A force awakens: NATO’s new game plan

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. Today in London, I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Think of who or what are the world's greatest climate offenders. Odds are you're not thinking about buildings. The property industry has an enormous carbon footprint, one that has to be shrunk if climate pledges are going to be met. And before the invasion of Ukraine, Roman Ratushny lobbied successfully to preserve a pristine strip of forest in his native Kyiv. Our obituaries editor looks back on the life of a young man who was soon drawn into a far larger fight to save what he loved. In the central Ukrainian city of Kreminchuk, officials said that at least 18 people had been killed when a Russian missile hit a shopping center yesterday. President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike an act of terror, accusing the Russian state of intentionally targeting civilians. That will weigh heavily on the minds of NATO leaders who are meeting in Madrid today for perhaps their most important summit in generations. The alliance had for years been perceived as increasingly irrelevant. But now that war on Europe's doorstep has energized it enormously, it has to work on its game plan.

NATO last published its Strategic Concept—this is like a vision statement for the alliance—back in 2010. And when it did that, Europe was at peace. There was even hope of what it called a strategic partnership with Russia. Now all of that seems completely outlandish.

Shashank Joshi is our defense editor and is in Madrid for the summit.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is in its fifth month. Relations with the Kremlin are at a generational low point, and the The point of this summit that I'm headed to is really to prepare the alliance for a much darker future ahead. How so?

What do you think will emerge this time around?

Well, there's going to be a new strategic concept for a start. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, is going to identify Russia as the most immediate threat to NATO security. Now, you might think that's staggeringly obvious, but to get all 30 NATO allies to agree to that is quite something. And it's Vladimir Putin, it's his invasion of Ukraine that has generated that unity. There are probably some differences over the future of relations with Russia. There's of course a hawkish camp, Britain, Poland, other Eastern and Central European countries that want to underscore Russia's pariah status. And there are some others who want to keep the door open to future engagement. We saw President Emmanuel Macron of France when he was in Kyiv a week ago, point out that, look, Russia is going to be a neighbor of ours. We have to live with it. But by and large, we're seeing a very clear hardening of the tone on Russia.

So that's the kind of high-level view. What would those changes look like on the ground?

Yeah, I think there is real meat on the bones, Jason, because in Madrid, leaders are going to sign off on very substantial changes in NATO military posture. One of them is that these battlegroups that NATO has in Eastern Europe, in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, those are going to get bigger. They're going to go from battalions to something that's closer to brigades. And the idea is these aren't just going to be tripwires that kind of get run over by Russian tanks, provoking a bigger response from the United States and others. These are going to be a much more robust line of defense. We're seeing 4 new battle groups being established in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. There's also going to be a much bigger pool of high-readiness forces in other parts of the alliance. So there's a NATO Response Force that's about 40,000 troops right now, that will number over 300,000. And these aren't just going to be general-purpose soldiers, these are going to be allocated for very specific missions, as Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, explained to me the other day.

So this is partly about more presence, but also part about for the first time since the end of the Cold War to pre-assign the troops, forces to be responsible for specific areas in the east.

So that should give NATO members, particularly those in the east, confidence that if Russia invaded, there would be specific forces allocated for their defence in a crisis.

So we've mentioned before how the war in Ukraine has really seemed to put the spine back into NATO. This is proof positive. This is putting some numbers to it. Absolutely.

We remember a few years ago, we had an interview with Emmanuel Macron at The Economist, and he talked about the brain death of NATO. That was back when Donald Trump was baiting the alliance. Turkey had invaded Syria, throwing NATO's interests there into chaos. What we're seeing is undoubtedly a revival of the alliance in many ways. When I spoke to Jens Stoltenberg, he boasted of an unprecedented increase in defense spending, for instance.

Before 2014, before NATO made the defense investment pledge, Allies were cutting billions in defense budgets every year. Since 2014, Allies have added billions to the defense budget every year, and this has enabled us to invest more in readiness, in new capabilities, in ammunition.

