Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Welcome to Chatham House. I am Leslie Vinjamuri. I’m Head of our US and Americas Programme here and Dean of our Queen Elizabeth the II Academy. It is a great honour and pleasure to welcome you here all today for a truly distinguished set of panellists to discuss NATO at 70: New Perspectives on Shared Security. Before I give very brief introductions to our speakers, I like to say that the more distinguished the speakers, the briefer the introductions.
I would just like to mention that today, we had a morning of discussions under the Chatham House Rule and we have this very special event, which is being livestreamed, it is on the record. Please turn off your phones but please do, I would encourage you to feel free to tweet, you see the hashtag? But it is on the record, and we will have remarks from each of our speakers, and then an opportunity for all of you to ask questions.
Today’s event is made possible, and the morning discussions as well, by the support of NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, and I wanted to be sure to thank them, because it really is – it does make all the difference for us here at Chatham House and, of course, we’ve been seeing across many countries, a number of celebrations, and panels, and discussions, and writings about NATO’s seven decades and today was really geared toward thinking, not only about NATO at 70, but about NATO going forward, which I think most people, I think, would agree is a very important thing, it’s a very significant thing, in a context where the US and Europe are perhaps at one of the more challenging points in their relationship, or their relationships, when the geostrategic, geopolitical, and geoeconomic context has changed with US Strategic – US-China strategic confrontation is taking up a lot of energy and potentially dividing, on certain dimensions. The US in Europe, where the nature of the threat environment has snowballed in a variety of ways, and where Europe faces its own internal challenges, as does the United States, and not least, at this point in time, the UK is going through a very particular moment. This is an incredibly important conversation and the commitment to NATO, I think, is one that’s shared, but the recognition that there’s a lot at stake, I think, is also one that’s very shared.
So, our speakers today, and let me just introduce very briefly. First, we are very honoured to have Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh. She is the UK Permanent Representative to NATO. She was previously, Director General for Defence and Intelligence at the Foreign Office 2014 to 2016, and thank you for coming. It’s a really – it’s quite an honour. Following Ambassador MacIntosh, we have Lord Robertson who is a Member of our Chatham House Panel of Senior Advisors, and I have to say that I personally have taken great solace in his superb advice, on many things small, medium and large, over the course of the year that I’ve been in this role, but even previously, when I was on the Council. So thank you once again for joining us and, as you know, in addition to his very significant and important role on our Panel of Senior Advisors, he was also the Secretary General of NATO from 1999, small thing but, you know, we try to rank our pri – we try to, you know, announce things in the order of their importance to us. But was, yes, NATO’s Secretary General at a very important moment in the Alliance, 1999 to 2003, and before that was the UK’s Defence Secretary, 1997 to 1999. So thank you once again for joining us.
Followed last, and by no means least, by Dr Jamie Shea, who, as you know, or as you may not know, is an Associate Fellow on our International Security Programme and is providing us also very excellent participation advice and many other things, but until last year, had a very significant role at NATO and a career of 38 years working at NATO. He was, in his last role, the Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges. So, as you can see, we are not lacking in expertise today and without further ado, we’ll turn it over to you, Ambassador MacIntosh,. Thank you very much.
Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh CMG
Thank you, Leslie.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Please join me in welcoming everybody [applause].
Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh CMG
In 1948, at the start of the Cold War, the Foreign Office told Ernest Bevin, in a secret memo, that’s now declassified, that if peace is to be preserved, the free nations must get together, otherwise they will be picked off one-by-one. Bevin agreed, 12 allies formed NATO, and its first headquarters was in Belgrave Square.
70 years on, NATO’s now 29 allies, spend close to a trillion dollars a year underwriting the security and defence of almost a billion people. We are as different as Iceland with no standing army. Turkey, on the frontline of some of the toughest challenges of the day, and the US, with the most advanced military forces in the world. But today, every day, we decide together, we stand together, we act together. And the commitment that we made in 1949, the one for all and all for one, has kept us safe and preserved our freedoms and our way of life for 70 years.
In a little over six months, NATO’s leaders will meet here in London to celebrate NATO’s first 70 years, to take stock of NATO’s adaptations in the 21st century and to set the Alliances’ future direction, what will they see? In the five years since 2014, Russia’s illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea and Daesh emergence in Syria, NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of collective defence and deterrence in a generation. We have deployed new battle groups to the Baltics and Poland, increased air policing across Europe, tripled the size of the NATO Response Force, created a Spearhead Force, increased readiness across all our forces, agreed new strategies for air power, maritime posture, countering hybrid attacks, cyber, and a new military strategy. We have modernised the Command Structure; opened two new commands. We’ve put in place 24/7 missile defence against threats from the Middle East and, at the same time, we have increased NATO’s contribution to the global fight against terror, joined the Global Coalition, built defence capacity in Afghanistan, Jordan, Tunisia, increased support to Georgia and Ukraine, and our presence in the Black Sea. We’ve launched a new mission in Iraq, and established a hub for the South. We’ve admitted a 29th ally, and signed the Accession Protocol for a 30th, North Macedonia, and we’ve agreed partnerships, including NATO’s first partner in Latin America, and all allies have increased their investment in defence. By any measure, that’s a lot of adaptation.
