CL Podcast Episode 2 - Final Audio
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Vitalijs Rakstins: [00:00:00] All we have, either military, either police or firefighter force, if they disappear somehow, there is no other force who is trained to replace them. There's no like civil defense units or formations who could be called up for some help. Some nations has, but it's not systematic and they're not a big, big amount.
The same if military is involved in military war fighting. No one could support in public, in maintaining public order or some special operations.
Kyle King: Welcome to the second episode of the third season of the Crisis Lab podcast. I'm your host, Kyle, and today we are taking a deep dive into the complex concept of resilience, which is very much a buzzword these days, with a special emphasis on security and defense and particular focus on the Russian Ukrainian war.
Our conversation will really try and aim to develop and deepen your understanding of resilience and its role in anticipating, preventing, and dealing with, [00:01:00] and even recovering from security threats and challenges. And we'll navigate the resilience of institutions, societies, and discuss the contribution of international organizations and touch on different aspects of resilience, including cyber and social resilience.
So, joining us today is Mr. Vitalis Ratskins, who is a seasoned security resilience expert who has had a distinguished 18 year career in the Latvia Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense. His roles have included being the Director of the Legal Department. A counselor at the defense mission to NATO and the director of the Crisis Management Department.
And more recently, from 2021 to 2023, Mr. Raskins served as the defense counselor to the UK and offered his expertise as a non resident resilience advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. He holds a Master's of Law degree and is currently active in academia as a lecturer and researcher at the Riga.
Stratenance University, where he teaches economic security and national security courses. And besides his academic work, he has authored books like Diaries of the Information War and Resistance Handbook, and developed [00:02:00] educational initiatives such as the Debunk NATO media literacy game. So Vitalis, thanks for joining us again, and it's good to see you.
Yeah. Thank you for inviting. So this whole concept, and we were just talking before we, you know, sort of started with the podcast and hit the record button, but we were just talking about how resilience has sort of changed over the years. And you've actually been working in this field since about 2018 before resilience became popular, I guess I would say.
And so, or at least let me caveat that and say the modern version of resilience, as we know it, as everybody's throwing around the term today, became more prominent in our discussions. And so. From your perspective and having dealt with this for a number of years now, how has resilience shifted? Like where were you in the beginning in 2018 when you started looking at this topic?
What did it mean? And then how has it evolved over time into what you're seeing today? Yeah, thanks
Vitalijs Rakstins: for a good question. I think first of all, of course, we need to caveat that term resilience is not, uh, agreed. So definition is [00:03:00] not agreed because different international organizations, different institutions title it resilience, but if you look at the scope with absolutely different topics.
But if you, if you look at the modern or evolving concept of resilience, definitely it started after Russian invasion, Ukraine, 2014. Then NATO started to develop so called resilience guidelines, which also facilitated many processes in the European Union and in many NATO and non NATO nations. And yeah, and then, uh, around 2017, 18, I started to do this topic.
At that time, maybe it was Not understood fully, but, but we understood that current crisis management system does not fit to address all the threats we are facing. And that's why this idea is that we need to change this concept to, to, to be ready to all type of disasters, to all, all hazards, which is very good described in these different documents related to resilience and of course.
Many international organizations [00:04:00] value to use term resilience versus craze management or some kind of hostile title like hybrid, counter hybrid, because it's not so against some particular nation or non state actor, but it's like concept, which allows us to be ready to almost all type of disasters, all type of crisis, even so called unknown, unknown.
So, so it's, it's, it's a broader evolving concept. And, uh, if I. Would sum up at the moment, so it's mainly focused on a continuity of some essential services. So if you look at the European Union, Nordic, Baltic region, also NATO, so it's mainly focused on what we call business continuity of essential services.
And second part, of course, is also preparedness of population or personnel, starting from psychological, cognitive, but also all this concept to be ready to all type of disaster. So 72 hours emergency bag and different courses. I think these two, these, [00:05:00] these, these two lines of all this resilience, they are developing very fast due to different extra external triggers, like potential war in Europe, or is it some kind of actions of non state actors, or is it some kind of pandemics?
I was in talks that we need to change existing crisis management system, which mainly is focused on some certain risks, certain accepted risks on certain risks, and which is not always helps. But this One of the examples is COVID because each nation had pandemic plans, what to do in case of pandemic, which were tested in different exercise, which have also some reserve.
But when this COVID pandemic came, so we saw that it was ad hoc solutions in many nations. Many decisions were spontaneous. So we are violated because of also this panic, because so, so many issues arise. And that's why it's, it's a, it's a good showcase that was it, why, why we need to be prepared to different type of [00:06:00] crisis, all the crisis, which, which is our unfortunate new normal situation, almost in all regions, either it's climate change, cost effects, either it's something related to national technological disaster, but also a lot of military, paramilitary activity, which.
it to be addressed and, and we cannot train everyone to be ready for some military combat or have some certain skills, but what we can understand that there is need to survive. And it's, that's why we need this essential services like electricity, water supply, communications to be provided in all circumstances, not only to be restored, but be provided also during the disaster.
