Security–Resilience (Con)Fusion: Governance and Legal Risks in Baltic Sea Energy Infrastructure

Resilience and security have become undeniable governance imperatives—sometimes attaining similar, near-synonymous, connotations in contemporary security strategies. Long-term investments in dual-use civilian and military infrastructure and functions, like drone walls or surveillance-equipped wind power parks, result in closer handshakes between resilience and security in democratic societies. However, how these two concepts interrelate in practice—i.e., which of them becomes the dog and which becomes the tail—is a matter of great importance to the ability of societies to govern their affairs in a sustainable, fair, and democratic manner. The fusion of resilience and hard security through the co-investment, co-location, and co-engagement of civilian and military investments, infrastructure, and functions carries significant political and legal risk for infrastructure operators, including the possibility of harm to the civilian population and objects. The obfuscation of civilian and military roles and capabilities entrenches a risk-averse security culture and erodes democratic measures and processes and may in that way build strategic advantage for authoritarian adversaries. Preoccupied with the blending of security and resilience in wind energy infrastructure in the Baltic Sea region, the article calls for scrutiny of relevant decisions and applicable legal frameworks. It bridges the literature on Polish and Swedish policy approaches to civil–military collaboration in the energy sector with the international legal literature on dual-use objects and civil–military accountability to reveal unresolved legal challenges acute in the Baltic Sea region.