15th annual Kingston Conference on International Security (KCIS)

In Case of Emergency: The Military’s Role in the Pandemic and Future Crises

 The 15th annual Kingston Conference on International Security (KCIS) took stock of the Covid-19 pandemic, gathering experts, practitioners, and academics from around the world to tease out some broader lessons on military adaptation and emergency management. With twenty-seven participants, including senior military officials, participants assessed and compared the pandemic experiences of different nations’ militaries, as well as the impact the pandemic had on multinational cooperation, at NATO and beyond. Several key findings emerged from those discussions:

• The inherent trade-off militaries face between adapting to events and continuing their core business, such as training and operations. Even before the pandemic, the Canadian military faced challenges tied to recruitment and retention, procurement, as well as sexual misconduct scandals. The pandemic represented another stressor on the military, forcing decision-makers to think about the increasing role of the armed forces in domestic operations, as well as the importance of tightening civil-military coordination in governments’ emergency management plans.

• Retaining emergency preparedness so that the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are not squandered. NATO allies were not completely unprepared for events like a pandemic; contingency plans were in place in several countries beforehand. However, no scenario had envisioned the scale and pervasiveness of this global health crisis, with its many economic, social, and political ramifications. Most governments were to some extent caught off guard, turning inward in the face of an unpredictable crisis. This was the case of the armed forces too, as the operational tempo was affected by COVID-19. While the extent to which countries and their militaries halted or slowed down their pace varied, there will be less willingness to do so when facing the next crisis. It is also crucial to bolster military readiness and preparedness in order to face multiple, layered crises if needed.

• Global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic have changed threat assessments. National, regional and global threats did not remain static during the pandemic, but evolved and mutated, much like the virus itself. From terrorism to cyber-attacks, civil wars to great power competition, the pandemic exacerbated security vulnerabilities. Moreover, countries and governments have come to see the danger of disinformation as a source of political polarization and even unrest, an additional challenge to pandemic response, as it erodes trust between public institutions and society.

• The need for international cooperation, even when countries and people cling to nationalist tendencies in crisis situations. Despite being the target of criticism during the pandemic, the support of international organizations like the WHO, the EU and NATO, organizations which already had contingencies’ mechanisms in place to respond to crises, proved critical in providing assistance to badly hit countries and regions. This involvement from international bodies was not without setbacks; countries sometimes prioritizing national crisis management to the detriment of regional or international efforts (e.g. vaccine hoarding). The pandemic demonstrated the deep connections that exist between countries and people and how sharing information and resources saves lives.

• The need to improve fast, coordinated response, when confronted with national and global emergencies. This coordination happens along several dimensions, but civil-military coordination, within national contexts and international organizations, was identified as a key area of improvement. The importance of public-private partnerships was also emphasized. It is important that these relationships and channels of communication remain active so they do not need to be rebuilt when the next crisis emerges. Therefore, more than a whole-of-government approach, it is a whole-of-nation approach that is necessary, which means restructuring and reallocating resources, often requiring creative thinking to overcome supply chain limitations.

• Resilience, in the last two years, went from buzzword to mantra. This is as true for military forces as it was for civilian institutions. The capacity to overcome and recover quickly from shocks and negative setbacks is indeed deemed essential. COVID-19 was certainly unprecedented in terms of the rapid global impact it had and the fact that we have not yet fully grasped the medium- and long-term implications of the pandemic. This means that the best strategy moving forward is to improve the resilience of not only civilian and military institutions, but also of society.

 There is probably no going back to the way it was before, no matter how difficult it is to accept the new normal. What is crucial moving forward is to retain the knowledge and optimized practices that were harnessed throughout the pandemic, in order to improve preparedness for future crises and emergencies.

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Published: Dec 14, 2021