Alice Billon-Galland
Hello, and welcome to this Chatham House webinar. My name is Alice Billon-Galland, and I’m a Research Associate at Chatham House’s Europe Programme. Today, we’ll be discussing European national security strategies. As the coronavirus outbreak continues to place significant strain on many European countries, we’ll try to understand why some countries have been able to mitigate the effects of the pandemic better than others. From there, we’ll broaden the discussion and try to understand how governments balance their response to the mix of risks that they face, often with rather limited resources and probably even more, given the economic recession that shall come after coronavirus. So, is the national security planning fit for purpose and what lessons can we draw from the current pandemic, regarding non-traditional threats, societal resilience, as well as contingency planning?
So, we have a great panel of speakers today. Our first speaker is Dr Thanos Dokos, who currently serves as Deputy National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Greece. Thanos was, until recently, the Director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Our second speaker is Lord Peter Ricketts, who served as Britain’s first National Security Adviser from 2010 to 2012, and was, before that, among other postings, British Ambassador to France, as well as British Permanent Representative to NATO. And, finally, last but not least, our third Speaker is Dr Clare Wenham, who is Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics, and, before that, she worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
So, let’s dive in. Thanos, can you tell us a little bit about how the Greek Government has handled the pandemic so far, and, more generally, how Greece does national security planning and juggles with the different security threats that it’s facing.
Dr Thanos Dokos
Thank you, Alice, and it’s a pleasure to be in such great company. If, before the COVID-19 crisis, one had asked the question, which countries would respond better to such a challenge? I suspect that Greece would not be in anyone’s shortlist. But we did, I think, a pretty good job. Now, why was that? Well, first of all, we paid attention to what was happening in nearby countries like Italy and Spain, even before the situation reached a dramatic level, and we took some precautions, like cancelling public events, even before we had a single case in our country. Because we knew that our health system had been weakened by the ten-year-old economic crisis and we didn’t have enough intensive care units to treat a large number of patients. But, most importantly, I think we listened to the experts.
A committee of top-notch Epidemiologists and Virologists was created, and Politicians really listened to them, listened to expert advice. But at the end of the day, I think, it was the decision of the Prime Minister, who, like his counterparts in, I suspect, almost every other country, was faced with a difficult dilemma. Now, Greece, let me remind you, was recovering from a deep structural economic crisis and recession that lasted for ten years, and it looked like 2020 was going to be a good economic year. But at the same time, it was obvious that lives would be lost. So, the dilemma was save lives or keep the economy open. But then, it became obvious at some point that if there was no early lockdown, we would lose people and not help the economy, and it was a question of time when the lockdown was going to come. So, an early decision was made, again, listening very carefully to what the experts had to say.
Interestingly, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, as Greeks are not been perceived as the most disciplined Europeans, we probably are a bit too Mediterranean for that, but people understood the stakes and co-operated. It also helped that we had a daily briefing by a very respected and soft-spoken Medical Doctor, and the Deputy Minister for Civil Protection, who was tough when necessary, and that convinced people that the government was doing what was best for the country. So, we didn’t have any instances of public protests against the lockdown, as happened in the US, Germany and a few other countries. So, it worked quite well. We have, I think, the latest count is 173 deaths as a result of the virus, and fewer than 3,000 patients overall. So, these are good numbers, but now comes the equally, if not more, difficult part, which is relaxing restrictions, opening up the economy and, for a country like Greece, which relies heavily on the tourist industry, also deciding how to reopen the country to visitors from Europe and elsewhere.
So, it will be difficult, and there are so many uncertainties. We don’t know when the next wave will come. It looks like there will be a next wave, that’s probably the only certainty. So, these will be the difficult questions. Now, to put it in a broader context, and of course this is not limited to Greece, I think every country is faced with a long list of challenges, risks and threats, and the means are almost never sufficient, even for much wealthier and powerful countries than Greece. So, one has to prioritise and we use the usual criteria, impact and probability. It’s a difficult process. Just to give an example for Greece, we are not – we are currently faced with more than one crisis, one is the health one, the other is the sort of migration crisis, the protection of our borders, we have a few issues with our eastern neighbours, so it’s a parallel process, which, of course, is taking resources and it’s burdening the crisis management system. So, it’s a difficult process.
Let me also mention that the European – just bring in the European dimension in the health crisis, it was [inaudible – 07:50] in the early stages. Every European country for itself, and the used contribution was limited, because there is no competence at the European level, and we also discovered that we are heavily dependent on non-European sources for basic items like masks and other medical equipment. So, I think these are lessons we need to study and make sure that we will do better next time, because Clare, of course, is the expert here. But I – my feeling, also reading the literature for many years, has always been a question of when, not if. So, there will be a next crisis, a medical crisis, and, unfortunately, many other types of crisis on our list, so let’s make sure that we are better prepared next time.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great, thank you so much, Thanos, and I think it’s particularly interesting what you’ve said and sort of goes to the heart of the discussion, that a country, like Greece, needs to manage lots of different crises and lots of different threats at the same time. So, coronavirus is one of them, but that doesn’t mean that migration or tensions with neighbouring countries stop. So, there needs to be a bit of a balance, in terms of the resources available, and also, sort of the political capital available for other crises as well.
