Smart Defence: the political angle

Smart Defence: The political angle

Why do we need Smart Defence?

We do need Smart Defence.

We do need to prioritize.

We do need to find ways for nations

who can't afford

a full spectrum military,

to specialize in a sensible way

with NATO being the coordinator,

so that we end up

with all the capabilities we need,

with less redundancy

and with more effectiveness

and more solidarity in the end.

28 nations agreeing on defence

priorities and specialisations?

It is going to be very difficult.

There have been success stories

in multinational cooperation

and in getting the nations

to do a sensible division of labour

when they can't all

do the same things.

More often than not,

each nation wants to hedge its bets

and be self-reliant and in an Alliance

with a shrinking resource base

we really do need to do things

in a conceptually different way.

I don't underestimate the difficulties.

If we're going to share the work, that

runs up against domestic pressures

from parliaments who want

to keep the business at home.

It raises questions of trust.

If we pool our resources

and purchase some capability,

will it be available to one nation if

another disagrees with the mission?

And, of course,

just the bureaucratic inertia.

People have been doing things

the old-fashioned way for decades.

So, just changing the way you do

business is always hard in any...

in militaries,

in civilian bureaucracies.

How does Smart Defence fit

with national sovereignty?

Sovereignty is going

to be a sensitive issue

because NATO is

not like the European Union:

An institution in which countries

pull their sovereignty.

But I think that,

if Smart Defence is going to work,

nations will need to voluntarily agree

to coordinate more than before.

They'll need to present

their plans for defence restructuring,

for budget cuts, before they make

irrevocable decisions

and listen to their allies

and the NATO professionals

if they recommend

a different approach.

Instead of continuing

to invest in tanks,

cut the tank force

and invest more in fighter jets,

or in surveillance drones,

or in mine countermeasure ships.

NATO needs a lot of capabilities

and nations need to think about

what's best for the Alliance

and not just for their country.

Where do partners fit in

to Smart Defence?

One of the exciting parts

of the Alliance in the last 20 years

has been the increasing

involvement of partners

in our operations,

in our political consultations

and I think that the success

of Smart Defence will be enhanced,

if we can find ways for partners

to literally plug in, to plug and play,

as part of these new

multinational initiatives.

There will be a limit to how far

the partners' involvement can go,

namely when it comes

to collective defence,

only allies have that responsibility

under Article 5

of the Washington Treaty.

And I think

we can't depend on non-allies.

That would be asking

too much of them,

but it'd also be asking too much

of allies who may feel vulnerable

to expect that the partners

would be part of the Article 5 mission.

But many of the missions that NATO

is likely to be called upon to perform,

in the future will be out of area

missions relating to threats

of terrorism, proliferation,

regional stability in Central Asia

and the post 2014

Afghanistan situation.

These are areas

where bringing the partners in

can add capability and political

legitimacy to what NATO does.

So I'm very hopeful

that the doors will be wide open

to involvement of partners

in Smart Defence.

Is Smart Defence

more bottom-up or top-down?

I think that if it's going to work,

it probably has to be

more top-down than bottom-up.

The execution of the programmes

will be carried out

by the headquarters

here in Brussels,

with our defence planning process

which sometimes gets a bad name,

because it is a cumbersome process,

but it is the means by which allies

sit around the table,

critique one another's defence plans,

try to come up

with a rational division of labour,

set ambitious goals for countries

and try to hold them to account.

We want to use that process.

But without the top-down

pressure from political leaders,

heads of state and government,

defence ministers,

there's a danger that the momentum

that is building, could dissipate.

So, we're thinking

of how can we connect capitals

on a continuing basis

to the work here in Brussels

so it doesn't become another NATO

committee whose work takes place,

but the results are ignored in capitals

and business as usual continues.

If that's what this all leads to,

it would be a big disappointment.

Is Smart Defence

a make-or-break project for NATO?

NATO's future will never hinge

on any one program or initiative

and NATO, of course, is too important

to fail for all of its member states

and for its partners

who now increasingly see NATO

as a guarantor

of their security and stability.

But NATO's credibility

does ultimately depend

on credible military capabilities

or a political military Alliance.

But without the military capabilities

underpinning the organisation,

our political leverage

would be far less.

It is vitally important, I wouldn't go

as far as saying it’s make-or-break,

but it really is now a very

critical challenge for the Alliance

that it must meet

by the end of this decade,

to deliver the capabilities

to fulfil the strategy

that we all dutifully adopted

at the Lisbon Summit two years ago.