But the world continues to harden and darken and we’ve got more to do, and looking forward, I think three things for the immediate future. First, we really need to stay strong and together in the face of current challenges, especially Russia and terrorism. The relationship we have today with Russia is not the one that any ally wants. NATO pursues a dual-track policy of deterrents and defence, on one hand, and dialogue at the same time, making clear that we have no quarrel with the people of Russia, and that we are open to a different relationship with Russia, if she changes her approach. But for now, the pattern of her aggression, malign activity, and abuse of the rules-based system continues, so we must continue to adapt our deterrents and defence. And this year, that will include responding to Russia’s violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and the deployment of new treaty violating missiles. There is time for Russia to return to compliance before the 2nd of August, when the treaty will otherwise lapse, and we hope that she will.
At the same time, we will continue to develop NATO’s contribution to the fight against terrorism. To support our partners and neighbours with their own security, including through evolving our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and doing more defence capacity building. When our neighbours are more secure, we are more secure.
Second major challenge: continuing to adapt to the changing nature of conflict, I think of this as high-tech and hybrid. NATO’s adapted very well to the cyber age, strengthening our defences, working with industry and taking a series of important decisions that have brought our deterrents and defence into the cyber age. We have agreed that cyberattacks can reach the level of force and that Article 5 applies. We have agreed that cyberspace is a domain of operations for NATO and that we will defend ourselves in cyberspace as effectively as we do on land, at sea and in the air. We have agreed that NATO may use allies owned cyber effects offensive, cyber capabilities, and the UK was the first NATO ally to offer our offensive cyber capability to NATO. Another eight have followed.
But we can and should do more to improve our ability to deter cyberattacks and the Foreign Secretary has set this as a clear priority for the UK. We also need to consider the consequences of at least two further phases of technological change that are coming. The novel weapons threatened by President Putin last year, in his speech in March, you’ll remember it with the graphics of Florida, like nuclear-powered cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles and disruptive technologies, like artificial inter – intelligence, automation, machine learning, biotech quantum computing. These have the potential to change warfare and contest as significantly as gunpowder and flight. So we will be understanding the risks and threats, seeking out the opportunities and innovating, and responding to the implications for security, for deterrence and for arms control.
NATO’s also adapted to increasing use of hybrid tactics against us. We’ve strengthened our resilience, improved our indicators and warnings, counted disinformation, we’ve got better strategic communications, and we work closely on this with the European Union, but there’s more of that to come, and we need to continue to adapt.
Third challenge: we need to continue to improve our burden sharing. This isn’t a new issue, but it is a current one, and it is an enduring one. But change is happening, for the better. All allies have agreed to meet their capability development targets. All allies are contributing to operations, and all allies are increasing their defence investment. Between 2016 and 2018, European allies and Canada increased their defence investment by US$41 billion, by 2020, that number will be US$100 billion. And there’s further to go. We would like all allies to meet their defence investment pledge of 2% investment in defence and 20% in new capabilities, but 100 billion is a lot of additional investment.
But looking forward, it’s not enough, of course, to adapt to today and tomorrow. We need to look further ahead, and Lord Robertson and Jamie are going to give you their views on the changing global landscape. So I just point quickly to three things: first, the Foreign Secretary recalls George Canning, his predecessor, describing the global balance of power as a standard perpetually varying, with new nations rising and the global order changing. With a more assertive China and the rise of other Asian powerhouse economies, that is happening again, and the implications should be understood.
Second, in addition to political and power changes between and within countries, we are moving from an industrial age to an information age. That will change both the means of contest and competition between states and non-states, for ideas, for values, for hearts, and the economics of conflict, from the possibility of private ownership of the means of waging war, to miniaturisation and swarming, to battlefield resupply. And third, of course, our long-term security, very long-term, will also be influenced by much wider factors: asymmetric demographic change, increased urbanisation, access to technology, global network development, interconnectivity, global supply chains, you know all this, environmental change.
NATO will not lead the international response to many of these changes, but underwriting allies security does mean understanding all the challenges to it, contributing to the international response at the right time, and in the right way, and maintaining and developing partnerships with other organisations, including the EU. That already happens, and you will see more of it in the future, because NATO will be a central part of our strategy for managing uncertainty.
A year after Ernest Bevin accepted that Foreign Office advice, that free nations should get together, President Harry Truman, signing the Washington Treaty on the 4th of April, said, “We hope to create a shield against aggression, and the fear of aggression. A bulwark that will permit us to get on with the real business of Government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.” And our first Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower said, “We are not concerned only with the protection of territory, but with the defence of a way of life.” Those were good aims 70 years ago, and they’re good aims now, and that’s what NATO should continue to do, and the UK will be at the heart of it. Today, we are leading NATO’s battle group in Estonia, and contributing to one in Poland. We are doing air policing across Europe. We’re providing the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. We have ships in NATO’s Standing Maritime Group. We’re hosting NATO’s Maritime Command and Intelligence Fusion Centre. We’re housing NATO’s mission in Iraq. We’re supporting security in Kosovo and the Balkans. We’re providing the security force in Kabul and training Officers of the Afghan National Security Forces. Our nuclear forces are assigned to NATO. Our offensive cyber capability is offered and available, and we’re developing the capabilities that NATO needs for the future. Today we do all that, and tomorrow we will take our share of the commitments to come.
For 70 years NATO allies and peoples have remained secure and free. Today, NATO is strong at 70, because we stand together, we share responsibilities, we face new challenges, with our enduring values, and our allies, and we are all the safer for that. As Jens Stoltenberg said, as he told the US Congress last month, “It’s good, you know, to have friends.” [Applause].
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Lord Robertson.