And I think it's one of these Concepts which also now is developing in the European Union. So there is several directives. One of best examples is third directive lead like title. Critical entities, resilience director, which is focused on protection of [00:07:00] critical infrastructure, what we call critical infrastructure, but from different angles, because in previous years it was either kinetic physical protection of the building or infrastructure, or either it's protection against cyber threats, digital protection.
But it's a new focus is also how to facilitate that these critical services are provided during the disaster, which, which in previous years was maybe concept to safety first, to close everything, save personnel. But if you see that this essential services are critical for all society, so you need to take bigger risks.
So I think what we're facing is the complex need to change. Uh, approach to, to, to resilience, to readiness approach to, to crisis management, uh, to the readiness, which is executed by different organizations, but different means. If NATO is looking from military perspective, how to enhance this incoming enhanced host nation support or enhances the resilience of the nation, striking nation, then OECD, for instance, they're looking on [00:08:00] resilience as a business enabler.
So it's enabler for businesses to continue. Operate also during disaster, like competitive advantage, European union, just looking from this energy and transport network and resilient. So everyone start to do something. But, but yeah, so I think what we will see definitely in following years, some try, some, some, some approach how to manage these concepts because we are limited in resources and many organizations have the same member states as participants.
And it's very hard for implementers to start implement, for instance, OECD, et cetera, usually they differ. So you need to start to at least on the membership level, better coordinate all this stuff. But I'll hold it too deep, so I'll
Kyle King: come back to it. Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, it is a complex topic and you can go very deep into this and it's very easy to do so.
And one of the things that, you know, I've noticed from my field and sort of the crisis emergency management space is that we have always had [00:09:00] a view of, okay, we go through our different phases of mitigation and prevention and preparedness and response and recovery. And then we always tend to focus on.
But that, well, always is a strong word, but we always would traditionally focus on, and we respond, we recover, we respond, we recover, and, and sort of that cycle and that disaster response cycle. And, and now what we're seeing more and more is just sustained, as you mentioned, polycrisis, right? So the sustained crisis, sustained operations.
And if it's not one thing, it's something else. And there's a consistent strain and drain on resources and people and manpower and training and equipment and everything else that go along with that. And that's one of the things too, that it is, you know, if we look across the last sort of eight years and then how things have developed is that everybody is now starting to get involved in the space, right?
You've mentioned to quite a few international organizations and they all have their own perspective on what resilience is. And so what we can divide this in certain areas, you can always have a sectorial approach, right, of what [00:10:00] resilience means. And then you also have sort of the international organizations and what they do.
And with their view of resilience, but can you explain briefly, like what are the international organizations like NATO, EU and OECD that you've mentioned? What are they actually doing in terms of promoting resilience? And then the second half of that question being like, who's ultimately going to be responsible for pulling all these things together and actually creating the resilient society, right?
And creating and implementing all these different ideas that are floating around. I will
Vitalijs Rakstins: start from the second question because as a responder, the implementation will be responsibility of the nation. So it's, it's. The international organizations, they can push you, they can give you some guidelines or regulation, but always it will be national responsibility because nations are responsible for crisis management.
They are first responders to each crisis. And that's why all these measures, whatever, by which organization, whatever, but by which agreement, so they will be implemented by, by the national institutions, [00:11:00] national ministries, governments. When sometimes he put on the table, all these different regulations for, from different organizations and bringing some challenges for, for executors, but talking about the organization, yeah, mentioned some of them because, so I'm from Europe and for us, these are the main organizations.
Definitely United Nations has a role. Resilience and in many documents, the resilience is mentioned both as crisis prevention, crisis disaster response measures, but also part of this 17 sustainability targets, because it's also the second part of resilience, which I didn't mention it also adaptability.
So we need to not only to be ready to respond to some crisis, but also to change also behavior, to change infrastructure, to be ready if you are witnessing. Climate change that we need to do, start to do something now, especially illiteral states or states, uh, which are island based. So, because they're facing this growth level of, uh, a level of sea rising.
So we need to do something. So, but yeah, of course, United Nations has, has the role [00:12:00] OECD as economic organization. Of course, their main interest is to facilitate this economic Prosperity and, and one of the last years, they start also to produce different recommendations, mainly on the protection of critical infrastructure or facilitating this, like the digital resilience, digital security, but we see the aim, small, medium, enterprisers, so they are resilient.
