Moderator Carlota Rebelo (Brussels, Belgium): Thank you, Donna in Miami and earlier Sarah in Stockholm. It is indeed an absolute pleasure to be here at the NATO HQ to conduct this transatlantic conversation with the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Thank you very much for having me in your home. It’s a pleasure. Before we begin, I would like to recognize the audience here with us at the Agora comprised of young NATO staffers and interns, I’m sure they’re very eager to hear your thoughts on the future of the Alliance and the future of the world. So, thank you and hello.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (Brussels, Belgium): Thanks so much, Carlota. It’s great to be with you here in Brussels, and also hello to Sarah in Stockholm and Donna and Miami and I am also told that in Miami, the president of Montenegro, Milatović, is there together with you, and Montenegro is actually the first country I had the honour and pleasure to welcome in, as a new NATO Ally when I became Secretary General. They joined in, back in 2017. So, it’s great to be together with all of you and to be able to, again engage with and talk with young people, and not least, and also to first time to engage with Sweden, with our newest member. We raised the Swedish flag outside the NATO Headquarters not so many months ago, and it’s good to have Sweden as a full member of the Alliance.
Moderator Carlota Rebelo (Brussels, Belgium): And then it’s been great to seeing it out there as well, while here in Brussels. Well, let’s look ahead to July, that’s when NATO will hold its Summit in Washington and it will mark the 75th anniversary of the Alliance, but also will address some of the very serious issues and challenges. So, I’m curious to hear from you. What are some of the key threats faced by NATO Allies and what are we doing to solve them?
NATO Secretary General (Brussels, Belgium): So, NATO faces of course many threats and many security challenges. We live in a world with more great power competition. Also, with China, but we have on top of that, of course, a new war in the Middle East, and we have a full-fledged war in Europe with a brutal war aggression launched by President Putin against Ukraine. And all of this matters for our security. No one can tell with certainty what the next war, the next crisis and next threat will be. But what I can say is that as long as we stand together, North America and Europe and protect each other, we will be safe, we will be secure, because together NATO Allies represent 50% of the world’s economic might and 50% of the world’s military might. So, as long as we stand together, we will be able to handle any potential threat and challenge against our security.
Moderator Carlota Rebelo (Brussels, Belgium): Well, I want to turn to the question of, you know, an increased defence spending because at a time when there are so many challenges around the globe, and this can go you know, from health to education to climate crisis. Why should governments be spending taxpayers’ money on, you know, more tanks and bombs so why this conversation about the increase in defence spending?
NATO Secretary General (Brussels, Belgium): Because without peace, without security, we will not manage to cope with any of the other big challenges we face – be it global warming, climate change or alleviating poverty or making social and economic progress. All of that will be impossible if we are not able to preserve peace, to preserve security for the 1 billion people that live in NATO countries. I have been Minister of Finance, I’ve been Prime Minister for 10 years, I’ve been in different political positions for many years. And I really understand that it’s hard to find money for defence because all politicians always, and I have been among them, would love to spend money on health, on education, on climate change, on all the other important tasks. But the reality is that unless we succeed when it comes to security, we will not succeed with all the tasks.
And when the Cold War ended, after the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, NATO Allies, also our own country, Norway, we all reduced defence spending for many, many years when tensions went down. But when we reduced defence spending, when tensions went down, we have to be able to increase the defence spending and once again, invest in defence when tensions are going up as they do now. And the last thing I’ll say about defence spending is that we have done it before. As late as the beginning of the 1990s, at least the end of the 1980s, NATO Allies in Europe and Canada, we spent roughly 3% of GDP on defence which is significantly more than we spent today. Because then we lived in a more dangerous world and then we invested more in our security.
Moderator Carlota Rebelo (Brussels, Belgium): Well I think we should open the floor to questions. We’ll get started in Miami where I know Donna is standing by and we have a couple of questions for the Secretary General.
Moderator Donna Farizan (Miami, US): Yes. Thank you so much, Carlota. And it is a great honour to have the Secretary General. We have asked one member of the Aspen Youth Council and one of the winners of the Youth Summit Challenge to address a question. So, Vijay and Kissa I’d love for you to come to the stage. Please introduce yourselves, we can grab that microphone. You can come on up and, both come on at the same time. And you will introduce yourselves with your name the country you’re from and then your question.