3 days after Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24th, Germany promised to raise its defense spending to more than 2% of GDP, which is NATO's target. And of course, that would make it the third biggest military power in the world. Other countries that are already at 2%, like Poland, are now headed for 3%. So we're seeing really a remarkable rearming of Europe, and it is indeed all thanks to Mr. Putin.

And so to your mind, this is a sign that NATO is back, it's armed, it's ready, it is as strong as it's been?

All of those things, but not necessarily completely cohesive. So I think the biggest issue that will hang over the summit is Finland and Sweden, two countries that both put in bids to join NATO, and many they thought that the Madrid summit would be a kind of celebratory occasion at which they would be welcomed. What has happened is that Turkey has blocked them from joining, demanding concessions on their supposed ties to Kurdish separatists, and that has really been a stink bomb at this summit. So we are going to see today a meeting between the leaders of Turkey, Finland, and Sweden, along with Mr. Stoltenberg. I don't think that's going to resolve the row, and that's probably going to hang over the meeting as a result. I think there are some other divisions or debates, we could say, still going on. One of the questions is how hawkish a tone should the alliance strike on China? Of course, America would like to see NATO on its side in its competition with China. But there are a number of European countries that are very wary of doing that. And I think overall, Jason, the big elephant in the room, the one issue that hasn't completely gone away is Donald Trump, the sense that he could return in the 2024 elections. I don't think allies have completely dispelled that from their thinking yet.

Sure, but a far more immediate concern for the alliance is surely what's going on in Ukraine. And we've talked before about how reluctant the alliance is to be seen to be actively involved there.

Where does that stand now? Everyone's on the same page that Russia's invasion has been a sea change to NATO's security. Everyone agrees Ukraine deserves very staunch support, and lots of countries in the alliance are individually sending a great number of weapons to Ukraine. But there's an interesting debate over how much NATO should be doing as an institution directly. There are some countries, the UK and others, who would like NATO to step up and do more because it's currently only sending non-lethal aid, things like helmets, blankets, that kind of thing. What's interesting is that not just the French and the Germans, but also the Biden administration oppose that because they say, let's not have NATO dragged into this because Russia will then claim it's fighting the alliance rather than fighting Ukraine, and it will increase the risk of escalation. When I spoke to Mr. Stoltenberg, what he told me is that the alliance will at least unveil a bigger package of assistance in Madrid to help Ukraine.

The comprehensive assistance package, that will be about non-lethal aid, supplementing the aid and support from many other allies, long-term support to Ukraine to help them to modernize the Ukrainian armed forces, to help them with the fundamental—

He said that would include support to help the Ukrainian army effectively transform itself, transform its command structure, become a more decentralized organization. And the fact that NATO is committing to that, I think, is a big blow to Russia. But we should be clear, this is the work of years, transforming the Ukrainian army, transforming the ammunition it uses, the training of its soldiers. It's going to take a very long time. I'm not sure it's enormous consolation to the Ukrainian soldiers hunkered down in trenches in Donbas in the coming weeks and months. Shashank, thanks very much for your time. Thank you for having me as always, Jason.

Climate justice! When do we want it? Now! Are we going to get it? Yes! As the G7 summit got underway in Germany this weekend, Climate protesters at the peak of the country's highest mountain unfurled a banner calling on G7 leaders to end the use of fossil fuels. Chancellor Olaf Scholz does have green ambitions for the alliance. In his New Year's speech, he said he wanted it to become a pioneer for a climate-neutral way of doing business. That will require quite some policymaking in some obvious industries, such as transport. But there's another, less obvious sector that will need to be rebuilt.

To meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, all buildings need to be net-zero carbon by 2050. Yet today, less than 1% are.

Vingeru Mkandawire is The Economist's global property correspondent.

And that's just the energy needed to run the buildings. Once you factor in emissions used to construct them, there's a real problem with our current approach to buildings.