So they have this like business continuity that they are able to cope also during the disaster. So they have this plan B, plan C, and that's why they look at resilience as. Enabler business enabler. So it's one of your competitive advantages against other companies who are not ready. And I think one of the examples is the same COVID that those companies who were able to change their business model.
So they get good, good revenue in the COVID because they, they, those who've totally changed their business model, I changed how they. Delivers this goods and services because people still demand all of them. So that's why, how, how flexible, how agile you are to the [00:13:00] crisis. So that's, that's very important.
When we look to European union, of course, it's, it's economical block primary. And then there's the interest is which, which title different, like the strategic autonomy or putting different, uh, non fiscal barriers to protect on market. But, but there's a main idea of different initiatives is to. Protect supply chains and starting from zero materials or 5G, 6G technologies.
All, all, all different critical technologies that is essential for, for the economic block. And that's why part of all this directives and regulations are related to, to the security chain. So security of supply, how to facilitate it, how to protect our markets. And second, of course, it's also. Resilience of critical infrastructure from the perspective that because of European Union has this freedom of movement, freedom of business, many restructure objects, they are located in on the territories of sovereign state.
That's [00:14:00] why you need better coordination or how not only is it a protection, but the operations, because there can be fully dependent on some suppliers from the. Nation B, nation C, and that's why you need this holistic approach from Europe. And that's why they have different instruments, both regulatory, but second also financial to support this autonomy and resilience of European market.
And NATO as organization, political military organization, of course, primary focus is military capabilities, but. As military, military start to realize that after the end of the Cold War, the military are very heavily dependent on civil sector, on civil communications, civil, uh, transport network, even see civil intelligence capabilities.
So that's why it's worse to push host nations to invest in the resilience. also critical infrastructure or critical service providers. And that's why NATO developed different, this recommendation, [00:15:00] mainly started to lay seven baseline requirements on resilience with particular checklists or for certain sectors, which are critical for the military itself.
So, so in short, so each international organization look from the angle, each maybe sometimes uses the same titles like resilience. Honestly, I don't believe that there will be a. ever a joint definition on resilience, like hybrid warfare is now a joint definition, like terrorism and like many, because it's, it's, it's very different angles, what is common, what is becoming much more commonly in all of this organization.
It is certain level of preparedness, so it's, which is not linked to only one risk, which only, which is your risk appetite, but, but it's like creating some general capability to be internal capability, to be ready to cope with, with many risks simultaneously. And of course, it's also some kind of certain preparedness of personal by training, education, by involvement, leadership, so becoming complex.[00:16:00]
Challenge and that's why I think there is also an option for the private sector to provide complex solutions for it because each organization sets their own standards and the private sector usually is the one who understands which is profitable. I think in long term, those solutions who provide this complex solution for all, so it's not only cyber protection, only kinetic protection, so you need to provide all of them at the same time.
And which brings different type of planning, because if you're thinking about the protection, critical protection of critical infrastructure, as it all days, it was one type of planners, like former police officers were forming military policy, physical protection buildings, then some cyber guys came with digital protection.
If you need to create business continuity plan, it's a different type of planners. It's people who take decisions on the organization. It's people who plan the process. So you need to almost draft the second business in your mind, how it could be implemented from [00:17:00] alternative location from out without, without some certain.
Critical raw materials with different alternatives. So it's the planning becoming much more complex. And I think the most challenging, and we talked also before about this, it is understanding of all the interdependences, because as our economy is becoming much more complex, as we are also, globalization still is on the table.
It's very It's sometimes hard to understand all, all vulnerabilities of supply chains or understand the cascading effects of some kind of disruption of some critical service, because they are so interoperable, so you can modulate something, but then something happened and you're, you're shocked how it's possible.
You never thought about it. So it bring additional layers of complexity. And that's why I think it's still, there is still need of government. Involvement regulation, because [00:18:00] it's, they only have this powers and legal authorities. to coordinate it between different sectors, because if the private sector will start to do it, it could be risks to competitive rules, other shady things could arise.
That's why before you see a big job for, for, for people in the government institutions to coordinate, or at least to at least start with the mapping of all this interoperabilities, vulnerabilities, and then step by step, how to improve it, how to make our systems much more resilient to systematic shocks.
Kyle King: You mentioned quite a few things there and I just want to sort of pause and reflect on them for just a bit because it's, it's really a lot to unpack and to think about because it's changing this entire initiative over the last sort of eight years or so is really changing the way that we're viewing a lot of sort of crisis management planning and emergency management efforts, at least at a national level.
And I'll mention that here as sort of a unique aspect about that here in a second. But [00:19:00] we, when we mentioned the international organizations and you're talking about, okay, either we're providing guidance or providing perspectives and ultimately the, the nations themselves need to implement. What we're seeing a lot of time is that what we've done in the past is that we've had a siloed approach.
