The global order is unsettled: Power is diffusing, polarities are shifting, and regions once peripheral have staked their claim to centrality. Resources are contested, technologies both miraculous and menacing, and the guardians of order are being outflanked by new actors and new theatres of conflict. New forms of war upend the consensus on how best to defend societies. Global commons — from oceans to orbits, from supply chains to cyberspace — have become global battlefields.

This pillar confronts the persistent shadow of conflict that hovers over the global landscape. Old threats mutate, new ones multiply, and frozen conflicts may burst aflame at any moment. The security order must be recalibrated to confront not only terror and ideology but also the technologies that enable them. Threats no longer lurk at the margins but pulse in civilisational centres, from divided societies to contested cyberspace, from the borders of Europe to the heart of Africa. How we navigate today’s storms will determine the shape and safety of the harbours we eventually find.