Let’s now move to Peter. Peter, building on what Thanos was just explaining, can you share with us your practitioner’s take on risk and resilience planning, this time within the British context?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Thank you very much. Yes, I can, and I think what Thanos said chimes a lot with me as well. I don’t think that governments find it at all easy to deal with risk and resilience issues, although they recognise the problem. Indeed, when we setup the National Security Council, for David Cameron, in 2010, it was one of the specific reasons was to improve performance on resilience. Governments here had been very spooked by sudden emergence of disruptive threats. For example, in 2000, the blockade of the fuel depots, under Tony Blair, which almost brought the country to a halt. So, David Cameron and his government wanted to give higher priority to resilience. They also saw a National Security Council as being good at foresight and better preparation for future threats and we did a national security prioritisation, risk prioritisation exercise in 2010, as Thanos said, looking at the likelihood and the impact of potential threats and we put, as one of the top four risks on the National Security Risk Register, the resilience issue. We called it natural hazards, and particularly we drew attention to the risk of flooding and of pandemics and the idea was that each of these top risks would get more resources and would be properly prepared for. And on pandemics, there’s been a lot of reporting in the press that, indeed, after 2010, there were plans developed and, indeed, an exercise was held in 2016, but we were still caught unprepared when the pandemic hit at the beginning of this year.
Why is that? I think it sheds some light on the problems that governments have. Governments, in my experience, are focused on short-term crisis managing. There’s always some pressing daily thing and what happens gets funded. So, there were terrorist attacks, and so counterterrorism was funded. There were cyberattacks, and so we put a lot of money into the cyber issue. There was international conflict. We had the Libya conflict, and so, of course, the Armed Forces got resources, and on resilience, flooding happened. Indeed, even in 2010, just after we published our strategy, there were floods and a lot of money was put into flood defences. Pandemics didn’t happen, until they did, and therefore, governments found it very hard to fund the sort of preparedness we need for pandemics, and I think that’s part of a wider problem that governments have with thinking strategically, with thinking longer-term, getting out of the day-to-day crisis managing cycle, to think about what might happen in the future. And that’s true in funding as well, because there is always something that you need to spend money on. in the NHS, Clare knows better than me, there’s always a winter health crisis, and so you fund that, and in the end, you don’t fund the sort of redundancy, you need extra equipment, extra capacity for a pandemic.
So, what do we do about it, just briefly? Clearly, we need to broaden our concept of national security. We have had resilience as a threat, but we haven’t really put it at the heart of our planning. I suppose, in the last two decades, we really gave priority to countering terrorism and focusing on international military interventions. But now, we need to give this real priority. That means funding redundancy in systems. I’m sure public health will now be at the centre of everyone’s attention, but they also need to be thinking about redundancy and the resilience, sustainability of grids, these grids, these digital grids, that our entire economy and society now depend on. And we need to be making policy choices now to prevent future disruptive threats, obvious example of that is carbon reduction. Even with a major economic recession to cope with, we need to start spending serious money on carbon reduction, if we’re not to have another disruptive threat in years to come.
But, final point, these are just the things that governments are really bad at, and I think that the British Government’s performance, my own take on it, is that it was too slow at the beginning. They didn’t see the problem building. There was too much overpromising and underdelivering, and there was too much getting absorbed in the daily crisis to have time to look at the bigger picture. I think that now we need to be working, clearing the decks to prepare both for the final phase of this crisis and the next one, I would delay the Brexit transition. I would get back to having regular meetings of the National Security Council. I think it’s astonishing it hasn’t met since January, and I think that the British Government ought to be out there building a new multilateralism for a co-operative approach to future threats. I would be very worried if one of the effects of this crisis is to drive the world back towards a kind of narrow nationalism, when we need better co-operation. So, there’s a starting list of things to do.
Alice Billon-Galland
Many thanks, Peter, and I think what you said towards the end is sort of, once again, the key issue, which is that it’s not just about putting together national security strategies and councils, but about actually using those tools and that’s maybe something that hasn’t been done enough in certain European countries, which were good at thinking about the crisis that could come, but not so much at actually acting when the crisis happened.
Let’s finally turn to Clare. Clare, now is probably the moment when finally every government has global health policy on their mind. So, according to you, can you tell us just a little bit about where the gaps are in how governments have reacted to this specific crisis, and how can we prepare better for the future global health crisis.
Dr Clare Wenham
Sure. Thank you so much for having me. I’m honoured to be part of this conversation. I have the task of going last and a lot of what I was going to say, Peter just talked about, which I guess shows that there is joined up thinking happening across thinking about security. I wanted to bring a different perspective to this conversation, by thinking about global health security and how governments have been preparing to date to respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases. And this all began – it started with HIV/AIDS and governments recognising that HIV amongst militaries might pose the risk to state stability and state security, if you don’t have a military ready to deploy. And it really became embedded within thinking about outbreaks in a securitised way in the post 9/11 landscape, where, you know, all non-traditional security threats were then securitised. You know, we see this across health and the environment and drugs and migration, all start to be considered as security concerns. And this was really catalysed in the health space post-SARS, ‘cause SARS came in 2003 and it really exposed the mutual vulnerability to the whole world to responding to an outbreak, and it also demonstrated, importantly, the risks to economic security posed by a pandemic.