And many people talk about this. It's historical. Everybody knows this. We've had a siloed approach. Water is water, food people, food security is, is a different sector. And, you know, transportation is one thing, critical infrastructure, communications, telecommunications is another thing. As you mentioned, government and private sector are different.
So we have our own domains and we play in our domains and everybody's happy. And that was fine when we had sort of far less complex threats to consider, I guess I would say, but one of the things that is now becoming readily apparent and you mentioned business continuity. I find this really sort of stark is over the years.
And we saw this, you also mentioned COVID and the pandemic over the years. We saw this. [00:20:00] Happened with the global supply chain, the heavily heavy reliance on the private sector, the need to sort of really foster that relationship with the private sector now, especially in terms of critical infrastructure, telecommunications, power, energy, energy security, all these different topics.
And then, you know, what is the role of the government in those? Because there's been a lot of outsourcing, a lot of globalization. And then we now have to pause and say. Have we, you know, increased our risk and our exposure to things that might happen in our communities. And so when we're reviewing all of that, it just, you know, it reminds me, like, for example, I just pulled up some quick statistics, but like in 2022, like the U.
S. Awarded something like 162 billion to small businesses in the United States for federal contracts. And then you have to think about, okay, for these 6 million small businesses, do they all have business continuity plans? You know, and so this is of course a U. S. specific sort of scale and number, but it's the same question for everybody, which is, is the private sector, now that we are really [00:21:00] dependent upon the private sector in many different functional areas.
Is the private sector now really prepared and engaged and ready to support national security in the way that it needs to be if a complex crisis comes up? So that, that was one thing I was thinking about was really that private sector engagement, the government piece. And then to your last point, which was like, who's going to coordinate all of that?
And, and one of, one of the things that I wanted to mention was, even though we have international organizations working on these topics and we have national level entities doing some planning and discussions and looking at how we can, you know, respond better to a national incident. Really, the mantra holds true, which is all disasters are still local.
So the communities are always impacted first. And so now We're at this very unique point in time where a lot of policy level discussions are happening, but you know, the implementation of policy takes years. And what I think is going to be extremely interesting is, is how communities develop to become more resilient in the face of these new threats and challenges and new security environment, [00:22:00] new civilian security environment, and how they do so while policy is being worked out, right.
While, you know, people decide where to invest. And so we have this sort of. unique environment to where we need to develop in parallel, both with communities and at a national level to try and understand and try and really build resilience as a whole of society, rather than just sort of as a functional portion of government.
Right. I guess if that makes sense. And then the last point I wanted to ask you about was there's been some, and I just mentioned the communities and sort of whole of society approach, but that also leads into another aspect. And, and you've talked about it, you mentioned it just very briefly, but. When we talk about societies in general and people's response to crisis and the, we start integrating this aspect of societal resilience and what that means.
So can you now sort of bridge that gap for us? So like, okay, we talked about the international organizations. We talked about it being a national responsibility at the end of the day to implement these things. You, you mentioned, there's lots [00:23:00] of discussions that have to happen between government and private sector.
They have to discuss who's going to invest in resilience. You know, who's going to build these programs and to what requirements and maintain these, these, you know, the economic foundation of a nation and all that, but now we, we've sort of even gone further into just this more sort of gray term in terms of ambiguity about societal resilience overall.
So what is the conversation having? What is the conversation sort of around the term societal resilience? What does it mean for people that you're, you're talking to these days? Yes, sir. We'll
Vitalijs Rakstins: continue with the private sector communities and then to those societies. You're fully right. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, that three main different organizations, they also try to facilitate different, that these businesses are small, especially small media enterprise, that they are resilient, so there is Many campaigns I have seen that promoting and even sharing some basic standard of this business continuity plan.
So to eat easy, to, to, to [00:24:00] feel it. But I think the moment there is, uh, I don't, don't, don't, don't see so great demand also from the private companies. All these standards are set either by the law, for instance, for the critical infrastructure providers, there is certain rules that need to be executed.
supply chain from practical protection, et cetera, et cetera. But it's also, and that's why it's. What we're calling, uh, almost every, every, every, every single meeting conference within the street starts that we need to change culture of cooperation. And I'm hearing this for five, six years. So every, every airline agrees that, yeah, we need to change how we cooperate, how we do, do, do business.
But in the end, nothing happened because it's about resources. What do I think in the, in the last years, and you better see from the USA, that insurance are becoming much more challenging because insurers don't want to take risks as they took in previous years. And for, for many small, medium entrepreneurs, [00:25:00] if they're not investing in business continuity, if they're not somehow preventing this, it will be challenging to receive this insurance or some payment, or at least to be insured at all.
So that's why I think this concept of, of, and to see that many, many, many sectors of the market are becoming less insured or they have much bigger premiums. So if you don't have this option to, to, to share risk with Ventura, so you need to think by your own. And that's why, of course, there is many, many issues, many, many of these basic business continuity planning efforts.