And what is that approach? Where do things stand now?

So buildings are among the worst climate offenders. They're responsible for nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions, with homes alone accounting for nearly 20%. So property emissions are a combination of two things. The first is the day-to-day running of a building, so the energy that's used to light up or heat or cool homes and office blocks and other property, that's responsible for 28% of annual emissions globally. The other type is embodied carbon, which refers to emissions tied to the building process, maintenance, and any demolition. That's responsible for around 11% of annual emissions. So all in, it's a really big contributor to the climate crisis.

And this is just a legacy problem that stems from buildings that have already been built?

No, the things that we're building now and in the future are also going to have an impact. We're building more and adding to the problem all the time. For example, in London, more than 200 towers have been built since 2009. And in New York City, over a dozen supertall structures are already in the works. An explosion of new buildings in places like China, India, and Africa will continue to fuel that construction. In these places, more than half of buildings that will exist in 30 years haven't been built yet. By one estimate, the planet will add floor space the size of New York City every month until 2060. So there are some really serious issues facing policymakers and the construction industry. About what to do with the carbon footprint of all this construction.

So if it's in the hands, at least in part, of policymakers, what kinds of policy solutions are in the works?

A lot of countries are at least looking to find solutions. In particular, they focus on that operational energy use. So new energy efficiency standards for buildings in England and Wales mean that 1 in 10 offices in central London risk becoming obsolete by the end of this year. Nearly 60% could become unusable by 2027. And across the European Union, new rules require that around half of a building's energy has to come from renewable sources by 2030. And then you've got cities like New York and L.A. that are also setting ambitious zero emissions grid targets. And you also have incentives for homeowners. In Britain, for example, energy performance requirements for new homes have to be dramatically tightened from 2025. And in Italy, the government has pledged to cover the full cost of home renovations plus an extra 10% to incentivize those still unsure about switching. And this is being done through tax deductions of up to €100,000 per home. And it's ambitious. You know, all of this is progress, but there's still so much we should be doing.

What you're talking about there sounds like it's focused on the day-to-day running of buildings, though. But you mentioned also embodied emissions. What about those?

This is where there's a more embedded issue with the construction industry. The property sector and most policy has focused almost entirely on making buildings more efficient at the expense of carbon emissions in the construction phase. At the moment, operational emissions, so things like heating and cooling buildings, that takes up a bigger share of total emissions. But that's expected to change over time as buildings become more energy efficient. By 2040, the embedded emissions are expected to exceed those of operational carbon in most buildings. And in many modern buildings today, embodied carbon already represents as much as half of the total lifetime emissions. Added to that is the problem that developers are much more likely to demolish a building than to make it more efficient and reuse it. That adds to the upfront carbon cost. And what's your view?

Do you think that's going to change?

Something about it will have to change if we're going to reduce the carbon footprint of the construction industry. One of the contributing factors to these issues is that a lot of building practices haven't really changed in over a century. Look at the ways that manufacturing has developed in that time for building cars or aircraft. Construction just hasn't really kept pace with that. But there are pockets of innovation. You have startups and venture capitalists looking at ways of boosting productivity in the sector and also making things like cement much greener. New methods, such as modular construction, which involves assembling a building's components in a factory before transporting them on-site, are also gaining traction. For example, in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, nearly half of all new homes are factory-built.

So I guess I'll deploy the phrase green shoots here. There are signs that change is happening, innovation is happening. Do you think that they'll take root? Do you think we'll see real meaningful change across the sector?

There are positive signs that property developers and policymakers recognize that change needs to happen. There are already a number of developers in the building industry that do more than what's required by law. But population growth and voracious demand for more housing and more buildings means that the size of the built environment globally is expanding at a much faster rate than efforts to slash energy use. Any reductions to emissions in current practices is going to be massively offset by the boom in construction we're going to see in the decades to come. So ultimately, our approach to not just how we construct and maintain buildings, but the building codes that go with them, all of that needs to change.

