“How NATO adapts to a changing world“
Lecture by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Leiden University College, The Hague
19 April 2018
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Thank you so much and thank you for that introduction. It’s a great pleasure to be here for several reasons. It’s a great pleasure to be here because it’s a great honour to be introduced by you, former Secretary General of NATO and you were responsible, you had the mandate when NATO actually had to respond to many difficult challenges at the same time. During your mandate, NATO was responsible for implementing, I think the biggest enlargement of our Alliance, so with many new members. Then we as an Alliance under your chairmanship we acted in a calm but also firm, and measured way to Russia’s aggression against Georgia. And then, also when you were Secretary General we increased our presence in Afghanistan. Conducting the biggest and most difficult military mission and operation that NATO has ever conducted. So, for me it is a great honour to follow your footsteps and to meet with you and to be introduced by you here at the Leiden University. So thank you.
Then, the second reason why I like to be here is that I like being in the Netherlands, in the [inaudible], and in this country. It’s very flat compared to my own country in Norway, but despite that I like it. Because I like the people, I like the culture, I like the atmosphere, and therefore it is always nice to be in the Netherlands. The only thing I really don’t like with the Netherlands is that you have the bad habit of beating Norwegians when we do different skating races for instance in the Olympics. So if you want to change that habit, there will be nothing wrong with the Netherlands.
The third reason why I actually like to be here is that I like academic institutions. I like the place, institutions, the buildings, where scientific work, teaching is taking place. That is extremely important, and especially at a university like this. The oldest university in the Netherlands. I think it brings a lot of knowledge and experience, which is important for us all. Actually, I like academic institutions so much, that actually I only once really made a deliberate decision on what to become, when I grew up, and that was to become an academic. So my big ambition in my life was to become a professor, as you have now become. So I don’t know what you have done but you have succeeded in what I have never succeed to become a professor. Because when I finish my exams back in Norway as economist, I remember we actually read some books of a Dutch professor called Jan Tinbergen, a great economist and he actually won Nobel Prize in Economics together with Ragnar Frisch, a Norwegian economist. Then I decided to leave politics because I had been active in youth politics, student politics, and do some real work. To start to do scientific work. And I worked in the research department of the Bureau of Statistics, working on econometrics and mathematics for two years. Then, I was asked to become Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Environment in Norway. And I said I will do it for one, maximum two years, then I will go back to this beautiful life of academics. I’ve been in politics since then. I’ve never managed. Also it is a disaster, my academic career is a disaster, because I’ve spent so many years in politics and therefore I will talk to you afterwards, and find out how you manage to become a professor, because that is actually an aim in my professional career. So therefore since I’ve not been able to pursue an academic career, it is even greater to visit academic institutions and to have some kind of atmosphere and to breathe in some of the air from academic institutions like this university.
But the most important reason why I appreciate to be here today is of course that it provides me with the opportunity to say some words about NATO. How NATO is responding to a changing world. I will not cover all the issues, not all the items which are important for NATO and our security, because I will really try to not be too long meaning that we will have some time for questions and comments afterwards and then you can raise the issues I don’t in my introduction.
NATO is the most successful alliance in history. And the main reason why NATO is so successful is that NATO has been able to change when the world is changing. For forty years, since NATO was founded 1949, and the Netherlands was one of the founding members, forty years, from 1949 to 1989, NATO actually did only one thing, and that was to deter the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And we did so quite successfully, because we were able to end the Cold War without firing a shot in a peaceful way. And the Cold War ended when the Berlin Wall came down in 89 and soon after the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. And then people started to ask do we need NATO anymore. Because in a way the reason why we were established, the reason why we existed, didn’t exist anymore. The Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact didn’t exist, so why should NATO continue to exist. And then some people also said that either NATO has to go out of area, meaning go out of NATO territory, or NATO has to go out of business. And what we did, was we actually went beyond NATO territory. Meaning for that twenty five years, we were not so focused on deterrence defence in Europe, deterring the Soviet Union or Russia. But we were focused on crisis outside NATO territory. First in the Balkans we helped to end two wars in the Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Serbia and Kosovo. And we went to Afghanistan where we helped to fight terrorism. We’ve helped to fight piracy of the Horn of Africa and our focus was outside NATO territory, mainly outside of Europe.