They, they, they need only this intellectual work because many of the things you can pre plan, pre sync, call people to arrange something. So it does not ask you to invest physical money, to invest in some technologies. But of course, uh, and one was a good example is cyber. Because nowadays almost each, each entrepreneur is, is, is cyber.
This is his homepage. He has some kind of account, his social networks. And, and all this. [00:26:00] International report that shows that the most vulnerable groups are all media entrepreneurs because big companies invest in cyber. They also invest in physical protection, they have analytic risk, so they are well protected, so they don't need these standards, they don't need pushing because they are thinking forward.
But all these small, medium, entrepreneurs and maybe also some from the, uh, poorest regions, so they cannot afford it. And then they becoming much more vulnerable. And of course it's impact also investment, because if you cannot show some kind of basic standards, you, you comply with all that investor, okay, sorry, I will go.
So it system becoming much more challenging. And I do presume that investors is some kind of also banking sector. So they will ask in a while, some kind of rules that you have. Plan B is that you have arranged something, maybe it's already ongoing. It's like with this insurance companies who are putting some kind of body sensors to, to, to, to understand your, your, your daily behavior.
So how, what are you at [00:27:00] risk group or not risk because they don't want to take this risk. And I think in the future it will be the same. So, you know, either banking sector, either finance sector, either some insurance, they need to understand that you are, that you have done everything to minimize these risks.
And business continuity, resilience is one of the must to do. Now, about the communities, yeah, and we see that, also you're fully right, that the crisis is always local. The community, the people, individual people will be first responders, and unfortunately, usually much prepared communities are in the regions where very often something happens, either a national disaster, or it's a region of some kind of tensions.
So these communities become much more. prepared for the crisis. So they start, even the government don't provide some kind of knowledge or tools to be ready. The people start to self organize themselves to create some kind of joint efforts because only in such way we can, they can survive. And, and, and [00:28:00] ourselves, one of the examples has Baltic nations, so a frontline state with Russian Federation.
Of course, many communities in, in Baltics, they feel this stress and they also start to self organize themselves. On the local level, starting from some kind of procurement, procuring some kind of equipment for the house to be much more resilient, to have much more energy efficiency, et cetera. But it's also system could work during, during the disaster, because if you already have community of people who are very active, who were able to join together to invest in this, like upgrading your house, so most probably these people will be able to self organize themselves and maybe to support.
community during the crisis to support vulnerable groups, the disabled person, and to cope, to survive. So, but, and then here's the role of the government should be to make the systems that people are able to gain such a knowledge, because in some nations, there is only state monopole of violence, state [00:29:00] monopole for certain knowledge, and you can gain them only through these formal structures.
But as we see that. Not every government has such resources to train, educate everyone. So we need to delegate this power, we need to delegate the needs. And, and yeah, it's one of example of events where you also participated was this bottom up organizes community forums of, of it, where it is led by NGOs, that people try to, all these activists from, from different groups, they start.
It is networks of people who could support, in our case, it was tested during the immigration crisis. It was tested during the hosting Ukrainian refugees and also during some floods, yeah. So people understand that there is, there is no, not always will be state present with the police or armed forces to support you.
As mentioned, there is concept of public crisis, that army or police could be involved in other disaster prevention. mitigation measures. So these [00:30:00] societies need to be able to cope with crisis by them all. And then it brings this, this culture of cooperation also between this community. And then, and of course, it's a, if you're looking much, much, much broader, this societal resilience.
It's, it's also this with different titles, but this is a general concept that whole society is much more prepared, much more ready for different disasters, that people also involved in different trainings and different plannings, also with your local municipality, at least part of them are represented in these discussions about potential risks, potential vulnerabilities.
And it's, I think many nations has these examples like UK. Um, resilience forums, forums of, of, of certain regions. So majority, because local can be, local municipalities, also the first responders, they are much more interested to be, to have this contact with local society, to, to get their support, or at least to, to somehow to use [00:31:00] the resources, because the central government usually is very far, so they are much more bureaucratized, so they have different global view on many issues.
But local municipality is also interested in this. That's why. What I have witnessed in many nations that people start to consolidate around this local forest, local municipalities to. So the first step at least to be ready to cope during the disasters, which are often for this region, for example, some earthquakes or some floods.
But then if you're ready for the basics, you can train your people to be ready for different type going deep, to go next, next layer. And of course, nations who has this auto defense concept, which are, which have this military threats, they also go to this military education, training of citizens in general.
I'm just understanding the role of citizens in wartime. So yeah, but what is the most, and the only solution nowadays, if you could ask me, it is this training education of people because we don't [00:32:00] have, no nation has a lot of resources to allocate them to invest in you. technologies, but at least start with the training, with education, with some kind of exercise of local people.
