In this Seminar, we had the opportunity to organize two roundtables. The first, titled «The Risks and Threats to Security and Their Impact on the Operational Environment,» was moderated by BG Francisco Dacoba, General Director of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies (IEEE), Ministry of Defense. Participants included BG Carlos Javier Frías, Director of the Army War College, Ministry of Defense; Col. Luis Alberto Hernández, Head of the Analysis and Foresight Section (SEAYP), Joint Chiefs of Staff (DIVDEF-EMACON-EMAD), Ministry of Defense; and Andrea G. Rodríguez, Senior Researcher for the European Digital Agenda, European Policy Centre (EPC), and member of the Cybersecurity Forum (CYBERSEC) Committee. The second roundtable, «The Geopolitical, Social, and Security Environment,» was moderated by Vicente Garrido, General Director of INCIPE, and included Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University and Full Member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences; Col. Jesús Díez Alcalde, Head of the Analysis Unit at the National Security Department (DSN), Prime Minister’s Office; and Eduardo Saldaña, Co-director of El Orden Mundial.
TG Fernando López del Pozo began his speech by highlighting the importance of the operational environment, as it provides a future projection within the Ministry of Defense, framed within a current reality full of changes. The operational environment is a foresight document for the next fifteen years, created through collaboration not only within the armed forces but also with other administrations, the academic, business, and industrial worlds, thus encapsulating the current Spanish strategic thinking.
The defense planning process, López del Pozo states, is essential, as it aims to translate political aspects into specific military capabilities. Additionally, it must connect the National Defense Directive with the documents produced by the Chief of Defense Staff. The circumstances, conditions, and influences are constantly changing, and as a result, the operational environment is always evolving. He also highlights the four characteristics currently present in the operational environment: volatility, complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Precisely because of this, the mission of Defense Policy must remain as stable as possible in order to face an increasingly varied reality and threats.
This can be observed in the continuity of the defense directives over the past forty years, highlighting two defining features that have remained constant: defense as a public service with the goal of protecting citizens’ security and defense, and a commitment to global peace.
The Risks and Threats to Security and Their Impact on the Operational Environment
During the first roundtable, «The Risks and Threats to Security and Their Impact on the Operational Environment,» Brigadier General Carlos Javier Frías began his speech by highlighting that we are in a period of change, primarily due to the fact that the structure of the international system is shifting from bipolarity to multipolarity. This multipolarity is unbalanced, with the United States and China at the helm, and a global south that is becoming increasingly important.
Carlos Frías points out that we are currently in a world where risks are combining, which means that in the future operational environment, no crisis will be exclusively military, and this will result in the need for collaboration between different institutions in order to protect citizens. Another effect of the changing period we are living through, Frías states, is the democratization of technology, which has made advanced technologies accessible to groups that previously had no access. Moreover, another change we are seeing is the immediate effect of public opinion on wars, and thanks to artificial intelligence and deep fakes, it is becoming more difficult to differentiate truth from falsehood.
Finally, Frías emphasizes that we must not forget that we live in a nuclear world, and all international relations are affected by this fact, as we move towards a multipolar order with an increasing presence of nuclear weapons.
In his speech, Colonel Luis Alberto Hernández focuses on explaining the different risks and threats outlined in the 2035 Operational Environment document developed by the Ministry of Defense. The first risk he highlights is the lack of perception of the threat, and the second is thinking that these threats can only be addressed from a military perspective, as it is necessary to use all the available instruments of power in a combined way to confront them. These threats, Hernández continues, have several characteristics, such as their global nature, affecting all countries; their transnationality; their multidimensionality; their multifaceted nature; and their simultaneity, such as risks in cyberspace, which are accompanied by physical attacks, as we have recently seen in the war in Ukraine.
Finally, Hernández divides the different types of threats we face into four major groups: hostile actions by the adversary; those related to technology, which also enhance the other threats; interconnection; and natural threats, such as disasters, pandemics, or the effects of climate change.
Lastly, Andrea G. Rodríguez focuses her speech on the emerging technologies that impact cyberspace. She highlights the growing use of these emerging technologies in both the civil and military sectors. She also points out that technologies are increasingly being used as economic and geopolitical pressure tools, and we must consider the direct impact that the development of biotechnology, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors will have on our lives.
Rodríguez believes that the next five years will be marked by acceleration in the field of cybersecurity, with the sophistication of certain tools, which will require more attention to be paid to cybersecurity and cyber defense in order to protect citizens. She further explains that during these years, we will face major threats in national security, economic security, and information security.
The risks we will face after these five years, Rodríguez explains, will focus on technological convergence, which will lead to a situation where all information and technologies will be interconnected, with the risks this entails. Therefore, we must develop the necessary instruments to confront them.
The geopolitical, social, and security environment
In the second roundtable, «The Geopolitical, Social, and Security Environment,» Eduardo Saldaña focuses his intervention on the general changes we are seeing in the geopolitical environment and global dynamics.
Regarding Europe, he points out that we are positioned between China and the United States and that we find ourselves in a very complicated situation in this shift in geopolitical dynamics, where we must decide how to orient our strategy and foreign policy to adapt to these changes.
Moreover, Saldaña explains that the economic change occurring in the world is leading us to a reformulation of the globalization model we had until now. This new model is heading toward protectionism, regionalization, and will be governed more by security than by economic benefit. We are moving toward a global process of greater polarity, which will lead to a geopolitics of greater confrontation in various aspects.
Emilio Lamo de Espinosa continues this second roundtable, discussing how we are currently facing a very important demographic divergence process, which varies greatly between developed and developing countries, and how this is aligning with a technological convergence process, which causes the GDP of countries to progressively adjust to their populations.
Lamo de Espinosa highlights five negative consequences of the globalization process, which are divided into: an increase in internal inequality within countries; social dualization and the rise of populism; an increase in technological globalization but not institutional globalization; a decrease in satisfaction with democracy globally; and finally, what Lamo de Espinosa considers the greatest problem of the 21st century: a growing governance deficit. This last aspect is due to the fact that currently, the problems we face are global, but we lack global instruments to manage them.
Colonel Jesús Díez Alcalde participates last in this second roundtable, explaining Spain’s perspective on national security, focusing on three crucial areas in the strategic scenario: the context we are in, the threats we face, and the response of the armed forces to this scenario.
He also emphasizes the importance of prevention and detecting problems before having to implement any response, which greatly benefits our societies, as Díez Alcalde reminds us that the objective of Spain’s national security policy is to protect the freedom, rights, and well-being of citizens. The strategic environment surrounding us, which threatens our security, is a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment that cannot be addressed without relying on and giving importance to governance, development, and security.
Closing Remarks
TG Fernando García González-Valerio, Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JEMACON), was responsible for closing the seminar, highlighting the importance for the armed forces to focus on two major areas: the planning of capabilities to address current risks and threats, and the formulation of strategies and tactics to be implemented; as the scenario we are facing is progressing at an increasing speed, with greater competitiveness, greater ambiguity, and a situation of ongoing dispute.
He also emphasizes that the use of military power is only one part of the solution, as today, all conflicts are avoided through a multidisciplinary and integrated approach, coordinating and valuing all the powers of the state, in order to shape a less uncertain future.
Elena Ferro.