Rt Hon Lord Robertson
I think we’ve heard a picture here today. It must be enormously reassuring, because almost every four to five years, a debate sparks up about is NATO relevant, is NATO finished, has NATO ended, you know, what is NATO, is NATO in crisis? But when we hear the facts, we begin to realise that NATO, as an organisation, is still alive and is still well, adapting to a changing world, a world changing, you know, almost before our eyes. So, it’s pointless me saying, “Well, hang on a minute, everything was alright when I left,” because it’s actually alright now, but it faces, as we all do, serious challenges for the future as well. But 70 years on, if you read the debates, especially in the United States Senate about the North Atlantic Treaty, you wouldn’t have thought it was going to last for any time at all. In fact, there were – the original Senate debate included demands that it be time limited, because people didn’t think it was going to go anywhere at all, and it was seen as being an organisation, they said, that was simply going to allow the Europeans to get into another war and expect us to fight for them again.
So, 70 years on, this organisation has grown, it has expanded its interests and its areas and all that it actually does, and its cohesion is still there. Very few people, 70 years ago, in 1949 would really have said that that was any possibility at all, and as it prepares to welcome the 30th Member, North Macedonia, at the end of this year, we see an Alliance that is strong and powerful and influential as well. The cohesion, the importance of the Alliance in its cohesion, its endless cohesion, sometimes laboured, has to be said, trying to get consensus in my day among 19 and the case now of 29 members of the Alliance is difficult to do. But I have a saying, I used to Chair meetings of the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council, 46 nations round one table, and as I desperately tried to stay awake, as 46 Foreign Ministers or Defence Ministers droned away with their briefs that had been constructed in their capitals, I kept reassuring myself that it was better than World War III.
I also found out that we had about six to 700 committees in NATO, all of which had to have 19 members on them, and I figure you couldn’t possibly have a war in the transatlantic area because everybody was going to NATO meetings and wouldn’t be available to do it. But of course, we face these new, sometimes existing, threats of terrorism and extremism and fundamentalism of migration, the dangers posed by cyber, the exploitation of space, the developments in technology with artificial intelligence and drones bringing a new dimension to warfare and the vulnerability of critical national infrastructure, and our maritime roots, as the maps behind us, quite clearly show are still vulnerabilities that need to be dealt with in a security context as well.
So these are the challenges that have to be faced, the adaptations that have to be made to the structure, in order to accommodate it. But I remember being asked on a platform here once before, what I thought was our biggest enemy in the future and my answer then and my answer now is, I think we are. I think we are our own worst enemy. Our complacency, our unwillingness to invest in the insurance policy that is national defence and security, is probably the biggest threat that exists and when people say, “How do you persuade the public, how do you persuade the public that we should have increased defence expenditure, when all social expenditure is being cut and we’re nearer still of austerity?” The answer to that is that there is nothing, nothing more important than the defence of our country and the security of its people. Security and safety presupposes that everything else will follow after that as well, and therefore, our capability in NATO to be able to deter and for crisis management is pivotally important, in terms of national and international security as a whole and it’s no – it’s not enough that President Trump, and indeed President Putin, have reminded us about how vulnerable we are at the present moment, because we need to make the case domestically for what we know is absolutely essential in the security field as well.
Because the whole concept of the NATO Alliance is built on the defence, not just of individual countries or of territory, it’s based on the values that we stand for. The values of the West, of the free world, but these are values that are very precise. It’s the rule of law, it’s a free press, it’s free speech, private property, the separation of church and state, the values that we all too often take for granted, and I believe that NATO has got to keep its eye on those values. Countries who joined NATO and are part of NATO are part of a value set, which is actually the key and towering strength of the Alliance over any other alternative available in the world today.
So, on one side, we have Article 5 that an attack on one country is an attack on all. The basic fundamental principal of collective defence. Only exercise once, and I remember standing at a lectern on the 12th of September 2001, and only when I got halfway down the statement, beginning to realise how historically important that was at that time. But it’s recognised as the bright, bright red line, beyond which any adversary will not go, cannot go, without paying an unacceptable price. So that military superiority, which despite the weaknesses that exist in NATO countries, that military superiority that still eclipses any adversary or potential adversary in the world today, is a crucial part of the strength of the Alliance, but the political superiority that we have is also critically important in a world where so many things are being questioned as well.
But while we’ve got a military superiority, that is why adversaries and potential adversaries look at our soft underbelly, look for our weaknesses and exploit them. That’s why they go for elections, why they intervene in debates, why they focus on the media, why they exploit corruption, and why they look at technology to get the advantage that they don’t have in the military sense as well. And I believe that we have got to do more focusing on that. Not just telling the British population, and indeed, the wider NATO community of why defence and security is so important and why we need to make the investments and capabilities that keep that deterrent value up there as well. But we need to explain, perpetually, why it is we do what we do. The elements that the Ambassador has given to us today about why that is part of British foreign policy.
The Foreign Office website, I gave the Ambassador some notice of this, and I raised it in the House of Lords in February, and I raised it with the Minister, a couple of weeks ago, and I advise you to go and look at the Foreign Office website and the page that is entitled, ‘UK and NATO’. You won’t stay there very long, because the last posting was on the 21st of January, and the statement on the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement was dated the 4th of December, but is headed, “Updates News and Events from the UK Government in the UK Joint Delegation to NATO.” Now, I make that point, you know, not just as a, sort of, cheap debating point or rather, quite an expensive debating point, in terms of relations with the panel here, but because the Foreign Office quite rightly say that NATO’s mission, the bedrock of UK’s defence, and a leading instrument of an international security, if that’s the case, then we need to do more about protecting that soft underbelly. We need to be nimble and visible with the messages that we put out. It’s no longer simply satisfied by a Minister making a speech, or talking to an occasional Journalist. That isn’t, in any way, going to compete with, for example, the Russian Embassy, who, in the last few months, have put out two very carefully constructed information sheets about the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, explaining the Russian position on the ending of the INF Treaty. Now, Members of Parliament, Members of the House of Lords, have all received that mailing from the United Kingdom Government, not a whisper and not a word, and that is simply not enough. We need to be – we need to, as I say, be nimble and agile with our information and with our explanations if we’re going to keep the public onside.
