Should resilience be the antithesis of efficiency?

For the Sultanate of Oman, a disruption at sea can become a question about food prices, factory inputs, insurance cover and public finances. What begins beyond our shores can arrive at the household budget. Resilience matters because uncertainty travels across borders and institutions faster than responsibility for managing it.
Economic, maritime, trade and financial resilience share a central purpose: reducing the scope of uncertainty and limiting the damage that uncertainty can cause. Countries need a clearer understanding of what might change, which exposures they can control and how they will cope with the rest.
Better information reduces what we do not know. A country may understand a shipping route’s vulnerability and still be unable to prevent its closure. Resilience must therefore narrow both knowledge gaps and the consequences that can overwhelm us.
Being two steps ahead means anticipating consequences and preparing choices. If a route closes, which alternative is available? If freight costs rise, which essential goods become vulnerable? If insurers withdraw cover, can trade continue? A forecast becomes useful when it changes a decision before the disruption arrives.
This requires watchfulness, but this has a cost. Permanent emergency readiness exhausts staff, devalues warnings and diverts resources towards whatever appears most threatening that week.
The answer lies in two complementary tracks. The first is national through graduated readiness: routine monitoring, agreed warning thresholds and a limited number of rehearsed responses. An early signal should trigger proportionate investigation; stronger evidence should release additional resources. Each significant warning needs an accountable decision-maker who records what was done and why. Reports without that obligation merely document vulnerability.
The second is international through interlocked interests and demonstrable outcomes. While this does not necessarily eliminate uncertainty, it reduces variables and operators to manageable scope and builds in some degree of interest based discourse. Interest is the only language of realpolitik as we witness today.
Then comes the uncomfortable questions: at what cost? And whose? Should resilience, then, be the antithesis of efficiency? Only if efficiency means minimising costs while assuming that everything will keep working. A system operating at full capacity with no alternatives may be economical in normal conditions and ruinously expensive under stress. Efficiency should be designed and assessed over the life of an investment, including disruption, recovery and costs imposed on others.
Countries should accept that cost selectively, where continuity warrants it. The policy test is the additional continuity purchased by each rial. Faster customs clearance, interoperable systems and qualified alternative suppliers can improve efficiency and resilience together. Costly spare capacity deserves priority where interruption threatens essential services, recovery takes time and substitutes are scarce.
Financing should follow the same discipline. Routine disruptions need operating reserves; larger shocks may require contingency funds and pre-arranged credit; severe losses may justify insurance or pooled risk transfer. Contracts must be tested for exclusions, payment delays and simultaneous claims. Insurance provides money under specified conditions; it cannot guarantee physical supplies.
Cooperation raises another difficult question. How far can countries trust one another when pressure rises? How to balance national interests and common interests?
Trust lowers the cost of cooperation, and mutual interest gives it substance. But interests shift. A government willing to share supplies in normal times may restrict exports during a shortage. Durable cooperation requires agreed contributions, transparent information, clear access rules and procedures for scarcity. Commitments should specify how shortages will be shared and how disputes will be settled. Regular exercises test whether promises can survive pressure. Alternative arrangements preserve cooperation by making dependence less absolute. Mutual interest is an incentive; institutions help sustain it when immediate incentives change.
For Oman, a pragmatic programme could begin with a small set of national continuity commitments covering water, food, energy, communications, payments and essential logistics. At policy level, each commitment should specify an acceptable interruption, a recovery objective and a spending limit. Procurement should account for concentration and recovery costs alongside price.
At institutional level, boards and executive teams should identify critical dependencies, assign responsibility for warnings and exercise their alternatives. Performance measures should include recovery time and demonstrated capacity to switch suppliers or systems. A successful exercise must lead to corrections, with deadlines and named owners.
Oman could develop a pipeline of adaptation investments suitable for innovative bonds or sukuk, subject to eligibility, credible revenue arrangements and disclosed fiscal commitments. Preparedness spending should be reviewed annually against demonstrable benefits. Explicit limits would reduce expectations of automatic rescue.
Whatever arrangements made nationally or internationally, they should combine shared early warnings, emergency customs procedures, reciprocal logistics access and selective joint purchasing or risk pools. They should establish reliable exchange information and workable assistance rules. Every arrangement needs a fallback when several members are affected together.
Resilience becomes credible when a warning has an owner, an alternative has been tested and a response has funding. Countries cannot purchase certainty. They can purchase time, preserve choices and prevent an unfamiliar event from becoming an unmanageable crisis.