NATO Romania

The European Security Strategy

My last point. As a political-military organisation, NATO must become more effective. And a new Strategic Concept should be crystal clear about this. If NATO is to remain our prime venue for transatlantic security policy in a rapidly changing world, then this organisation must transform not only its policies, but also its structure. Given the increasing demands upon us, our activities must all be less process-oriented and more results-oriented. Our resources have to better match our priorities; and you cannot reconcile forever more performance with a zero-growth budget. Let me be clearer: I think that NATO nations are soon going to have to increase NATO’s budget, to match a growing list of responsibilities.

We also need a defence planning system that is more responsive to nations’ needs. We need a force generation process that is more predictable and delivers faster results. We need to exploit the opportunities of common capabilities strategic airlift, logistics far more energetically. And we must take a hard look at the way we fund our operations, so that all Allies are motivated rather than discouraged to put their capabilities forward.

I believe that taking NATO reform seriously means also to look for more synergies with the European Union. I would like to see much more pooling of our capabilities, especially in areas such as vital enablers, transport and helicopters, or in research and development, or in harmonising our force structures and training methods. After all we only have one common set of national defence budgets and national military forces. So it is absolutely critical that all of the capabilities that we are able to generate from this pool of forces are equally available to both NATO and the EU. If we duplicate, or go off in different directions, we will both fail. That is why our Finance Ministers should want closer NATO-EU cooperation just as much as our Foreign and Defence Ministers. It is why a new Strategic Concept should be unequivocal about the need for more NATO-EU cooperation. And it is why the elaboration of a new Strategic Concept for NATO should take account of the EU’s efforts to update its own European Security Strategy and vice versa.

I have one more particular concern and I have raised it from the start of my tenure: We must deepen and broaden the scope of our political consultations. The challenges today are multi-faceted, interlinked and can arise from anywhere in the world. So we need to do a better job of scanning the strategic horizon. We cannot just be reactive: discovering the strategic significance of a region only after putting NATO forces on the ground there; or waiting for Estonia to be cyber attacked before we wake up to the dimensions of information warfare; or waiting for another major terrorist attack before we step up our activities against terrorism. When it comes to proliferation, energy security, the consequences of climate change or of failing states, we need to anticipate these dangers and do more preventively to mitigate their effects. This can only be achieved through more and better transatlantic dialogue.