Thanks very much for your time, Benjero.

Thanks for having me.

The incident that shaped the life of Roman Ratushnyi occurred on November 30th, 2013, on Independence Square in the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. He was in a crowd of hundreds of students protesting against the decision of the president, Viktor Yanukovych, to renege on a special trade deal with the European Union. There were speeches going on, there was singing, there were flags waving. The square was a sea of blue and yellow EU flags. As well as Ukrainian ones. Roman was only 16, one of the youngest there, just in his first year at college, and he was determined to miss nothing that happened there. As the night drew in, Roman Radushny was aware suddenly that the stage where all the speeches and singing had been going on was being taken down. And people began to shout, "What's happening? Are you destroying our revolution?" And a man called out, "No." And then almost at that moment, hundreds of riot police descended on the square. It was then almost dark, so there was the terrifying prospect of these police laying about them with sticks in the darkness. And everyone fled. And when he fled, he found that he was being beaten and chased down the street by one of the riot police. He was hit in the back and hit in the leg. That night in Independence Square taught him how good it was and how comparatively easy it was to gather together a community for a cause, and how good he had felt to be a part of that community. And the other thing it had taught him was that defiance of the authorities might well be worth it. You could just start a little demonstration, a little expression of anger, and it could grow and grow. And that was what this demonstration did, in fact. There were even larger rallies in January and February. In February, Yanukovych called in troops to fire on the demonstrators, and nearly 100 people died. And that in fact brought about the revolution in Ukraine, the Orange Revolution, and Yanukovych fled to Russia, where he still is. And so Ukraine was suddenly a new country, or so it seemed. But certainly Roman Radushny was not convinced that it was there yet. There was a lot of corruption around, especially in the police. There was illegal building and logging going on. Businessmen were in the pockets of politicians and vice versa. So gradually he became a civic activist. He found that it was easy to gather people to him. He was good-looking. He had a very bright, direct gaze. People were keen to join his cause. He had support and friendship with civic leaders and green activists in other cities too. In fact, though, his main canvas for campaigning was quite a small one, centered around a forest in the middle of Kyiv. Improbably, there was a forest there. It was called Protasev Yar, and developers had been granted an illegal permit to build two 40-story towers there with shops and offices. As far as Romain was concerned, it was not only a desecration of the city, but a removal of the green lungs of the city. And he gathered as many residents, neighbors, and interested parties to him as he could and started off with fairly small, low-key demonstrations, taking citizens through the streets with their dogs and with musicians. Just going as far as the perimeter wall and blocking the traffic on the road. Then he also confronted the thugs who were guarding the building site and got beaten up and pushed about as a result of it. He had to fight through the courts for 2 years to get Prasat I Viya recognized as a place that ought to be a green zone and not developed. So in 2021, the fight for Protasev Yar had ended. But then, less than a year later, another war intervened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And he reacted as all his friends had known he would react. He immediately, on the very day of the invasion, went to put himself forward to be in a unit. He was put into the 93rd Mechanized Division, and he was sent first to fight a bit round the capital and then sent to Sumy and then eventually to the Eastern Front, to just near the Donbas, where, of course, the fighting was fiercest. He changed quite a bit, said his friends and people who met him, as a result of the war. He had always looked boyish and somewhat innocent in all these escapades against the authorities, but he had steel inside him, and this showed very much when he became an active soldier. He posted selfies and Facebook posts from the front, and they showed him enjoying himself there, truly, but also looking as if he was absolutely determined to kill as many Russians as possible. And one of the last pictures he sent was of himself in a trench in a forest, looking actually very happy there, looking as if he was almost part of the earth and the roots. He was in his camouflage uniform. And it was an ironic picture in a way, because he had been the great savior of the improbable forest in the center of Kyiv. And here he was in a forest far away in the Donbas. But this forest could not protect him.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence Let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a line at podcasts@economist.com or leave us a rating wherever you listen. We'll see you back here tomorrow.