Then in 2014, that’s another pivotal year in the history of NATO, and in the history Europe, and our security. Because in 2014, two things happened. The first thing was that Russia illegally annexed Crimea. That’s the first time since the Second World War that one country grabs or annex a part of another country, when Russia annexed Crimea in the spring of 2014. Then, they also started to destabilise eastern Ukraine providing support and also have some military presence in the eastern part of Ukraine and they continue to do so also today. That was a more assertive Russia in Ukraine, using military aggression against Ukraine.
The other thing that happened in 2014 was that we saw a new kind of terrorism and a stronger and more dangerous type of terrorism, we saw Daesh or ISIL. And I remember very well when I was asked to become, first there was some consultations whether I was interested in becoming Secretary General NATO in general in 2014, that was before anyone had heard about Daesh, it was only some few experts. Then some few weeks or months later, Daesh or ISIL controlled big part of Syria and Iraq, 7, 8 million people a territory as big of the [inaudible] and they were actually in the process of threatening Bagdad.
So then, NATO had to change again. And NATO has since 2014 implemented the biggest adaptations of our Alliance, the biggest change to our Alliance since the end of the Cold War. And we have done that because for the first time in our history, we have to both address collective defence, deterrence defence in Europe, but at the same time address the issue of projecting stability, stabilizing our neighbours and fighting terrorism beyond our borders. And we do that based on the core principle of NATO which is „one for all and all for one.“ We have in our founding treaty we have something called paragraph 5, our collective defence clause say that if one Ally is attacked that will be regarded as an attack on all Allies. And that’s the strength, because then also small countries know that if they are attacked the whole Alliance will be behind them.
And the purpose of those security guaranties, so that collective defence clause, Article 5, is of course to provide what we call credible deterrence and the purpose of credible deterrence is not to provoke a conflict but it is to prevent a conflict. Because as long as all potential adversaries should know that if they touch or attack, or are aggressive against one Ally the whole Alliance will respond then there will be no attacks. That is in a way the simple idea of deterrence. So, the purpose is not in a way to win the war, the purpose is to prevent the war. And we have successfully been able to deliver that credible deterrence for almost seventy years and that’s perhaps the longest peace in Europe for almost ever, at least for hundreds and hundreds of years. Because NATO, but also the European Union have helped to stabilize and prevent military conflict in our part of the world. Now we are, now we need to deliver the same kind of deterrence, collective security guarantees, in a different world than we have done up to now.
We are responding partly by implementing a big reinforcement of what we call collective defence, meaning our joint defences. We have for the first time in our history, we have deployed NATO troops, battle troops, to the eastern parts of our Alliance. Especially to the three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, but also to Poland. And we also increased our presence in the Black Sea region. These battlegroups are not very big. They are around thousand each of them. The Netherlands is part of the battlegroup, you provide around more than 250 troops to our battlegroup in Lithuania, as I said well around thousand in each of them. But the important thing with those battlegroups is that they are multinational. Meaning that Germany leads the battlegroup in Lithuania, the United States leads the battlegroup in Poland, the UK leads the battlegroup in Estonia, and Canada leads the battlegroup in Latvia. And then there are many other NATO Allies providing troops. And by having combat ready troops in the Baltic region, along our eastern borders, we send a very clear message that if any other Allies are attacked, if any of these Allies are attacked, then NATO is already there, it will trigger a response from the whole Alliance. So that’s the best way of providing credible deterrence by having troops already deployed in these countries.
Then, we are increasing the readiness of our forces, meaning that if any Ally is attacked we are able to reinforce to move forces to help and to support. We are doing all the things addressing for instance what we call hybrid threats and cyber, and adapting also in many other ways. I can go into more details afterwards if you want. The thing is that we are significantly strengthening our deterrence and defence in Europe.
We do that in a measured and defensive way. Because we don’t want a new Cold War. We don’t want a new arms race, so we have to find the balance between being strong to deter any attack, but at the same time not provoke, overreact and increase tensions unnecessarily. And therefore we are pursuing what we call a dual track approach to Russia. Meaning that we are strong, we provide deterrence and defence. But we also work for dialogue. For us, for NATO, there is no contradictions between deterrence and defence and political dialogue. Actually, we believe as long as we are strong, we can also engage in political dialogue with Russia and that is exactly what we are doing. Because Russia is our neighbour, Russia is here to stay, Russia will not go away. And therefore we have to continue to strive for a better relationship with our neighbour Russia.
