A Turn to Infrastructure. The Role of NATO-Industry Collaboration in NATO's Maritime Security Strategy

Following the Nord Stream sabotage, NATO has reinforced its focus on security governance for maritime infrastructures. This paper substantiates two claims: First, Russian aggression and incidents exposing the vulnerability of maritime energy infrastructures have spurred a ‘turn to infrastructure’ within NATO, visible both institutionally and discursively. This has revitalized NATO, contributing to its raison d’être. Second, the operability of NATO’s ‘turn to infrastructure’ is constructed upon close collaboration with the industry that owns and operates the infrastructure. Consequently, a novel NATO-industry collaboration is evolving as an integral component of NATO’s raison d’être. Because European maritime infrastructures will expand with the green transition, both the ‘turn to infrastructure’ and the NATO-industry collaboration are likely to cement into durable, intertwined and long-term maritime security governance structures. Based on a proposition that European energy security hinges – at least in part – on the quality of NATO-industry collaboration, this paper explores the emerging governance structures in NATO-industry collaboration, identifying collaborative strengths and challenges. Doing so, we engage with scholarship on cross-sectoral, multi-level collaboration, a body of work with which international security studies have not extensively engaged. Empirically, the paper relies on a document study of NATO and industry documents, and interviews in NATO and major energy companies.