Now, this is important to go back there, because this model of SARS and, kind of, pandemic influenzas has been central to how governments have thought about outbreak preparedness and planning for pandemic preparedness. And, as Peter mentioned, we’ve seen outbreaks, pandemic influenza, put on national risk registers, national security strategies across the world in the last two decades. One of the problems with this has been that they’ve been modelled on pandemic influenza and the coronavirus isn’t an influenza. So we need to start – you know, so the models that were put in place, the policies that were put in place were from a different type of disease and that’s really important, because you need to have a plan in place for whatever disease it is.
The other thing to think about, when we’re talking about what have governments been doing around pandemic control to date, particularly when I think about the UK Government, is it’s very much been rooted in this notion that we need to collectively work together as a globe, but to monitor – to prevent, detect, respond the threats posed by outbreaks. And it’s because we have conceptualised it that anywhere in the world is the weakest link, right, and we’re only as good as the weakest health system or where an outbreak might emerge. And I think this is what’s dominated the UK response to pandemic preparedness, up until now. We’ve conceptualised it as outbreaks are something that happen over there, right, and we’ve seen this with Ebola, with Zika, with cholera, and for the structures we’ve developed to respond to pandemics and protect the UK from them, has been managing it over there, so it doesn’t spread here, and that’s meant a deficit of planning and implementation for how to respond when it actually is in the UK. And we see this through the numerous teams that the UK has to build capacity elsewhere, to respond to outbreaks. We’ve seen it with the Public Health England Global Health Teams, which work to build capacity to prevent diseases externally. The UK has a Rapid Response Team setup in the wake of Ebola to be able to be deployed to respond to outbreaks. We’ve seen DFID doing lots of work around this. But, you know, there’s the gap there between the – kind of the international and the domestic, which I think’s important.
We’ve also got to think about the gap between policy and practice, which I think has been remarkably exposed by this outbreak in the UK so far. So, last year, the Global Health Security Index tried to measure capacity to respond to a pandemic and it measured all countries across the world, based on their policy infrastructures, what they have in place, what they’re saying they’re doing, what they reported to the World Health Organization, and the UK scored number two in the world and the US scored number one. Now, that’s shown us that actually, these policies are in place and they just haven’t necessarily been implemented. And, as Peter mentioned, you know, we had this risk register, which has shown it, we’ve had an operation to model it, and nothing – or rather it wasn’t then put in – you know, all the things that need to happen to be ready weren’t necessarily in place, or weren’t necessarily funded, or weren’t necessarily operationable at the time when it needed. And I think this comes as part of a broader trend, certainly in the UK, or austerity and a lack of funding of public health, which has meant that we haven’t had the public health system that we could have, more broadly.
So, I think the next step is thinking about, well, how do we prevent the next one? And there will be a next one. I don’t know if we’ll see another big global pandemic like this. We haven’t seen one since 1918, I’m not sure if we’ll see it in our lifetime, but there certainly will be other health threats emerging in other parts of the world and we never know where those are going to be. I think we need to – I think one of the things that’s concerned me most about this coronavirus outbreak is how we have retreated back to national policies, right, and national thinking.
We have a World Health Organization, like, we have a World Health – we have a WHO Europe Office, if you wanted to do it at a European level. We have, within the EU structure, the European Centres for Disease Control, another EU body, which I haven’t seen being so prevalent in this conversation and in the response to coronavirus so far. My concern is that a kind of – the politics is driving this and we’re seeing this retrenchment to national levels, and that’s never going to work when what you need from a public health perspective, to respond to these outbreaks, is transparency, sharing data, being able to work together to detect the outbreak and then respond to the outbreak, because we know that the sooner you can get to an outbreak and the sooner you can stop it, the better – you know, the less damage it’s going to have across the globe and across societies.
But I see one of the key problems here, and I think actually, listening to Thanos talk about Greece, has been the kind of political drivers of this outbreak, and normally, we talk about epidemics affecting politics and how kind of a big epidemic can have a real impact on political decision-making. But what we’re seeing here is the opposite, we’re seeing political differences impact how the outbreak spreads, and if you look at, you know, in the UK, whatever the reason it was the delays happened early on, it was a political decision-making, weighing up between protecting the economy and protecting lives. We’re seeing this in the US, we’re seeing this in Brazil. And so, I think, when we start thinking about capacity for risk, capacity for resilience, we need to factor in, well, how can – how – what’s the political system? What’s the political setup, what is going to be prioritised and what’s not going to be prioritised? And this needs to be brought into our thinking more about this, about how political decisions affect how our outbreaks spread.
And then, just one final comment around the concept of resilience, which I also think is really important, that we start thinking about again, and I think this is something which goes beyond states and beyond kind of EU level thinking, and something which I think this outbreak has demonstrated, is, at the point of crisis, we are retrenching back to community level activity. We’re seeing mutual aid groups spring up, we’re seeing local level activity happen, and I think we need to think about how to incorporate local government, local organisations, civil society, better into our planning for responding to crises, whatever they look like, because there’s a lot of capacity there which isn’t being used, which can be really vital to providing on the ground response. Thank you.
