From 25 to 28 October 2021, the NDC Research Division was co-organizer of the Kingston Conference on International Security (KCIS 2021 https://www.thekcis.org/conference/kcis-2021), organized by the Center of International and Defense Policy (CIDP) of Queen’s University and held in a hybrid mode in Kingston, Canada.
Photo courtesy of the the Kingston Consortium on International Security
This year’s topic was “In Case of Emergency. The Military’s role in the Pandemic and Future Crises”. From 2020 to the present, national armed forces from all over the world have been called upon to support civilian authorities in the fight to defeat COVID-19. In addition to responding domestically, the military has also adapted the conduct of its operations abroad. As the vaccines continue to be rolled out (unevenly across regions), it is time to take stock of the pandemic from the perspective of Western armed forces.
KCIS 2021 incorporated lessons learned to strengthen national emergency resilience moving forward. The conference also provided an opportunity to reassess allied threat assessments, asking which vulnerabilities have been made more salient by this global crisis.
The Director of the Research Division, Dr Thierry Tardy, offered opening remarks the second day of the event and moderated the fourth panel looking at “Threat assessment”, and the NDC Commandant, Lt-Gen Olivier Rittimann, delivered the closing Keynote Address.
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