The largest port in Europe stretches 24 strategic miles, from the historic flat-bottom barges in the city’s old inner harbor to the dunes and white windmills of the North Sea coast.
Here, ships four football fields long and as tall as high-rises sail in with 40,000 containers of cargo a day, from consumer goods to chemicals to American-made tanks, fighter-jet parts, helicopters, and ammunition.
If war breaks out in Europe, and NATO allies call for backup, this will also be where tens of thousands of troops from the United States and Canada could disembark and head for the front lines.
Why We Wrote This
If Europe needs to defend itself, its security might depend as much on civilian infrastructure, like ports and bridges, as it does on military forces. Expect that to be a major theme at this week’s NATO summit in Turkey.
A vital hub for civil-military cooperation, it is potentially a prime target for attacks, too, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned during a May visit to the city. That will be a key message at the alliance’s annual summit in Turkey starting July 7: the need for greater resilience among NATO countries.
With an admiring eye toward the sort of societal scrappiness Ukraine has shown in its war against Russia, top NATO officials are stressing Europe’s need for better transportation networks, more reliable energy supplies, and stepped-up civilian preparedness to help allies absorb shocks, rebuild quickly – and continue on if conflicts last longer than expected.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who tirelessly touts lethality and the military’s ability to inflict damage, nodded to resilience at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in June – the first alliance gathering he has attended since October. Mr. Hegseth, who has long derided “free riding” allies, called on members to boost the civilian networks that support national defense.
The key along the way is to avoid normalizing wartime mindsets in peacetime societies, says Hans Horan, a strategic analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He adds that too much emphasis on looming threats can “blur the line between civilian resilience and societal militarization.”
Resilience as defense
On an electronic map at the Port of Rotterdam’s headquarters, Sarah Olierook, manager of port security and resilience, points to red dots that track the movement of dangerous materials coming into the port, including chemicals, explosives, and ammunition. “We know exactly what’s coming at us,” she says.
Other ports have physical fences around their perimeters, but Rotterdam’s facilities are too big, Ms. Olierook notes. Instead, there are “virtual fences” that help protect dangerous chemical shipments, oil refineries, and storage tanks that dot the coastline.
Preparations include helping to develop protections against drones and unmanned undersea vessels as well, which are increasingly “big threats” to port operations, she adds.
When the Iran war broke out, demonstrators came to protest the movement through the port of F-35 fighter-jet parts between Israel and the U.S., raising concerns about state actors potentially stirring up trouble in the guise of demonstrations.
Such potential gray-zone tactics extend to cyberattacks on the highly automated port, where unmanned vehicles move containers coming off ships and workers in an office operate cranes remotely.
With this in mind, NATO ran an exercise in June imagining drones detonating as a ship enters the port. In February, the Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence down the road in The Hague introduced a war game called “Rotterdam” to get military and private-sector players practicing ways to keep allied reinforcements transiting through as disasters strike.
There is focus on the port not only because it’s a backbone of global trade and troop movements, but also because it’s a barometer for the broader resilience challenges members face, analysts say. Disruptions here can ripple across NATO countries, exposing everything from sabotage of supply chains to energy security.
There’s a sense, in other words, that as goes the Port of Rotterdam, so goes the rest of Europe, along with the railways, roads, and waterways that extend from it, Mr. Horan says.
While lethality is important when it comes to fighting wars, “You can’t be lethal if you can’t get to the conflict,” he adds, “or if your tanks run out of fuel.” Differing standards of train-track size among NATO member states, for example, have long been a source of concern within the alliance, given that weapons off-loaded from ships must often continue to their ultimate destinations by rail.
With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this sort of NATO logistical strategizing has kicked into high gear: Last year, the Netherlands’ Defense Ministry announced that the Port of Rotterdam will expand its terminals for loading and unloading multiple ships carrying military cargo – particularly equipment and ammunition – to better support NATO operations and amphibious exercises.
Cooperation is key
Around NATO headquarters in Brussels, a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder” is making the rounds.
The idea is that, beyond being resilient, stress can, like building muscles, make people and groups more durable. So, too, can uncertainty, Dr. Taleb argues, offering the opportunity for old assumptions to be tested and mistakes to reveal weaknesses that can become strengths.
“Antifragility is like a step above resilience,” says Italian navy Capt. Giovanni Galoforo, a strategic communications adviser to the NATO Military Committee. Resilience allows countries to absorb shocks. “Antifragility actually brings you to a higher level of strength than you had before the shock,” he says, adding that it is something that NATO is working to develop.
During his visit to Rotterdam, Secretary-General Rutte noted that the latest weapons systems being developed use more energy, not less. An F-35 fighter jet, for example, burns 60% more fuel than the older F-16. The same holds true for modern tanks and warships.
That costs taxpayers, too, analysts say, so the civilian sector also has an interest in developing things such as alternative fuels to insulate the alliance, and to allow it to carry on, and even thrive, amid the shocks that come with conflicts.
In such times, civil-military cooperation is key, say analysts. They add that planning and practicing crisis response helps avoid rapid deference to military institutions during emergencies, a phenomenon which they say is unhelpful in democracies and an additional strain on the armed forces themselves.
Population preparedness is important, too. In this, experts stress moving from reactive crisis mode to proactive steps people can take to build resilience in times of crisis.
Distribution of Sweden’s “In Case of Crisis of War” brochure, which goes to every household in the country, is frequently cited as an example of best practices by NATO officials. With its home-preparedness checklist that aims to make citizens self-sufficient for at least a week, the brochure advises keeping at the ready a backpack filled with basics, including water, batteries, and a wireless radio.
From cyberstrikes to cutting of undersea communications cables to port sabotage and drone infiltrations at airports, there are developments that people need to have on their radars, Mr. Horan says, but the aim is not to put citizens on edge.
“We don’t want people all of a sudden cranking it up three notches, thinking there’s an imminent threat of invasion,” he adds, “or looking for the bogeyman where there is none.”