BUILDING A 21ST CENTURY MILITARY: REDEFINING MILITARY PREPAREDNESS

The COVID-19 pandemic has given the world and its governments a renewed perspective on crisis preparedness and management. The levels of global preparedness, in the main, leave much to be desired as the death toll caused by the pandemic illustrates. This article contends that military priorities must be structured in such a way that appreciates the 21st century challenges of non-traditional threats like pandemics, climate change and threats from violent non-state actors, whilst maintaining the capacity to be dual-purposed in the scenario of kinetic State threats. Militaries across the world must be overhauled for a planet more in danger of collective and universal problems and threats, (i.e. pandemics, climate change, and mass migration), and not only traditional military threats like State-to-State confrontation. These 'new' threats and their causes know no boundaries, therefore, nations worldwide, beginning with the world's foremost and emerging powers, but also smaller and less influential States, must seek re-prioritization.