Alice Billon-Galland
Thank you very much, Clare. Before we move on and open the discussion to the audience, I’d just like to ask a question to the speakers, going back to something that Clare just mentioned, which is the fact that, to a certain extent, austerity measures in the UK had an impact on the British, sort of, resilience planning. My question is to what extent would you say, in your country and given your expertise, that an economic deficit is necessarily translated into a security deficit? ‘Cause we’ve seen in the case of coronavirus and Greece that by knowing its own vulnerability, the Greek Government has managed to handle the pandemic better that the British Government, for instance. So, given that we’re entering a massive economic recession and that there’ll be, sort of, smaller budgets everywhere in Europe, to what extent do we think – do you think we need to rethink our national security strategy, taking this, sort of, economic criteria in mind? Clare, do you want to start? Then we go back in a reverse order.
Dr Clare Wenham
Absolutely, we have to think about that, right? You can only do what your government has money for, right? So we need to think about this, both in terms of how will economic insecurity, over the time period before the next crisis and following on from the coronavirus outbreak, we know we’re going to be in a period of economic crisis, what are going to be the priorities there, right? Are – and a problem that, as has been mentioned, is that it’s often in the post-crisis period where you stop thinking about the never events, right? Because it’s not going to happen again in my electoral cycle, we’re not going to have another global pandemic while the Johnson Government is still in power, and so you stop prioritising that. And actually, we know, from a public health perspective, we know that prevention is always cheaper than treatment or cure. And so, why can’t you apply that to thinking about kind of the security risks that are posed and, you know, invest more in preventing them happening, rather than waiting for them to happen? But that’s obviously a difficult political potato to handle, right, to know what you’re going to invest in and what you’re not going to invest in.
And then, this is why – and then, just to follow it, to kind of re-emphasise, at a time of economic crisis and when the government may not have money, this is the time when you can utilise civil society. They have resource, human capital, to be able to contribute and they want to contribute, and by overlooking them, you’re almost wasting an opportunity for, you know, that activity, out – which is, sort of, outside of budgets that you’d need to use.
Lord Peter Ricketts
Shall I carry on, Alice?
Alice Billon-Galland
Yes, go ahead, Peter.
Lord Peter Ricketts
Just very, very briefly, I mean, I agree with that, I think we sometimes – somehow have to combine localism and globalism, because we can’t deal with this crisis without global co-operation, localism is very important. On funding, and as I said before, what happens is what gets funded, and so the government mobilised massive amounts of money to fight terrorism and Britain is now very well prepared for a terrorist attack, and they put an awful lot of money into cyber resilience, and I hope we’re quite well prepared for that as well. But because pandemics weren’t happening regularly, they didn’t get funded. Now, public health will get better funding, but something else will therefore be at risk of being underfunded. Governing is all about setting priorities and even in tight economic times of austerity, the government can find money for whatever it decides is absolutely vital. So, we need to change Treasury rules, so that we can spend money on things we don’t need now, but we will need at some point in the future. That’s not something Treasuries find easy to fund, but I think that’s part of learning the lessons of this crisis.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great, thank you very much. Thanos?
Dr Thanos Dokos
Right, well, leadership and good crisis management are very important, but there is a limit. At the end of the day, you need certain resources, you need hard work. So, if the economy cannot provide sufficient funding, because of austerity problems and low growth, then obviously you have a problem, and looking, for example, at the case of Greece, we have a very diverse set of problems to deal with. In the last few years, we’ve had floods, we had forest fires, we had tensions with neighbouring countries, we had to manage migration and refugee flows, and now the pandemic. So, obviously, you need to prioritise and make difficult choices, but then an ideal solution, and I’m not saying that we have managed to do that, it’s only an objective, is to create some kind of flexible mechanism. A critical mass of professionals, whether that be strategic planners and first responders and others, that have a security culture and they can be used to deal with more than one type of crisis. Now, again, something very difficult to achieve, we haven’t done that, it’s only an objective, but that can perhaps be the poor man’s answer to multiple security challenges.
Alice Billon-Galland
Many thanks, Thanos. Let’s now have a look at the questions from the audience. One question, comment, by Callum Paton at The National. Callum points to the fact that because Europe has been overburdened by the coronavirus crisis, countries, such as Turkey and Russia, have been able to exploit certain, sort of, vulnerabilities in other European countries. My question would be to what extent do you think, today, are countries are able to manage at the same time this massive epidem – this massive pandemic, plus the usual challenges? We know in the UK there is, sort of, the added layer on Brexit on top of it, which Peter has alluded to, but to what extent can the usual work of national security planning and, sort of, management be done during an epidemic? Peter, do you want to start?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Well, no, I think Callum posts a very important question. At the moment, it feels, in this country, as if the entire bandwidth of the government is consumed by the coronavirus crisis, in its many different manifestations, and yet, stuff doesn’t stop happening in the world, absolutely. There are countries, like Russia, I’m afraid, who are only too willing to exploit the fact that West – the West is distracted, that other governments have other agendas, to push forward their own advantage. And I think I would add China to that list as well, I think the Chinese are also very actively looking at ways of tightening their grip in certain areas. The answer is the governments have to be prepared and willing and capable of doing more than one thing and coping with more than one crisis, as Greece is clearly doing, and I come back to the idea that the National Security Council ought to be meeting regularly here, not necessarily to interfere with managing the coronavirus crisis, that should be done elsewhere, but to look for other things, look for what is going on now that is a possible threat and look at what might be on the horizon in the future. We allowed ourselves to get into a very difficult position, for example, on Huawei and the 5G telecoms problem by not seeing that crisis developing, and there may be others out there as well. So, I think that the government has to show it’s got the bandwidth to do more than one thing at the same time.