And even if you don’t believe it is possible to improve the relationship we have to manage the relationship with Russia. We have more military presence, we have more exercises, we have higher tensions, and then we have to make sure that we don’t have accidents or incidents. We saw the downing of the Russian plane over Turkey a couple years ago. We have to avoid that kind of incidents and accidents. And if they happen, prevent them from spiralling out of control and creating a really dangerous situation between NATO and Russia. So we need transparency, we need predictability, we need dialogue with Russia to try to calm down, and reduce tensions and manage our relationship with our biggest neighbour.
Then we are responding not only to a more assertive Russia, but also to the increase terrorist threats. Fighting terrorism is about many different means, or we need many different tools in the fight against terrorism. We need police, we need intelligence, we need border control, we need also social workers, teachers. Addressing some of the neighbourhoods in our own countries, in our own countries, where some of the terrorists are recruited from. This of course is not a NATO responsibility. But it is extremely important in the fight against terrorism. To do something with the [inaudible] causes in our own countries that create extremism in our own countries. But there is also role, an important role for NATO in the fight against terrorism. And that is to project stability as you called it, or to address some of the conflicts which is the breeding ground for at least some of the terrorists and some of the terrorist attacks that we have seen against in our own countries. And that’s for instance why we are in Afghanistan. We are to remember that the reason why NATO went into Afghanistan, our biggest military operation, is a terrorist attack on the United States and that is the only time NATO has invoked our collective defence clause, Article 5, was after the terrorist attack on the United States, 9/11/2001. We have been there to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for international terrorists, a place where they can train, prepare, organise terrorist attacks against our countries. We are in [inaudible] we do some training there. And also NATO Allies are part of the Global Coalition to defeat Daesh. And we work with countries like Jordan, like Tunisia, our aim is to enable them to fight terrorism.
The message from NATO now is that of course we have to be able to deploy large number of combat groups in big combat operations, as we have done before for instance in Afghanistan. But the message now is that more important than deploying NATO troops in combat operations it is to enable local forces, train local forces to stabilize their own countries. Because we will always be foreigners. It will always be difficult to deploy Dutch or Norwegian or British troops in Afghanistan or in Iraq or wherever it is, because we will always be foreigners. So it’s in the long run it is better if we are able to train local forces, build local capacities, build local institutions, and enabling them to stabilize their own countries, and to fight terrorism themselves. That’s the reason why we have ended the combat operations in Afghanistan. That’s the reason why we have started to train and advise the Afghan National Security Forces, but also while we plan to do more training and advising in Iraq. Because we have to make sure that ISIL is not coming back, and the best way of preventing that is to enable the Iraqis themselves to avoid that instead of us coming back and conduct a big combat operations. Prevention is better than intervention therefore we have to train the local forces.
We are also responding to many other challenges, cyber, proliferation of nuclear weapons, what you call hybrid threats and many other ways, and this is part of the broader adaption and change of NATO which is taking place.
But my last message to you is that the world has become more unpredictable, more uncertain, in many ways we live in a more dangerous world, therefore we have to invest more in our security. And security does not come for free. And I told the Defence Committee, in the Dutch Parliament this morning that when I was Minister of Finance in Norway in the 1990s, I was responsible of cutting defence budgets, so I know how to reduce defence spending. And then people ask me why can you argue in favour of increase defence spending, since you as Norwegian politician, were responsible for reducing defence spending. My answer is that when tensions are going down, when threats are reduced, then it is right thing to reduce spending as long as we are able to increase defence spending when tensions are going up.
So yes, all European countries, the Netherlands, Norway, many others, they spent less on defence after the end of the Cold War, and that was right. I am able to defend that today. As long as we are able to prove that we are able to increase defence spending again now when tensions are going up. I welcome that the Netherlands has started to increase defence spending. But it’s more, [inaudible] need to do more because we have agreed that we should spend 2 % of GDP on defence based on the idea that we stand together and we all have to protect each other.
So let me end by just saying that what has really impressed me with NATO since I became Secretary General is that it’s not that all 29 Allies able to stand together, but it’s actually 29 Allies able to stand together and then change, and adapt and respond when the world is changing.
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Zdroj a ilustračné foto: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_153756.htm?selectedLocale=en
