The world is becoming less safe, the number of wars and armed conflicts is increasing. In most cases authoritarian governments instigate war, with Russia being the most blatant case. The internal dimension of external aggression is receiving little attention in the formulation of national security strategies, thereby missing a key element for prevention and change.
We hosted an international roundtable to discuss a set of recommendations, making concrete proposals on how to integrate democracy better into national-level security strategies.
Download our recommendation paper here
In the preparation of these recommendations, we have analysed 13 security strategies by different democracies (Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, the UK, the US). As part of this work, identified a gap in the thinking about international security and the nature of political regimes: Democracies increasingly understand the threat from authoritarian governments, but they do not integrate the support to democracy, as a key means to reduce that risk, into an overarching security concept. Instead, support to democracy often remains in a silo of democracy promotion by funding projects.