Alice Billon-Galland
Thanos?
Dr Thanos Dokos
The Chinese and the Russians are doing their job and we should do ours, and by we, I mean we Europeans, and I’m still struggling with the idea that the UK is no longer a part of the EU, but we are partners in NATO and we still are faced with the same set of common threats. So, I see ourselves as a team here. We have been absent from Syria, despite the fact that Europe has been paying a heavy price in terms of our refugee and migrant flows. We have only a limited role in Libya. So, unless we start trying seriously to shape our neighbourhood and stabilise those countries, then we’ll continue to pay a heavy price.
Dr Clare Wenham
I’m not a European security expert, but I would just add that one of the key things we see across outbreaks that have happened over the last few decades is that kind of complete political prioritisation of the outbreak in the health system. And that has knock-on effects of everything else that’s going on, even in the health system, right? So, we know that when outbreaks happen, things like maternal health doesn’t get funded, right, or routine vaccination. And so then, we know, down the line, we’re going to see increased maternal mortality, we’re going to see increased rates of preventable disease, which, in their own way, pose different types of security threats, you know, human security threats, things that we should be able to prevent and we have been able to prevent for a long time, start to creep up again. So, it’s – you know, I think we need to think about what’s being missed, not just at the kind of macro level of global politics, but also, at the kind of more local level of what’s happening to everyday citizens because everything’s focused on the coronavirus.
Alice Billon-Galland
Thank you. Another question by Raluca Exonatoni, which is about more the means to address those threats. So, Raluca asks, “What would be the speakers’ take on the risks and opportunities provided by new technologies, in terms of handling security threats?” And I think that’s actually specifically interesting in this context, because we’re talking about the fact that European governments do not have the necessary capacity and resources to juggle with all the different threats. Do you think that new technology, be it digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, could provide a mean for countries with limited means to deal with the multiplicity of threats better? Thanos, do you want to start? And then we can go to Clare and Peter.
Dr Thanos Dokos
Well, one of the points I was going to make, perhaps at the end of our discussion, was that we also need to deal with a broad range of future scenarios. We also need to engage our societies and try to create a kind of security culture, so that people feel that they have to do their bit, when faced with serious threats to our security. But then, I was going to add that we cannot compete with a number of Asian countries, which have a degree of discipline, but also, the kind of coercion capacity of the governments, when – and they have been using those technologies. So, I’m – this is going to be a major concern for the future. We have to make hard choices, but if I’m faced between the choice of, you know, having 100% success in dealing with, let’s say, a health crisis and then the cost would be an authoritarian political system, then I would have very serious second thoughts about this. So, this is something we need to consider. We need to find the balance, but, of course, I can see also the attractiveness of the idea that if we use more technology, then we can be more efficient in dealing with crises, but there is a heavy cost to pay, if we go too far in that direction. So, I think this is going to cause a serious discussion in many Western, and especially European societies, for the years to come, how to use technology to deal with such problems, and there are no easy answers.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Peter, do you want to come in?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Well, just very briefly, ‘cause I think I agree with that. I don’t think new technology is a magic bullet. As we’ve seen in the coronavirus crisis, even things like tracing apps, which, in principle, could have obviously a good effect, come with privacy issues and protection of personal data issues and the potential also for them to be misused by countries, in order to control freedom of speech and movement of populations and so on. So, artificial intelligence and new technology, it has helped in the fight against terrorism, but it’s a double-edged sword and, as Thanos says, it needs to be used carefully.
Alice Billon-Galland
Another question, this time by Alex Faulks, who points to the fact that, even though this is a global crisis, the solutions have been hyper local or handled nationally by national governments. The discussion today is on national security strategies, but to what extent is the national level the best scale to answer those crises and those issues, and not only pandemic, but if we’re thinking about other maybe non-traditional security threats, be it cyber or other, to what extent is the national level still the best scale for those threats? Clare, do you want to start?
