“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is not a clear one.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1914.

I’d like to thank David Omand for his kind introduction. I was honoured to be asked to return to RUSI – and especially delighted to find that I was speaking at a session chaired by David.

I am sandwiched between two distinguished speakers – both of whom are talking about specific future challenges (climate change and emerging diseases). I am therefore going to take a slightly different tack, looking at: How resilience can help us think about the complex and unstable world we live in.

How it helps join up our thinking about a series of disparate challenges. The role that this process of connecting the dots can play in what, at a global level at least, seem certain to be turbulent times. In other words, I am going to talk less about a specific future challenge to resilience, and more about the future of resilience thinking itself – arguing for the power of resilience as a lens through which we can unify our thinking about future challenges.

The Future of Resilience