A final word. I think in the future, we’re going to have to return to the era of Arms Control, not just the INF Treaty and the events surrounding that, because the Alliance is absolutely in accord on that, as indeed it was over Salisbury. But we’re entering a very dangerous period, great power rivalries, the resurgence of China and Russia, Iran and North Korea, exploiting all of our weaknesses and an era of arms control needs to return, discussions and debate need to take place between adversaries and potential adversaries as well. And when we created the NATO Russia Council in 2002, it was designed to be a forum, not just for agreement, and we had a whole range of things that we were agreed on at that time, but also, a forum for disagreement as well and an end to dialogue, I think was one of the worst aspects of the crisis that developed over Georgia and then, over Ukraine and Crimea and Salisbury as well, that we need to make sure that we get our message over to those who disagree with us, just as much as those that we agree.
However, 70 years on, I think NATO has been a remarkable success. It will continue to adapt, and in a few weeks’ time, just a matter of days’ time, it’ll be the 20th anniversary of our successful intervention in Kosovo, when the objectives that we set out at the beginning of the Kosovo campaign, and Jamie will remember this only too well, were Serbs out, NATO in, refugees home. Not many interventions by NATO or anybody else achieved all three of the objectives that we set out. It’ll be worth remembering that in a few weeks’ time. Thank you [applause].
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Dr Shea.
Dr Jamie Shea
Thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, like London buses, all good things obviously come in threes today. First of all, I would like to thank Chatham House for inviting me. As Leslie said, this year, I have the privilege to be an Associate Fellow here, working on space and cyber, so I’m delighted to be invited here today to talk about a subject that I actually know something about, and I’m also delighted to be asked to talk about the future, because like Woody Allen, who famously said, “I like the future and want to spend as much time in it as possible,” I also wish the same thing for NATO as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, a couple of weeks ago, as you know, NATO marked the 70th anniversary. Foreign Ministers met in Washington DC and I, as a longstanding NATO person, was a bit fretful about this, because anniversaries are normally difficult times, when the criticisms come back into play, you can look very vulnerable, but indeed, NATO passed through this 70th anniversary remarkably well. It might not have been three cheers for the Atlantic Alliance, but it was definitely two and a half cheers. President Trump sounded as if he was beginning to realise that the burden sharing debate that Ambassador MacIntosh described was the glass half full, rather than the glass half empty. Secretary General Stoltenberg gave a speech to the two Houses of Congress and I think he had what, about 25 standing ovations while that was going on. The tone of the commentariat many of you represented here today when they stepped back from the sort – the immediate issues, and looked a little bit more at the long-term and the fundamentals, was surprisingly positive. So NATO, somewhat surprisingly, given the background noise, had a good 70th anniversary.
This anniversary also has come after five absolutely frenetic years, which marked the last five years of my time at NATO HQ. Obviously, the need to readjust quickly to collective defence and deterrents in Central and Eastern Europe after the shock of Crimea, going back to doing things that NATO hadn’t done for the best part of 25 years, with the enhanced forward presence, the need to quickly adjust to play a role in the anti-ISIL coalition in Syria and most notably, for NATO, Iraq what also Ambassador MacIntosh mentioned, and quickly to grasp the reality of new domains of warfare like cyberspace, the information space and create the mechanisms to be able to assess that and to handle it where we had to play catch-up, winding down one mission in Afghanistan, starting up another mission in Afghanistan, welcoming two new members and keeping the enlargement door open, moving to a new HQ. It sounds simple, but believe me it wasn’t, and using that as an opportunity to carry out some in-depth internal and necessary reform of NATO, and then of course, the shock of President Trump, let’s be honest, who was not expected to win the election, and at least then comes in with a much more sceptical note about NATO. Two difficult summits, if we’re honest, with President Trump in Brussels with noises about the duration of the American commitment.
So that was five years of frenzied activities, absolutely no time to develop a new strategic concept of the future. Sometimes your best public statement is the acts that you do, but my impression and my main, sort of, thing today is that, because we’ve had a good 70th anniversary, and because we’ve got through the immediate things that we had to do in these, sort of, frenetic five years from 2014 to 2019, we’re now in, sort of, calmer waters. The calm, of course, is not going to last forever, but there is now time to take a, sort of, step back and look at some of the fundamentals and what are they?
For the fir – for me, at least, the first and most noteworthy thing is that for my 38 years at NATO, it’s very much a question of one thing in one place at one time. You know, we did the Cold War, where the focus was on the Fulda Gap, that was the map in my office. That map came down after 1989, and a few years later, the map of the former Yugoslavia went up for the best part of ten years. Then, of course, it was the map of Afghanistan, you get the picture. We had the luxury of focusing our resources, our energy, on one particular scenario, in one localised geographical space, but also, in the belief that if we could sort out the problems in that particular region, we would, sort of, put down a marker for global security more generally. Yu know, if you dealt with the Cold War, you kept alive western democracy and liberalism. If you sorted out the Balkans, you put down a marker for responsibility to protect, for combatting ethnic cleansing, for the comprehensive approach of NATO working with the UN and the EU and others. If you sorted out Afghanistan, you built bridges with the Muslim countries, that part of the world, and avoided the clash of civilisations. And of course, if you made mistakes that was okay, you had the time and luxury to correct them, but that’s gone.
