Strength and Weaknesses of the Norwegian Total Defence – Report to the Norwegian Total Preparedness Commission

Norway’s total defence shall safeguard our national security, public security, civil protection and emergency preparedness. Resilience, cross-sectoral situational awareness and civil-military co-operation are of fundamental importance for the total defence. The strengthening of the total de-fence that has occurred over the last decade provides a strong foundation to meet future chal-lenges. This work should continue. Norway’s total defence should evolve with the anticipated future trends. Climate change, tech-nological developments and future conflicts will continue to affect our national security towards 2030. Strengthening the total defence to meet the future challenges should take a comprehen-sive and proactive whole-of-society approach. In order to leverage suggested best practices for countering hybrid threats, a comprehensive national security and defence concept should be considered. This concept should include a modern psychological defence, in order to maintain the will to defend and resilience against foreign influence and interference activities. Norway’s general principles for work related to emergency preparedness and crisis manage-ment should continue to build upon four principles: the principle of responsibility, the principle of conformity, the principle of proximity and the principle of cooperation. For the principles to work as intended, the long-term and continuous preparedness work both horizontally and vertically within the Norwegian crisis management system should be strengthened. The resilience of essential services and critical infrastructures in society should be strength-ened. This requires updated knowledge about such services’ vulnerabilities and interdependen-cies. Strengthening civil protection, civil-military health preparedness and response, energy se-curity and digital security are of utmost importance. This is a continuous and long-term effort. Training and exercises are important for strengthening the total defence and civil-military coop-eration. The training and exercises should include CBRNE, mass casualties scenarios and evacuation scenarios. The total defence should also be subjected to stress testing for assessing its resilience in different scenarios throughout the whole crisis spectrum. Harnessing science and technology is necessary to meet the future challenges for the total de-fence. This should be done by applying transdisciplinary scientific knowledge and research that focus on impact and solving problems at pace. Authoritative scientific advice should be made available for both policy makers and stakeholders involved in crisis management.