IN SMALL CONFIGURATION WG DEFENSE, ENERGY SECURITY & DIPLOMACY

TRUST AS A BASIS FOR AUTHORITY RELEVANCE, STRUCTURES, STARTING BLOCKS, PREDICTABILITY, CREDIBILITY WORKING AT PREDICTABLE FAIR PARTNERSHIPS 

“The question is not whether Europe needs unity, as it clearly does. The question is how to make it operational”  We picked this significant quote up from a study published by the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics (BIG) entitled ‘Green Realpolitik: Recasting Europe’s Climate and Energy Diplomacy’, written by Professor Thijs Van de Graaf from Ghent University, back in July 2025.

Another quote from this same study is: “ Deep decarbonization at home remains essential, but for different reasons, not because it will save the planet, but because it underpins Europe’s credibility abroad.” This reminds us of the fact how crucial credible branding is in political, cultural and economical diplomacy, having in mind that not only the individual but also the collective responds to a famous quote to be found in a novel of 1962 by Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Mother Night’, saying ”We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be!”  How to deal with this important issue of perception and  in what way the Draghi, Letta and Niinisto reports are showing the way?

As mentioned in previous TAC Documents focus in this first working year of the design office(DO) remains  on questions of civil and military preparedness in support of the choice  of the TAC for this field of action, whereby we discuss it in the DO  from a multitude of angels, transversally, in line with the approach followed during the 3 Houjarray Foresight Talks in the Maison Jean Monnet in previous years.

As Ms Muriel Delaporte from the Defense Magazine Operationnels SLDS rightly points in her article “From Algorithms to Kilowatts” published in the margin of the Eurosatory Fair in June 2025 in Villepinte (Paris), “Energy is rightly described as operational by many armed forces. It has become a decisive factor on the battlefield, inseparable from the logistics component. The battles of tomorrow will therefore be won not only with algorithms, but also-and always-with kilowatts”. We may add, as the ongoing war in Ukraine clearly shows,  these battles are fought on many fronts and not only at the geographical frontline. 

It all points to the inherent paradox of the technological turn our contemporary societies are taking, offering them manifold possibilities for operational superiority but also new vectors of several vulnerabilities. 

In what way AI applications are affecting everything we are doing through the integration of existing applications?

As is reminded in the 2025 Houjarray Declaration rebuilding trust requires strengthening our communication and education systems, certainly in times we are confronted by what some experts qualify as cognitive warfare. What began and is still presented as essentially an augmentation helping humans to take better and faster decisions, becomes  bit by bit a dependency because of managerial decisions looking often too exclusively to easiness and financial gains at the expense of human labour  and so atrophies human expertise.  Where do we invest in AI so that it is for good? Where and how do we obtain the necessary means?

Is the Rearm Europe initiative up to its promise to mobilise substantial national and EU-level resources to scale up defence investment across the Union? What about its financial underpinnings: are they fit for purpose and coherent enough? Should we look at a reframing of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to repurpose it to also support public investment in defense?

More than enough questions are here on the plate. Looking at them through different experienced glasses is what we want to do.

With the activities of the TAC and its design office we want to build further upon what was central in both Monnet’s and Kohnstamm’s  approach: organizing peace by organizing trust. We invite you to take part in this exercise to look more closely into operational vulnerabilities, logistical strains, environmental and social pressures and the challenges they purport for European autonomy, sovereignty and the need for frugality.