A new railway is not a strategic capability if it ends at a vulnerable bridge. A battery is not a reserve if it relies on the substation whose loss it is meant to bridge. A second data center is not redundancy if both sites share a fiber route, supplier, or control layer. Such assets do not necessarily create strategic capability.
Recent US intelligence assessments reportedly warn that Russia may test NATO’s resolve between next month and 2029. NATO must be sure that the civilian infrastructure its forces depend on will work under pressure.
At the 2025 Hague Summit, allies agreed that up to 1.5% of GDP (of the total defense spending pledge of 5%) may include key national infrastructure and resilience. NATO has since approved a €27bn ($32bn) plan for improved fuel storage and distribution, for example, while the European Commission estimates that electricity grids need more than €1.2 trillion by 2040.
Projects already have to pass technical, financial, environmental, and security reviews. But there is a missing link between national assessment and alliance planning. This must be fixed. The aim is not to create a new veto or narrow the 1.5% category, but to ensure that investments are well-grounded and deliver what’s needed in crisis or war.
Each project should face three tests.
• First, can the asset withstand disruption and be restored in time?
• Second, does it remove a national bottleneck, add redundancy, or reduce dependence on one route, supplier, or node?
• Third, how does it change the alliance network? This level is not assessed systematically with the first two. It may reveal an alternative route, added capacity, or a gap one country cannot see alone.
The costs and benefits may fall in different countries. One ally may finance a route or interconnector while the alliance receives the security benefit. A national cost-benefit analysis can therefore underestimate alliance-wide value. A large project may add little if it ends at a new bottleneck or is not interoperable with neighboring networks.
Electricity shows why the portfolio matters. A line that is lightly used in peacetime may keep a port, rail corridor, or defense production operating in a crisis. A hardened substation, battery, or repair team may matter more than new generation. For data centers, commercial availability does not prove that capacity supporting key functions can survive physical attack or operate without primary power.
Strategic value includes economic security. The Euro-Atlantic economy must retain access to everything critical — like energy and defense production — in a crisis. Reducing dependence on a single vulnerable point may matter more to the alliance than a national business case shows.
Addressing this missing link requires a practical process. I call it Strategic Infrastructure Assurance. It would not replace reviews, but would connect their findings and add a common geostrategic view across the same three levels at two points in the project cycle.
The first review would take place before location, route, capacity, architecture, suppliers, and financing are locked in. It would ask what capability the project must provide, which bottleneck it removes, and which disruptions it must withstand.
The second review would come later, following design, procurement, construction, and acceptance, checking whether the project’s aim had survived the specifications, contracts, spare parts, staff readiness, exercises, and recovery plans. The assessment would be repeated after a material change in ownership, supplier, technology, route, or security conditions.
The result would be a clear profile, not a single score, showing strategic effect, critical risks, confidence in the evidence, and improvement measures. A critical weakness must not be averaged away. A gap should first lead to a time-limited improvement plan and, where justified, targeted support, not disqualification. Physical resilience does not remove digital strategic exposure. A separate review of external cloud dependence, remote access, updates, encryption keys, and access to strategic data should feed into the profile.
Markets pay for capacity, while resilience often depends on reserve capability for a crisis. A private investor will not finance an extra route, hardened node, or spare parts if it bears the cost while most benefits go to the state or the alliance. The profile would make this cross-border public value visible and support co-financing.
EU and national programs could help pay for the resilience benefit. NATO requirements and common funding could show where an additional measure removes an allied bottleneck. The profile would help allies substantiate a project’s contribution under the alliance’s 1.5% non-core target before it is reviewed in 2029.
NATO must provide what neither national authorities nor the EU can: an alliance-wide operational picture, military requirements, classified threat information, and cross-border effects. It would not approve projects, but could set common questions and show where a lower national priority solves an allied problem.
NATO should move quickly with interested allies to pilot Strategic Infrastructure Assurance on transport, energy, and digital projects linked to regional defense plans. The current investment wave can add infrastructure or build a system able to reroute energy, transport, data, and supply chains when part of the network is attacked or lost.
Strategic resilience exists only when national projects work together as one alliance network that functions when needed most.
Đuro Lubura is a telecommunications engineer and Special Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure of the Republic of Croatia. He chairs the working group drafting a regulation on risk assessment of electronic communications equipment and is Croatia’s national Single Point of Contact for strategic connectivity infrastructure projects. He completed Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in National and International Security program.
He writes in a personal capacity.
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