Forty years ago, the Stockholm Document turned the political promise of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act into a more practical system of confidence-building. Amid the Cold War, Europe\u2019s East and West did not disarm, abandon deterrence or begin to trust one another. Instead, they agreed that military competition could be made safer through prior notification, observation, information exchange and verification. The lesson was modest but durable: adversaries do not need trust to reduce uncertainty.<\/p>\n
That logic is now needed beyond the military sphere. Today\u2019s world is not divided into Cold War-style military blocs. Yet in trade, technology, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and supply chains, increasingly security-oriented economic networks are forming around the United States and China<\/a>. Export controls, sanctions, investment screening, industrial policy and resource restrictions are turning interdependence into a potential source of vulnerability.For three decades, globalisation rewarded concentration. Firms sourced from the cheapest producer, countries specialised and supply chains were designed around \u201cjust in time\u201d. That system lowered costs, but it also created chokepoints<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once governments began to regard dependence as a national security risk, the organising principle changed. Efficiency gave way to resilience; \u201cjust in time\u201d increasingly became \u201cjust in case\u201d.<\/p>\n