be clear, the NSRI project is still in its infancy. Not all data is yet available, not all kinks of our model are ironed out. But we are proud of what can already be demonstrated: That it is possible to measure resilience. And as we believe: It is necessary to do so to reliably increase resilience.
Thus, we understand today’s NSRI as a conversation starter. We invite you to work on it with us, as we are further developing the model under the guidance of DGAP’s Academic Advisory Board, led by Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse. Our goal is to determine robust figures that can be compared over time and across national boundaries.
Then, the NSRI will help decision-makers to determine what works and what does not. Thus it is a promising new tool for better understanding our national performance in a new age.
