Responding to A New Geopolitical Reality. NATO and EU Strategies of 'Whole-of-Society' and 'Resilience' and Implications for Corporate Actors

The invasion of Ukraine, Russia's weaponization of energy, the Nord Stream and the Balticconnector incidents accelerated NATO and EU initiatives targeted at enhancing the security of critical energy infrastructures. Central to ongoing security efforts targeted at energy infrastructures is a `whole-of-society approach' and a focus on 'resilience', both involving a new role for, and new demands on, corporate energy infrastructure owners and operators. In this paper, we first examine the rationales underlying NATO's and the EU's whole-of-society approach and the focus on resilience therein. Second, drawing on the case of Norway and major Norwegian energy companies, we discuss potential implications for corporate actors. We conclude with observations about the need for scholarship to explore the various implications of what we label 'corporate securitization', that is, the process through which the activities and functions of corporations become reframed as security policy and become subject to security policy tools.

Keywords: Energy security, Whole-of-society, Resilience, NATO, the European Union, Critical infrastructure, Securitization.