Dr Clare Wenham
Thanks, that’s a really interesting question and I think my answer is, I don’t think the national is the right level to manage those threats. I think that, you know, non-traditional threats, pandemics, climate change, these are all global problems that need to be tackled globally and there’s economies of scale that can be built up globally. I think the tension here is that we live in a Westphalian system where governments aren’t going to want to seed that authority or that responsibility to a global actor, and/or they can’t agree on how they want that to happen. Certainly in the sphere of pandemics, we – you know, the WHO is that global actor. We have a global international framework, the International Health Regulations, to respond to outbreaks and the tension has always been, since these were revised in 2005, post-SARS, is that balance of power between governments and the WHO. How much power do you give to a global actor to be able to intervene in national epidemics, to prevent them spreading globally? And governments push back and say they don’t want that to happen, they want to be able to maintain authority and decision-making around when to report diseases, when to welcome Epidemiologists in, when to launch a response plan, and that’s a government’s prerogative, they’re elected by their people. And so, I think it’s much more of a structural problem that we need to think about and maybe coronavirus, as a global problem and as one of the few things that has been such a global problem acutely, I mean, I know climate change is a global problem, but it’s been a much more slow burner, maybe this is the time that we can start to think about moving beyond national structures. We can hope. I’m not confident, but I think it would be a great – it would be a better mechanism for responding to outbreaks certainly.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Peter, do you want to come in?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Yes, very briefly. I think we need all levels, inevitably. Inevitably, in a public health crisis, people will look to their governments in the first place and governments have to be accountable to their people for how well or badly they handle it. So, we can’t avoid the government level, but I think, as we were saying earlier, the local level for community support, the government level because that’s, in the end, where the democratic accountability is, but also, multilateral global levels because we need global research on vaccines and medicines and response and so on, and we will never create another global organisation. So, we’d better make the WHO work, because it’s the only one we’ve got and it is vital. So, I think the answer to the question really is that we need all the levels, but they each need to do something, which is within their area of competence.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Thanos, do you have – do you want to come in? And also, you mentioned the fact that the EU level and the EU, sort of, scale is also missing in this specific case, is, in your opinion, the EU level also a good one to address, not only this type of crisis, but maybe other security threats that, sort of, go beyond the remit of just one country?
Dr Thanos Dokos
I very much agree with both Clare and Peter, we need all the levels. I’m especially disappointed, however, by the lack of, you know, European and global responses. I think we need much more of that. We need the EU to do more, NATO to help where it can, we need also US leadership, I’m not saying more leadership because there was none. But certainly, when it comes to the EU, and for countries like Greece, you know, some of the smaller members of the EU, it’s obvious why we can benefit from a common EU response. But it – at the end of the day, it proved that even the big ones, you know, France and Germany, could do with a bit more co-operation and response at the EU level. So, I think this is a one-way street. Am I optimistic? Well, the EU is burdened with so many problems nowadays, you know, and decisions that should have been made some time ago, including, for example, you know, migration policies, this has been delayed, the form of the system has been delayed, and decisions about the EU’s economy, and so on and so forth. So, I need – we need to do much more, but I’m not terribly optimistic that we’ll do that in the near future.
Alice Billon-Galland
I see. Related to that idea of, sort of, interdependency, Tom Raines asks whether, in the future, you think that states could sanction each other for exposing them to risks, being massive environmental damage, global health risks, not responding transparently to threats, etc., is that the type of future, or at least mindset, that we can expect? Clare, do you want to start?
Dr Clare Wenham
I think that’s interesting. I think this is something that’s being talked about a lot in thinking about revising the International Health Regulations, not just from coronavirus, but from Ebola and how you can try and hold governments to account. At the moment, it’s a name and shame mechanism, where the only real problem with not doing it is you get called out at the World Health Assembly, which isn’t enough of a deterrent. However, in this kind of – I hate to repeat myself, it comes back to what governments are going to agree to, and I can’t see, in the current political climate, but maybe I’m wrong, that governments will agree to allow sanctions for failures to implement the International Health Regulations, or failure to report diseases. I can’t see governments agreeing to that, at this stage. But, ultimately, we need to find a way to make sure that the systems that are in place are working. I don’t think we need new systems, I think we just need to make sure they are implemented as intended, from a public health perspective.
Alice Billon-Galland
Hmmm hmm. Thanos?
Dr Thanos Dokos
It sounds like an attractive idea, but it’s difficult to imagine a situation where you might be able to impose real sanctions and a great power and if there is no equality and there are double standards, then this is not going to work. Maybe, you know, put the emphasis on early warning exchange of information between countries, so that we respond earlier and more efficiently. But, other than that, I think – ask the Australians, they asked for an inquiry into China’s handling of the whole coronavirus crisis and they got 80% increases in tariffs. So, I don’t think there will be a lot of enthusiasm for this idea, especially among great powers.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Peter?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Well, I’m sure that’s right. That’s a very realistic appraisal. I don’t think it’s possible either to start thinking of sanctioning, but I think holding to account and calling out is right and I think the call for an international inquiry into how this devastating global pandemic happened is a reasonable one, and I, you know, honestly don’t think that China’s response to Australia is a reasonable one. China wants to be regarded as a serious international player, as a leader of the international community indeed, and I think it’s fair enough that there should be an expectation that China gives, you know, a full and fair accounting of what happened at the outset of this. So, I think we – I think it’s holding to account, rather than the idea of imposing sanctions.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. One topic that came up during your opening remarks, and featuring the question, is resilience and how to build, sort of, more resilience and integrate a better resilience within our systems. At the, sort of, local scale, as we’d say, within the wider population, do you think that European countries, and maybe your own specifically, are doing enough to build that resilience within the general population? ‘Cause I feel like we’ve seen quite different reaction also from the population, thinking that, you know, maybe risk zero exists or doesn’t exist, and that the government, even though, you know, being Devil’s advocate, even if the government did everything that they could, not all risks can be mitigated, or can be prevented. So, do you think there is also work to do, in terms of education and dialogue with the population, as to what risks can be avoided and what others would just need to be mitigated? Peter, do you want to start?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Yes, I do think – and I think that links back to Clare’s earlier point about local community action. One of the effects of the austerity and recession in the UK in the last ten or 15 years, has been a hollowing out of local government, and what used to be quite strong local government structures have been very, very much weakened. And I wanted to draw a comparison with your country, Alice, because we used to laugh at the French for spending so much money on their local government, their different levels of government, but actually, the system of préface, of having a central government representative in every area of France able to co-ordinate all the state powers to respond to whatever crisis it may be, that seems to me to be a very valuable network actually, and the UK’s lost that completely. We don’t even have central government offices in the regions in the UK anymore, there is nobody representing the central government of the UK in Manchester or Glasgow. So, I think the idea of a stronger network of local government, of local community, emergency response teams, a bit picking up Thanos’ point, and that is something which the British at least ought to look again at. I think we’ve thinned out too much the local and county levels of our government in favour of a lot of centralisation in London.