Question (Miami, United States): Okay. All right. Good morning, Miami and good afternoon, Sweden. And thank you so much for having us. My name is Kissa Jafri. I’m part of the Youth Council Summit. And I’m originally from Pakistan, but I’ve lived in Chicago for a couple of years now. And [Secretary] General thank you so much for your time and sharing your knowledge with us in answering some critical questions that we have. And one from me is with emerging technology, shaping the future of warfare. How is NATO going to be responsive, adaptive, as well as ethical during these changes? Thank you so much.
Moderator Donna Farizan (Miami, US): Thank you and you can pass the microphone on to Vijay. Vijay, you may do the same.
Question (Miami, US): Alright, so my name is Vijay. I am a senior at Yale and from Luxembourg. Thank you so much for taking my question today. My question is about NATO strengthening relations with countries outside of the Alliance, like Australia and Japan. What is NATO’s mission in fostering those relationships and how to respond to questions about NATO potentially overexposing itself, specifically in regions that intersect with China’s sphere of interest.
Moderator Donna Farizan (Miami, US): Thank you both for your smart, thoughtful questions. Carlota. Back to you.
Moderator Carlota Rebelo (Brussels, Belgium): Thank you. Well, let’s begin with the first question about you know, emerging technology and how it is shaping warfare. I’ll let you tackle that one first.
NATO Secretary General (Brussels, Belgium): Well, emerging disruptive technologies are changing the nature of warfare as much as the Industrial Revolution did a couple of centuries ago, because we see it also in Ukraine. How cyber, how drones, how autonomous systems are playing a very major role in the warfare in Ukraine. This is part of, so they have trench warfare, which reminds us of the First World War and then we have the advanced technologies applied to this kind of classical warfare. NATO has been and continues to be the strongest and most successful Alliance in history for many reasons, but one of the reasons is that we have always been able to keep a technological edge on our potential adversaries, and we just need to make sure that we maintain that technological edge. We do that by and now investing more in technology, we have established a new fund, Innovation Fund. We have also established a network of centres for developing technology across the Alliance.
And all of this was due to partly ensure that NATO as an Alliance but also Allies as Allies ensure that they invest in new disruptive technologies, which are very linked to also military capabilities, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Of course, it matters really, or how weapons or weapons systems will be acquired and developed today and in the future. We also need ethical guidelines. We’re working on that. For NATO Allies, but most of all, we need to ensure that not only NATO Allies, but also our potential adversaries have a minimum of ethical guidelines when they now implement all these different technologies in their weapon systems.
Then on our partnership outside NATO, we have many partners, we have close to 40 partner nations around the globe, but the question was primarily about our partners in the Indo-Pacific. We have four partners there, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These are important partners for NATO. NATO is a regional Alliance, North America and Europe and NATO will remain a regional Alliance. Article Five our collective defence clause will apply for NATO Allies, Europe and North America. But this region, the North Atlantic region, faces global threats. Cyber is a global threat. Space, which becomes more and more important for defence is a global challenge, of course. But also, for instance, China. It’s not about moving NATO to the Indo-Pacific, but it’s about that China and global threats are coming closer to us. We see China in cyberspace, we see them in Africa, we see in Arctic, we see them trying to control critical infrastructure in our own countries. So, all of this matters for our security in many ways.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that security is not regional, security is global. The main country that is enabling Russia to conduct its war of aggression against Ukraine in Europe, is China. They are by far the biggest trading partner for Russia. They are delivering a critical components to their weapons, microelectronics, advanced technology, which is enabling Russia to build missiles, drones, a lot of other stuff, which is key for their war against Ukraine. So, and then we have Iran and then we have providing drones. We have North Korea providing ammunition and weapons. So, the friends of Russia in Asia, Iran, North Korea and China, they are key for Russia’s capability to fight against European friend, neighbour of NATO. So, this idea that we can divide Asia from Europe doesn’t work anymore. This is interlinked, than we also of course, need to address the security challenges that China’s representing for our security.
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Source: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Speaker: Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General
Format: Public Remarks
China Policy Research 