I think the first thing that will define the next 70 years of NATO is complexity of having to operate on multiple fronts at once, and the problem of course, is that some allies will, given their geography, their threat perception, will put more of a premium on one particular front than the other. For example, at NATO when I left, I’d, sort of, identified three fronts: the front of the East, of course, back to collective defence, the core business of deterrence, but there was also the South, given the requirements of a number of Southern allies for NATO to deal with threats across the Mediterranean which, for them, are far more immediate and real than what they see coming from Russia or in the East. And what Lord Robertson was talking about of course, the growing awareness of the vulnerability of the functionality of our Governments, economies and societies, the hybrid kind of attacks and the increasing nexus between difficulties abroad and the prevalence of more hybrid attacks at home. And the problem here is that the function of NATO, in the next 70 years, therefore has to do two things: number one, generate a degree of common understanding and generosity, so that allies who deal with the South will feel sufficiently motivated and concerned to send aircraft and tanks and troops to the East and vice versa. So a 360 degree Alliance in which everybody believes that the key to their security is helping other allies with their security, it’s more difficult to do than to say. And the second major challenge is to develop different strategies because, for example, in my last couple of days at NATO, I went to a few meetings and the first one on the Monday, was a meeting on nuclear deterrents, where we had about six Colonels, military uniforms, sitting around a table, a very small group, very much on the same wavelength, from the same background. I went to a meeting on cyber defence on Friday, shortly before I left, and this was a massively greater crowd, EU, Lawyers, the private sector, academics, a large number of activists with black T-shirts and earrings and long hair, you never quite knew whose side they were really on, but you knew that you needed them, nonetheless.
So, in other words, to deal with one particular problem, you needed a totally different, sort of, set of networks and relationships than on others, and in some cases, you got the impression that NATO was in the lead, and NATO is an organisation, which historically, is comfortable when it leads things. We have always been in the lead in what we’ve done. We’ve been the convener, other people have come in under our command structure, to join our effort. But I got the sense, looking at some of these new security challenges, that on many occasions, NATO will not be leading, it will be following and for an organisation used to leading, developing a culture of being ready and able to plug into somebody else’s effort and to be a follower, is going to be more difficult. So first thing, being able to manage three strategic fronts at once.
Secondly, to take on those three strategic fronts, a slight step back from the immediate urgencies and taking therefore, a more long-term view. For example, on the East, now that the battalions are in place, we’ve got a little bit of time to sort out questions of what actually deters and how do we know it deters. How – what percentage of our overall armed force should we devote to the East vis-à-vis other theatres and without leaving ourselves exposed? What would be the need for reinforcements and how can we locate them, and how can we generate them? What should be the relationship between the military and the civilian command structures, in terms of decision-making and so on?
In the South, now that we’ve got a hub in Naples and we’ve got some training missions in Iraq, Tunisia and elsewhere, it’s time to step back and think, “Well, with our limited resources, how can we get beyond gestures, and have a real strategic impact when it comes to very complicated issues in North Africa and the Middle East? What kind of partners do we need to work with, locally? How can we persuade them to be willing to work with us? How can we not waste vast sums of money that we wasted ten years ago on security sector reform that doesn’t do the job?” And on hybrid, we can take a step back from the immediate need to look at resilience and vulnerabilities and ask ourselves, “What is the consequence of NATO if hybrid means that in the future, we have to take lots of little decisions every day of the week, and maintain solidarity in doing so, rather than have the luxury, as we had for the first 70 years of NATO, of only having to take one big decision, which Lord Robertson proclaimed himself, after 9/11, once?”
And I was – it’s easy to name solidarity if you take decisions rarely and only big, if you like, no-brainer type of decisions. But what if every day of the week in response to a cyberattack against one ally where other allies are not directly affected, you’re called upon to expel Russian Ambassadors, to impose sanctions, or do various things. How can NATO maintain the stress of lots and lots of little decisions all the time? To main – to construct the type of deterrents that Ambassador MacIntosh was talking about. So some of those issues are a step back.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, just before I conclude, you remember some of you, my generation, the old Jeux Sans Frontières game, I used to love that, you remember? Doing silly things. You used to have, for example, somebody on a bike who had to, sort of, go across a tightrope and not fall into the, sort of, oily, sort of, tanker below, and that was difficult enough, right? To get from A to B, but of course, what was great about Jeux Sans Frontières is there were a gang of people with footballs coming out a cannon, who were shooting at that person, as he tried to cross and therefore, destabilising him and therefore, while NATO adapts to the reality of three strategic fronts, there are, to my mind, four or five, if you like, management issues that we need to take heed.
One is burden sharing and we will probably talk about this in the Q&A, it’s been referred to already by Ambassador MacIntosh, but it’s key that we are not going to go through the next 70 years at NATO with the same burden sharing arrangements and the same overwhelming reliance upon the United States that we were lucky, lucky to enjoy, for the first 70 years. And NATO is going to be a much more equal a partnership between Europe and the United States, but how do we move to it? If you’re in the US, you feel pressure, pressure, pressure, is the only way. If you’re in Europe, you feel that counting contributions and other things and giving the Europeans space and time is the way. So, how do we, sort of, move towards burden sharing, without it provoking, sort of, crises every time we have a NATO Summit?