It could be the first good start at least. And then we could maybe find some private private initiatives or international organization initiatives to co found this or to support, to facilitate it. Yeah. So it's, so starting from the private communities, but looking generally this need of all people, it's not about the militarization of societies, but it I mean, no, no preparedness because we see that we are living in much, much dangerous world nowadays.
That's why this readiness culture is one of the concepts which should be available to majority of communities.
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Yeah, I agree. There's, there's often been in the military world, you know, you have military readiness and that's, that's a specific program. There's not necessarily anything in the civilian world that is a version of civilian readiness, right? So there's Emergency preparedness, right? But that's preparedness for disaster, but not necessarily readiness in terms of readiness and willingness of your community support, a security threat or anything else that goes along with that, right?
So it's more preparedness and I'm prepared to sustain myself for 72 hours. So it's sort of, it's a finite specific perspective that we have had for a long time, which we needed [00:34:00] and it still exists today. It's still needed today. And now we're really talking about what you were alluding to, which is like, what's the next step now into enhancing overall civilian readiness, instead of leading into societal resilience overall.
It even goes a little bit further before I get there. I wanted to hit on the topic of resources. Cause you mentioned something that people often don't really think about, which is in the world of sort of poly crisis, like you're saying, and there's multiple sort of, you know, issues happening at the same time.
We do have a fixed finite amount of resources. And so there's two things that happen in sort of a, an op, quote, unquote, operational environment, which is one, you have multiple events happening and you only have finite amount of resources to apply across multiple events. And so an event, if you get a third event or a fourth event, you're obviously going to be constrained and it becomes a resource issue.
So there's only so much that you can do with the resources that we have. And our resources are always planned for historic events, right? So [00:35:00] we've had This many traffic accidents, this many fires, this many police calls, we already have a historical view, resource management, and current capabilities.
Because if you try to advocate for more, it's, it's a difficult discussion, right? Because people say, where's your justification? Why do you think you need more? And so there's that, and then there's the other aspect of what that means in terms of operations and, and, and really something that was coming out of Ukraine that I had seen, which I think is really at least, you know, academically and intellectually interesting to look at is, Managing these resources on the civilian side in terms of a degrading operational environment.
So how do you continue with the fire service or with the police service when you lose a fire truck once a week, right? Or when you lose capability, that's beyond your replenishment rate. And so you're always operating in this degrading sort of glide scope going down of capability. And the only people that can fill that gap are peoples in the communities, right?
They'd have to [00:36:00] then therefore be more resilient and be ready to support those public services that are no longer capable of performing over time. And so it's a really unique and specific thing that we're seeing now that I think people should really take notice of. But it leads us into our next. Sort of phase here, if we're looking across this spectrum of crisis management and crisis response, I guess I would say, you know, we're talking about sort of the local community, local events.
And we have larger sort of multiple regional sort of events leading up to a national level incident and security. And then, you know, we, we get across the spectrum of sort of just response or recovery. We get into sustained crisis over time, and then we start shifting from, you know, resilience to societal resilience.
How can we enhance, you know, overall civilian and military and whole of government approaches to maintain a resilient society, to increase civilian readiness, and then we, we go even further on that spectrum, which is into sort of crisis and conflict. Then we, once we get into that [00:37:00] sort of end of that spectrum there in terms of full conflict, then it really becomes an issue of, and you've, you've coined it in some of your work, which is resistance, right?
So we're getting into that resistance field. And so what is your perspective on. You know, shifting from resilience to resistance. And then what does that mean specifically? What is happening in those communities when this transition happened? The concept of
Vitalijs Rakstins: resistance is, is unique concept of the nations of total defense mainly, so who has this military threat in the risk register and, and that's why total defense concept per se, it sees the role of almost all population to support military, to support defense efforts, and that's why.
Resilience in these communities is also linked to the resistance, so resistance becoming part of the general resilience. So general resilience, that we are society ready to cope during the disaster, so we can live without water, without essential services, it's like resilience, a [00:38:00] denial. So we're denying that there is no gains to switch off energy because we will not surrender.
But second part, of course, is how these societies could support military. And it's not always by military means, because you understand that the only certain percent of population is ready to become soldier is also ready to become partisan, guerrilla, etc. But, and it's usually three to five percent. So it's.
Mean lady also, if you're witnessing your ongoing war, Russian Ukraine war, so in Ukraine without all, with all mobilization. So it's only around 5% of pop of all population who are fighting on the, on the field. But they is supported heavily by the population in the rear or by, by, uh, population also abroad.
And that's why one of the concepts of the resistance is, uh, to continue defense operations. Even on the territories who are temporarily lost. So if the, if the enemy temporary say some territory [00:39:00] or military, it's only the next phase of operations. So you continue to fight by all means you have, but what to do, what civilians, how civilians can support.