Dr Thanos Dokos
But we don’t have a tradition of a strong local government institutions and this is something we’re looking at right now. Although the emphasis is still on the central government and how this would manage all the problems, but we have been trying to shift some resources and some competences to regional and local government and see how this is going to work, but this is work in progress at this stage. But I said anything that’s married in that idea, that we need to strengthen local government.
Dr Clare Wenham
I agree with Peter, that we need to think about how to build capacity at local levels, ‘cause, you know, ultimately that’s where you’re going to detect an outbreak first. The outbreak doesn’t happen across a country in one go, it happens in a small pocket. So, having the structures in place to pick that up and to know how to manage it locally is really important. But just picking up on something else you said around kind of communication, I think that’s another part which is really important in this conversation, which is we know from kind of governance 101 that transparency is key and making sure you’re explaining exactly what you’re doing and why, at every stage, is really a good way of making publics feel safe. And so, I think we need to – whatever happens next and whatever the next crisis is, ensuring that there is, you know, a stronger social contract between the population and the government, whether that’s national or local, and that the population will listen to whatever’s being asked of them, whether that is stay at home, or whether it’s to, you know, keep an eye out for packages on the Tube, whatever it might be, it’s to make sure that people actually do that by increased risk communication and the sense of trust between whichever level of government it is and the population.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Peter Feldenen asks what – “Are there other different types of disease that might create diverse pandemics, whose possibility we should consider in the future?” And, just adding to that, going beyond just pandemics, and maybe going a bit in the gloomy direction, but what other non-traditional threats do you think governments, and maybe your government, are aware of but currently underprepared for? What other types of crisis could happen, and we would sort of look back and say, “Oh, we could have seen that one coming as well.” Does – do any other sort of come up more specifically? Thanos, if you want to jump in?
Dr Thanos Dokos
I read this book, a couple of years ago, called Black Out, and I’ve been haunted ever since with such a scenario where someone uses cyber methods to cause a major energy crisis in Europe. And then I, you know, hadn’t realised that, if you don’t have energy, nothing else works, there is also shortage of food and everything. So, I’m concerned that there is a Greek and a European vulnerability, when it comes to the use of cyber methods to strike at critical infrastructure and energy is the example that comes to mind. I’m not sure how – you know, this is a typical example of a European level threat. It can only – also because of the interconnectivity of our national grids, that this is something that can be dealt with only at the European level. So, I hope we have done our homework in that direction. That’s my worst case scenario.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great. Clare, any worst case scenario you want to share beyond pandemics?
Dr Clare Wenham
Yeah, so, I mean, this is really important is that, you know, when you plan for pandemics in a national security setting, or national security strategies, what type of pandemic? And the kind of global policy has moved away from thinking about particular diseases, and it’s moved to much more of an all risk approach, to thinking about, you know, what disease might it be and make sure that you’re modelling for all different types of scenarios, because, you know, one of the reasons that we had this delay in the UK and this discussion around herd immunity is because, if you’re planning for a disease like influenza, you know, you’re not – you haven’t got that incubation period that you’ve got with coronavirus, so you have to kind of let it run through the population. Now, obviously, that’s different with coronavirus, but because your assumptions are based on a certain model, you’re then not thinking about what’s the best model for what we’ve got here? So, I think we need to move to an all risk approach, to thinking about how we prepare for pandemics, rather than just focusing on influenza.
But I think the other big glaring issue, from a public health perspective, is antimicrobial resistance, and this is becoming an increasing problem across Europe, across the world. You know, in 50 years’ time, we’re not going to have – most of our routine antibiotics aren’t going to work for us, and that poses a real crisis, right? We’re going to see increases of all normal routine infections that you get, aren’t going to be able to be cured. And, you know, it’s not that kind of high impact move now event, it’s that slow burning event, a bit like climate change, which is why it hasn’t necessarily got the political agency around it, but I worry we’re sleepwalking into a further disaster by not thinking about it now.