Secondly, European defence, it’s high time, whether you believe in a European Army, I don’t, or European strategic autonomy, I do, but it’s high time that the Europeans got their act together to spend their money, €186 billion a year, more wisely and more productively, and that’s the key also to solving the NATO burden sharing debate. Because if you simply put more money into a jug with holes in the bottom, much of that extra spending is simply going to be wasted. So we need to cut out the duplication in European defence establishments and R&D and have a greater synergy of effort, but how do we, sort of, develop a narrative that the Europeans are happy with, can live up to, and that the United States is willing to tolerate, without seeing this as a threat to NATO?
Thirdly, NATO has always had one adversary at once, like it was in one place at one time, but the future, unfortunately, like we see from all of our national security strategies is multiple, sort of, if not adversaries, some are enemies, like ISIL or Al-Qaeda. Others are, sort of, competitors, others are adversaries, which is not quite the same as enemies, and others are challengers. If you look at NATO today, for example, there are three adversaries: there’s potentially Russia, there’s potentially Iran, in the sense that our missile defence system is geared towards the South, and then there’s, of course, there’s ISIL and terrorists. So, how do we prevent the challenges developing into adversaries, the adversaries developing into enemies, and if we have enemies, how do we push them back into the adversary camp? This is going to take a lot more political finesse from NATO and a more bold culture of consultation than we’ve seen in the past.
Technology, don’t need to say anything. I see Leslie looking at me, and Ambassador MacIntosh mentioned that very well, but the one thing quickly, is that we must avoid a technological divide in NATO, a digital divide in the Alliance, where some countries are comfortable with the new technologies, like offensive cyber, the rules of engagement, the use, the automaticity, the decision-making stresses that using these technologies imply. And other countries don’t have the technologies, have not invested in them, and are very, very uncomfortable about the military strategic implications that those technologies have and therefore, we paralyse ourselves between two different technology cultures and then, finally, I totally endorse what Lord Robertson said about norms. We – NATO was lucky, in the first 70 years, because we had the preponderance of western power in all domains, soft power, hard power. It was clear who was going to win that, sort of, ideological strategic contest. If we just had the unity and staying power, and it was all about what we were going to do to the rest of the world, right?
The next 70 years is going to be what the rest of the world is doing to us, increasingly, and we see this already, in terms of our dependencies, in terms of the multiple challenges and adversaries that we need to confront. The balance of where you go for your economic prosperity and where you go for your security and how you juggle all of this. We’re going to be a little bit more on the defensive, quite frankly. We’re not going to be able to fight our way out of it, through brute force and hard power alone, and therefore, our ability to go back to what we did so successfully in the 60s, in developing a culture of arms control and norms and restraints and limitations and rules of the road, and appealing to our partners in Asia, elsewhere, to join us in that effort, so that our standard becomes the global standard, is going to be the key, and we are not doing enough of that at the moment. NATO is ideally suited to do it and we need to do it.
So, my only regret is that I’m not starting my NATO career today. I would have been massively happier, as a, sort of, a 25-year-old beginning in 2019 than leaving in 2019, because no matter how fascinating I thought NATO’s first 70 years were, looking at the next 70 years, it’s going to be massively more interesting. Thank you very much [applause].
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
That was an extraordinary set of contributions. I was really struck listening to you, Lord Robertson, just even mentioning, you know, 19 to 29 members and soon 30, it – the num – the adaptation, the complexity that NATO’s already survived tremendously well, but looking forward, I think it’s – it’s interesting to say it was clear that we were going to win. I wonder if it looked that way, to those on the inside, perhaps in the earlier days of your career, I suspect not. Nonetheless, a lot on the table.
I’m going to immediately open it up. I have several questions of my own, but I think it’s only fair to give it to you. You’ll notice that I said first that Lord Robertson was a Member of Chatham House’s Panel of Senior Advisors, and it wasn’t tremendously satisfying, so I – when you introduce yourself, please do tell us your, apart from being a Member of Chatham House, so who you are, and if you put your hands up high. The gentleman right here in the back. Please do raise your hands, ‘cause we’re going to take some questions collectively.
Euan Grant
Yeah, thank you very much. Euan Grant, I’m a former Law Enforcement Intelligence Analyst, covering the Balkans and the ex-Soviet states, and most of my subsequent career has been spent there, including several years in Bosnia, when Lord Robertson was a much regarded Secretary General locally, very much regarded.
My question is primarily for Ambassador MacIntosh, but really for all of you, and the relationship with the EU and its common security and defence policy, I did work on a prototype project of that and I noticed that they were heavily dependent on a few key individuals there. How deep and wide is the relationship going with the EEAS and the European Commission broadly? In other words, not just its military group, and not just at senior level, but are Middle Managers getting involved and a culture of proactive engagement, rather than, shall we say, champagne receptions? Thank you.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
So, we’ve got a question just here, and again, if you keep your questions relatively succinct, then we’ll be able to get more in. Right here, in the second row, the gentleman just to your right, sir.
David Skidmore
David Skidmore, Surgeon, a very practical job. Practical job for NATO is actually war-fighting. The great problem, it seems to me, is persuading nations, who are rather recidivist about their finances, of the importance of exercises. John Lehman, in his brilliant book on the Reagan Navy, points out the importance of the carrier battle group the Navy taking the challenge to the USSR in exercises. How do you persuade countries, with a low contribution, to make the money available for the exercises, which are needed?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And I’m going to add my question in here. A number of you talked about, I guess especially Lord Robertson, but you all hinted at it, the, you know, there are a couple of challenges. One is to really sell and make the case domestically to all the member states that they need to make it the case to the public. But also, that there’s this imperative on making the case to each other that all the member states are in it together, and I guess my question is, first of all, those two things are linked, because if you can’t make the case to your allies that you’re in it together, it’s very hard to explain to the public why they should be in it with a number of other countries. And I guess the question is, how much more complex do you think that is, especially in the context where the US is increasingly primarily concerned about things that NATO isn’t primarily concerned about, in other words China and China’s rise and does this put pressure on NATO to begin to play some sort of role in that broader strategic confrontation between the US and China?