And of course, there is some, some options for them to, to join this guerrilla warfare to take weapons and to support them. We are in there protected by, by, by the Geneva Conventions, but that's majority of people they could support, uh, support defense operations by the so called nonviolent resistance.
It's by different means, not cooperating with the occupation powers, not supporting them economically, not getting engaged in their different activities. So it's like non political, non economical, non social cooperation, which makes this occupational regime very ineffective. So if they cannot control the territory, if they need to bring their own teachers, The managers, police office.
So you need to bring [00:40:00] everyone to maintain order on this territory. So it's becoming very questionable. Is it, is it, is there any added value to maintain such, such, such a way of, of, of a temporary state territories? Yeah. And of course there is a different. books of literature, literature, uh, with different examples from the history.
But, uh, yeah, so on one particular, I was focusing was ongoing Ukrainian war and how a civil society could support defense also by a non military means. And nowadays it's easy because we are living information or, or, or data age. So by, by, by, by exposing some, uh, enemy activities online by, uh, by, uh, doing different activist jobs, but by also supporting forces and, and, uh, by, by charity, by, by, by different means.
So you can support them. But second, of course, you have different activities, how to cope during this temporary occupation, uh, how to not to lose ties with, with, with, with [00:41:00] your state and how to continue. So it's, it's a very complex system. And that's why I mentioned it, it's easy, unique for the certain nations who acquire this risk in their registers.
And it's also needs this deep education training because it was first business sense of purpose that people understand that even as a territory is temporary says Nothing ends, it just begins. So for military or continue their defense operations, civilians also has a role. And civilians also has a role in nowadays, especially if we see all this targeting processes are becoming, technology becoming much more sophisticated.
That's why part of the Western community, also Ukrainian. Officers, they need to double check all these targets and you can only double check with the support of local people because you cannot trust fully technologies. You need also some information from the field. That's why all these people also who are presented in the temporary occupied territories.
They support this process of targeting, and then it's a surprise, yes, [00:42:00] they manage, obviously, at the count to destroy some unit, but to destroy this unit, so many people were involved in this targeting process of understanding where's the enemy, because the enemy also is movable, he moves all the time. So that's why it's a very complex system, and what is, of course, the main challenge is This information is very sensitive.
You cannot educate and train everyone because they do different reasons. Many people are not ready, many not wishing, but those who are ready, who wish to do this, or at least to consider that they could support defense in such a way, so there is also need, as I mentioned, education, training to prepare them, you don't need to expose the defense plan.
But at least you need to train and explain why it's so important to do it. So it's a very unique situation when civil society support defense, both military, but also resist enemy. We can see it in different conflicts, [00:43:00] how it's ongoing. But yeah, so it's one of the examples of resilience. So resilience of people to survive during the war.
Even the not availability of essential services, let's say, is not a reason for them to surrender. So they are ready to cope without energy, without water, trying to find different means. And in here, the community level is very important because Individual people, they could be super ready. They can be champion of survival, but alone.
You cannot survive for a long time. You need other people to support because you need to sleep. You need, you can be wounded, et cetera. On the community altogether, uh, they can. Be, be much more survivable because as organizations, they are much more effective than 20, 20 people alone, or 20 people in, in joint units, they are much more effective.
And that's why what state also needs to provide this, to facilitate this, this activities of self organization people. It could [00:44:00] start with like a local. Citizen patrols, just to keep an eye on what's going on in the neighborhood, but you also can go much deeper and also to involve people much, much, much deeper, yeah.
But I think to execute it, you need, as I mentioned, education, training, and proper, proper direction. Not going into details, because people are very creative, they could invent different things, but you just need to explain why you need to do it, and I think nowadays, especially young people, so they can They are much more inventive.
They can find different solutions, how to solve problem. So yeah, short transfer.
Kyle King: Yeah, I think that that is going to be important in the future as we, you know, we look across the landscape of like societal participation in these types of issues, it's hard to gauge specifically, but if we look at some indicators, like if we look at recruitment numbers for the military and things like that, and we see those are all sort of across the board, they're down.
We look at sort of societal participation in, in a number of different ranges. If we're looking [00:45:00] at applicants, if we're looking at these sort of job functions, you know, and if they're all down, then we're starting to see a, and then what we have seen is sort of a declining interest in, in sort of these, these jobs, these functions and, and contributing to sort of societal, you know, security, so to speak.
And, and so I think the education and training piece, this ad piece, this advocacy to, to sort of enhance overall. Self organization and, and awareness of what their requirements are to be resilient community are going to be increasingly important to trying people to, to want to contribute back for their communities and to their, to the nation overall, especially in the future.
