Resilience does not have a telephone number

The war in Ukraine shows how fragile peace and freedom are. Nations are under pressure and face multiple threats that require a comprehensive, whole-of-society approach. Societies need to prepare and increase their resilience to attacks on their infrastructure, their political system, their government and, most importantly, their social and national cohesion. Increasing resilience in our complex world requires cooperation and mutual understanding between different actors and stakeholders.

From 28 to 30 November 2023, more than 350 participants developed and built a network of experts from the political, administrative, economic, military, social, infrastructure and information technology sectors with the aim of achieving a better common understanding of the problems posed by hybrid threats.

The three-day Common Effort Training Event 2023 (CETE23) was an excellent opportunity to get to know each other, to exchange ideas, to share expertise and to promote better understanding between security forces and civilian counterparts. The City of Hamburg provided the platform.

The event focused on the cross-sectoral and interdepartmental impact of attacks on critical infrastructure and ultimately on the resilience of state structures and societies. Hamburg served as a living laboratory. With its critical infrastructure and as a city-state, Hamburg provided a microcosm in which complex interrelationships and mutual effects on resilient structures could be simulated.

As “resilience does not have a telephone number”, which was addressed during the discussions “it is even more important to meet each other before you need each other” – just according to the key motto of the Common Effort Community.

For more than ten years, Common Effort has provided a series of events to promote and put into practice the Comprehensive Approach – initiated by the 1 German-Netherlands Corps in 2011. The purpose of the Comprehensive Approach is to coordinate and maximise the resources of diplomacy, security policy, development cooperation and humanitarian aid across departmental, ministerial and institutional boundaries.

The activities are driven by the Common Effort Community, a network of more than 60 military and civilian organisations from government, industry and non-governmental organisations, mainly from the Netherlands and Germany.