So I’m going to open it up to the three of you. I know you won’t all be able to address all the questions, but who would like to go first? You can pick and choose your question. I can see that Lord Robertson wants to go first.
Rt Hon Lord Robertson
Well, I’ll return to what I was actually saying. There is an obligation on all of us to make the case. One of my regrets, in a way when I was in NATO, is that we built up our Press Department then the man here used to be in charge of it at one point, in his stellar career, but we relied on the nation states to disseminate the information. So, in contrast to the rather pathetic nature of the Foreign Office’s NATO website, if you look at the Press Department of NATO on their website, you will see an array of arguments that are there persuading, you know, persuading countries of why it’s important, persuading adversaries about why they shouldn’t tangle with NATO, all of that done and done expertly and extremely well. And there is an obligation on countries to pick up some of that and to disseminate it as well, and I think that is one way in which you get it over, and it does answer a question about resources for things like exercises, you know, the European problem is that we’ve got hollowed out forces, we’ve got irrelevant tanks with tank battalions, we’ve got slow fast jets, unguided missiles in huge numbers. You know, and that is not the capability of the future that we’ll be dealing with either an adversary or crisis management. You know, we tend to think about great tank armies coming across the North German Plain but, you know, a lot of the capabilities that are available, are used simply in crisis management, not Bosnia or Kosovo or Macedonia, as it happens, but in civil emergencies as well, these capabilities are available. They’re not simply there for defence, so we – the argument has to be made and has to be made by political leaders using their bully pulpit, like in many ways, the Secretary General of NATO has to do in a wider context.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Jamie, would you like to…?
Dr Jamie Shea
Just a couple, obviously, quickly. I’ll take the – particularly living still in Brussels, I’ll take the European Union CSDP one. The EU has done about 35 CSDP Common Security Defence Policy operations and I think the great majority of those would’ve benefited NATO, even if two thirds of them have been civilian and small because they’ve, sort of, done the sort of things, in terms of, you know, justice, home affairs, borders, that NATO is not geared to do.
What I would think would be the key thing for the future is to try to get the EU, when it looks at its missions, to focus on areas, which are also of strategic interest to NATO, so that instead of the EU being in one half of the world doing its thing and NATO in the other half, we increasingly, sort of, select, if you like, common strategic priorities. Think of defence reform in Ukraine, think of the Balkans, obviously, where the EU has taken over from NATO in Bosnia. We’re together on the ground in Kosovo or think of the African literal, for example, a recent good example was the way in which NATO ships and EU ships came together in the Central Mediterranean to assist Libya, the Coastguards and help with the migration issues. So it may be a little bit more of a selective approach, not trying to be everywhere all the time, and focusing more on the immediate strategic priorities in the neighbourhood, but it is obviously the case that the EU does have some assets that NATO doesn’t. If you think of a couple of years ago, we had the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, the EU had a mission there called Atlanta, which, as a NATO person, I would nonetheless argue was probably more effective than NATO’s operation, because being the EU, they could tie it to development aid, building prisons, financial flows of illicit money, all of these kind of things, it represented more of a comprehensive approach. So, you know, putting the assets together, but according to the same strategic priorities.
I think also one good thing at the moment, to – before finishing, is that as the EU looks at this quest of strategic autonomy and what – spending more money on R&D and multinational programmes and trying to cut back on duplication, it is very, very mindful that in order to gain support for this in NATO and in Washington, the EU requirements should also reflect NATO requirements. For example, the EU willingness to spend some of its infrastructure money, upgrading roads and railways, and ports and that sort of stuff for civilian purposes, but to spend that money also to benefit NATO, through its military mobility, is a good thing. So, I think we’ve made a good start, the atmosphere is totally different, but turning all of the 74, sort of, aspirational let’s co-operate items into concrete achievement, that’s still going to take some time and effort.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Very good. I don’t know if you wanted to add –not? Okay, we’ll take a question right here, from the second row, gentleman in the…
John Warren
Thank you, John Warren, Physician. In the medical world, billions are spent by industry to promote intervention, but it’s very difficult to get Doctors not to intervene, when it’s often the right thing to do. It seems to be the same in defence, there’s hu – billions spent advertising the need to intervene with the latest gadgets, but very little pressure, apart from, well, think of the worldwide demonstrations against intervention in Iraq to balance that, how can that intervention/non-intervention be balanced?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Okay, question right here in the front. Gentleman in the front, and then just behind, as well.
John Wilson
John Wilson, a Member of this Institute and a number of military think-tanks and a Journalist. I was at the Russian Embassy a few days ago and they mentioned that the speaker there, that Russia had applied to join NATO, often forgotten. My question is this, that ear – in January this year, I was at a meeting in which the Deputy Director General of the Institute of Strategic Studies, being well aware that the Russian Ambassador was sitting with me on the front row, said and I quote, “Britain remains a major military power, and can fight and beat any nation, but the United States.” It was obvious from the look on the Russian Ambassador’s face that he did not agree with that and bearing in mind that Mr Corbyn is now talking about not using Trident, had he got some traction in that? My question is this, which of the two people that I’ve mentioned were right?