And then if we're looking at the future now, and I guess when the last questions I have is. What are we really seeing or what is your perspective on future developments or, or challenges? I mean, what do you foresee now that you've been working on this for a number of years now and have a number of different projects in this area?
What do you foresee in the field of resilience, especially as you mentioned, we have technology and then we also have sort of all [00:46:00] the different geopolitical dynamics that are going on these days. What is, what do you think, or what is say one or two things that you're noticing now? That may be important in the future.
Vitalijs Rakstins: Yeah. So I think it anyway, our mindset will be changed in the following year. So and it's, you see the brings, so we, we, we will have to face to address simultaneously different poli crisis, which could be starting from the space, whereas ending with some kind of state doctors using modern technologies, like you see as is Ukrainian attacks on, on Russian, uh, the oil infrastructure.
It could be easily repetitive in any nation because it costs almost nothing, but you can gain all the tax. So I think it's, this is this need of societies to becoming much more consolidated around this community resilience because in different ways, so it's, it's, it's very hard to survive. And usually it's.
Humankind during different ages. So they change the [00:47:00] structure of the society according to all the stress. Yeah. So when we face the middle age or facing some stone age, it is different. Yeah. I see some positive initiatives. So this concept of business continuity is understood. So we see it in different ways.
Many nations start to implement different. Entrepreneurs start to implement these different regulations rules. But as you mentioned at the beginning, so between the policy documents and like execution. Several years. So maybe frontline nations, they much faster. So because of the urgence of the need, you do it faster.
But in the end, I think it will be more or less because many, many companies are international. So you will just implement the standard like GP, GPR standard for, for data protection from one particular European union, it becoming much more universal. So standard for all other nations, the similar like security resilience standards, somehow through international corporations, they will be also.
So printed to different continents regions. And, uh, and second, I [00:48:00] think it's, uh, it's understanding and as you correctly mentioned that there is no plan B for, there is no capacity as a plan B. So all we have is a military, as a police or firefighter force, if they disappear somehow, there is no other force who is trained to replace them.
There's no like civil defense units or formations who could be called up for some, some nations has, but it's not systematic and they are not a big, big amount. The same if military is involved in military war fighting, no one could support in public or maintaining public order or some special operations.
So that's why I think there will be need to also to, to enhance, to have much bigger reserve of people who are civil defense or police officer. Military, because no, no one could afford to maintain this 24 7 army, 24 7 civil defense corps. But it will be some combination of different, like reserve status or some kind of expert status, which could be easily mobilized for, for, for, for, for [00:49:00] crisis.
Yeah. But I think so. So the change of mindset continue to have different activities. investing in infrastructure, but also in the planning of business continuity of essential services. But I think this is one, one which is need to be much more, hence much more facilitated is this preparedness of this reserve force for, for almost all domains, because they could be also support each other.
But, but we need some people to, to, who are trained, who can support. It's the state institutional municipality during, because it also could be some collaboration between like this communities loose with something. So, I think we will see different options for different regions who have their own unique models, but if you describe them also, it's like hybrid reserve type system of people who could plug in and support.
It's very important for responsible institutions to, to, to, to cope with different crisis. And the last one, of course, this mindset should be much [00:50:00] broader because still many companies are looking very narrow on their own risk appetite. So they, but we see, you need to be look much broader. Also look inside your supply chain, look inside your partners, buyers.
So by different means, so to, to be much more.
Kyle King: Yeah, I definitely think there's going to be an opportunity to learn and grow in the next few years. I think we're in for sort of turbulent times this year, and it's going to be interesting to see how things develop, but it's, it's very interesting to pause and reflect upon the spectrum of crisis and how we are sort of, we're moving through these different perspectives, these different fields, right.
And then how that leads into resistance. And I, I used to have an old boss who would say, We needed to widen the circle of responsibility on some of these, some issues, right? And so, in my view, when I hear you talking about, you know, training the communities and things like that, it. Whiting that responsibility, that communities are not only responsible, like the police are not the only ones in the fire and others [00:51:00] are not solely responsible for everything, right?
Communities now have to be invested. They have to be also responsible for their own safety and their own security. And I think that's just the world we're going to be living in moving into the future. Oh, something certainly that we need to consider, but that brings us to the end of our episode today on the Chrysler Lab podcast.
We extend our deepest gratitude to our guest Vitalis for his invaluable insights on resilience and business continuity, especially in light of the lessons we can learn from Ukraine. And it was a privilege having you on the podcast. So thanks for joining us Vitalis. Yep. Thank
Vitalijs Rakstins: you for
Kyle King: inviting, so keep in touch.
And we'll certainly do that. Thank you for tuning in to Crisis Lab. We hope that today's episode has provided you with new insights and perspectives. Remember, each episode is a step towards mastering the complexities of crisis management, and we're here to guide you along the way. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred platform to keep up to date with our latest episodes.
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