Alice Billon-Galland
Hmmm hmm. Peter?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Well, I can almost guarantee you that the next major disruptive crisis will be one we haven’t thought of, however hard we think. I was just thinking back over the last ten or 15 years of my career, we had, as I mentioned, the blockade of fuel depots, which nearly brought the country to a halt. We had the ash cloud you remember the ash cloud that more or less stopped global aviation. We had Fukushima. In Britain, we had the use of a chemical weapon on the – in a country town in the UK. So, I think we’ve got to have adaptive capabilities, we’ve got to have flexible capabilities ready to deal with exactly what we are not expecting. Our societies, our economies are so finely balanced now with just in time deliveries and our digital dependency, that we’re vulnerable in all sorts of ways. So, we need, as Clare says, all risks, I’m afraid I’m dodging the question, but you can almost be sure that whatever happens, it won’t be something that’s been on top of our risk register.
Alice Billon-Galland
You’re perfectly allowed to dodge the question and come up with a smart answer to a different question, that works fine. I’ll just take a last question and maybe ask the speaker to answer it and give maybe some concluding remarks. Mary Dejevsky asked about the NSC, the British NSC more specifically, and the fact there has been an inadequate response to the pandemic by the British Government. From here, I’d like to take the question maybe a bit more sort of broader and think is there – is the issue right now the fact that the way governments are organised internally maybe not the best in order to deal with those sort of non-traditional security threats? Do you think that, for instance, if the Department of Health and the Treasury were in touch more often, or if there was more, sort of, intergovernmental, or intragovernmental discussion on those issues, that we could try to prevent some of the non-traditional risks, be it energy, be it sort of cyber, that risk, or climate change, that risk coming our way? Ad, if you want to add, as a concluding remark, sort of, your top advice that you’d give a national security planner today and, Thanos, being one, maybe, sort of, the main thing that’s on your mind right now. Let’s do it in reverse order, Clare, do you want to start?
Dr Clare Wenham
Are you giving me time to think? So, I think I’m just going to end by, again, dodging the question ‘cause I haven’t had time to reflect on it, and I think my main message would be to think about the structures you have in place, to think about what’s worked well elsewhere in responding to this crisis, right, instead of thinking nationally, to look at other countries that have done well, right, why – what can we learn from – in this crisis, for example, what can we learn well from Singapore, from Taiwan, from South Korea, from New Zealand? What are the key strengths there? What decisions were made and when? Which organisations are involved? Going back to your question, you know, the kind of whole of government approach, does it actually mean whole of government, and where are decisions being made? And I think to the kind of – the concluding thoughts would be, you know, prepare for what you can and don’t skimp on preparedness ‘cause in the end it will become more important and it will become a more cost-effective way of managing the crisis. But – and not to let that sink in the inter-crisis period when you haven’t got a pandemic and don’t take that risk, ‘cause that’s going to expose the weakness. And particularly if you think about other countries, which are much less well-resourced than us, that have had previous experiences of outbreaks, places like Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, you know, they are implementing decisions much quicker and moving much quicker to respond to this. And so, I think it’s thinking about, well, previous experience needs to be kept fresh in people’s memories and also look to other parts of the world to learn best practice.
Alice Billon-Galland
Hmmm hmm, and actually maybe also looking – European countries looking beyond Europe for best practices, which we may not do enough today. Peter, any concluding thoughts?
Lord Peter Ricketts
Well, I think on Mary Dejevsky’s question, I think the British NSC did its job, in the sense it flagging up this area of pandemics, as well as floods and other things, as high impact, high likelihood areas. It was then down to departments to get on and plan for it and then resource it, and I think the critical issue isn’t so much the organisation of government, it’s breaking through that barrier between having a plan and actually spending money on the operational capacity to give it effect, and that’s what we need to do. As to what my big worry is, I think it’s the one that I finished my earlier comments on, the risk that this crisis may accelerate the moves I see in the world towards nationalism, towards the re-emergence of blocks, adversarial borders based world, rather than the sort of co-operation that I think we need. I think it’s going to make it more difficult to build multilateral co-operation, at least for the next five or ten years, and that really worries me.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great, realistic note. Thanos?
Dr Thanos Dokos
I’m a great believer in the whole of government, or interagency approaches, the Americans would call it. I’ve been studying that for 20 years as a think tanker, now I’ve been asked to help implementing this in our system of government. And we are in the early stages, we’re looking at the examples of other countries, the UK being one of them, and try to borrow some good ideas and perhaps prevent some of the mistakes. So, I think this is extremely important. I would – in addition to everything that has been said, and flexibility in decision-making is something very important. I would also add that every country needs a mechanism for foresight and – or agency planning. Obviously, because of the limitation and the constraints in funding and resources, we can’t prepare for everything, but if we get some early warning and, of course, intelligence is another important component of that, then that might go a long way in helping us prepare for something that we haven’t thought of and we’re not really prepared. But given a bit of early warning, then that will help us manage the – such a crisis more successfully.
Alice Billon-Galland
Great, thank you very much. It was a fascinating discussion. I’m sorry we didn’t manage to go through all the questions, but I think we covered quite a lot. I think my main takeaway from this discussion is that national security planning is a difficult business and that governments sort of do their best, but still struggle and that there is still wiggle room. Being aware of your own vulnerability is important, preparing to juggle multiple threats, but also putting your money where your mouth is and actually acting on the plans that are drawn. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for the Chatham House Events Team for their support and making sure that Zoom works smoothly for everyone and thanks again and we’ll see you for another webinar. Thank you.