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
And then the gentleman just behind, right there. Thank you.
Member
And good morning to you. I’m afraid I’m not as half as intelligent as most of the people in this room. I was a former Parachutist. I’ve been in active service, been wounded for my country, and what I would like to say is this. You mentioned that we need money for NATO, but the general public, I do not believe, have any idea what NATO really does as a whole, I’m speaking generally. For example, Russia takes over Crimea, Joe in the street couldn’t care less. They don’t know what sort of firepower Russia has, compared with ours, and certainly, I mean, nothing’s ever been said about China, which I believe is – I believe China to be a far greater threat to world peace in the future than Russia. So I do believe that NATO should inform the public, to a greater extent, of exactly what they do and how they do it.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you. We have just two and a half minutes left, so we’ll give each of you an opportunity to choose your question to answer and add any final remarks. We can – shall we start with you, Ambassador MacIntosh?
Ambassador Sarah MacIntosh CMG
Thank you. In response to the last question, and in fact to all of you here who have served your country, thank you for your service. We should spend a bit more time talking about what NATO does, what the threats are we face, and how NATO counters them, you’re right. I think that’s more or less exactly what Lord Robertson was saying. I’ve taken a note about the website, but the general point is also right because this is the 70th anniversary year, and in December, the UK will host a leaders’ meeting of NATO’s leaders for that 70th anniversary. There will be more about that this year and that’s a great opportunity, we should take it.
Prevention and intervention, I don’t think there is any ally who doesn’t believe that prevention is better than intervention. We know it and everyone who has served their country knows that too. Our answer is that’s what our deterrence is for. We have these forces, we take these postures, we take these measures, we make these decisions, we stand together to deter, so that we don’t need to intervene and to deter, so that we don’t need to fight.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Thank you. Lord Robertson?
Rt Hon Lord Robertson
The point about Mr Corbyn and Trident, Mr Corbyn has made it clear that the Party Conference decision stands. The renewal of Trident was carried by three – over 300 votes in the House of Commons, including the vast majority of Labour MPs, so I don’t have any qualms on that particular issue.
Russia was not invited to join NATO. President Putin said to me, “When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?” and I said, “We don’t invite countries to join NATO, they apply to join NATO,” and at that point he said, “Well, we’re not going to stand in a queue, with a lot of other countries that don’t matter.” I said, “Right, let’s just co-operate together and build a relationship,” and indeed, we did as well. And I come back to what Ambassador was saying there about intervention/non-intervention, the whole purpose of NATO is as a defence alliance, and it’s got no offensive intentions whatsoever. And if you want to look at the intervention in Kosovo and the successful ending of that will be in a few weeks’ time, the 20th anniversary, but also look at another success story that has got too little publicity.
In 2001 before 9/11, there was an armed insurgency in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Myself and Javier Solana and the Foreign Minister of Romania, who was then the OSCE Chairman in Office, went down there and over the course of that year, we prevented a war from taking place, with three organisations working together steadily on the ground and in fact, the leader of the armed insurgency has been in the Government of that country almost ever since then and by the end of this year, North Macedonia is going to be a Member of NATO. So, people remember all the interventions that perhaps didn’t have a happier outcome, there are some which, if it had not been for the intervention, we’d be living with the consequences today and they would not be nice.
Dr Jamie Shea
When Lord Robertson mentioned Macedonia, he sort of stole my thunder because I wanted to rush in and give him credit for that because that does show that preventive diploma…
Rt Hon Lord Robertson
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Dr Jamie Shea
Right, credit. But that does show that preventive diplomacy can work and you need people who take the responsibility, you need the support of the nations, the support of organisations. But as Lord Robertson said, the problem is, is when you’re successful, nobody pays any attention and therefore, nobody learns the good lessons of success. We’re good at trying to learn lessons from failure. If we spent half the time looking at lessons of success, we would probably be further forward. But what I would say is that we are now in a world where conflicts seem to be going on forever. Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I or World War II. Yemen, I think, we’re now in the sixth year. Syria, now we’ve been going on there since 2011, with enormous causalities, and if you look at the migrant flows that were coming into Europe around 2015/2016 which began, as you know, the whole political movements that we are, alas, still living with today, about 50% of the migrants were non-economic migrants. They, in fact, were fleeing from warzones and it strikes me sometimes, and again, I am a private citizen now, so I can say these things, that it’s somewhat, sort of, counterproductive to be increasing military budgets, as much as I support reasonable rises in defence spending, and at the same time, slashing our diplomatic services. And in the United States, as you know, where they have a military budget going through Congress now of $750 billion, the state department has taken 25% cut successively in recent years and, you know, we need Diplomats to craft sometimes messy, not particularly ideal, sort of, solutions and to these conflicts, to bring parties around a table, as belatedly now seems to be finally happening, hopefully in Afghanistan and because if we have peace, at least we can start moving forward. But as long as we have conflicts, we’re not going to have only terrible suffering in the regions themselves, but all of the shockwaves coming out of these countries that ultimately engulf us as well.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
That’s a tremendous amount on the table for one short hour, but I guess the thing to look forward to is that we will clearly be carrying on this conversation, given the December meetings in London, and there’s going to be a lot that happens between now and then, so – and a lot of issues on the table.
Thank you so much to all three of our speakers: Dr Shea, Lord Robertson and Ambassador MacIntosh, thank you for making the trip, in the midst of a very, very busy time [applause].
