Thank you very much.
I will not touch on the nuclear side of your statement, because as you probably know, nuclear is not included in my portfolio. I have no responsibility on nuclear weapons or what the nations are discussing in terms of future deterrents and the different postures of NATO, which will be agreed upon in Chicago in a few weeks from now.
On the conventional side, yes, we are not at all looking at any kind of arms race, but to the contrary. As part of the job I'm performing on behalf of NATO, we work on establishing the requirements for capabilities in the future. The very title of this part of the work says it all. We establish the minimum capability requirements. This is the basis on which we will ask the nations to look at their own capability development, based on the minimum level of military capabilities that NATO needs to fulfill its mission, as decided by the heads of state in government and reflected in the level of ambition, which we have decided that NATO be able to fulfill. What are the minimum capabilities we need to accomplish the mission?
What is very important to note is that we do this after an analysis of what we call political guidance. Following the strategic concept, which is renewed or a new concept is written and agreed upon roughly every 10 years, we have in a two- to four-year cycle of what the nations call political guidance, which is an updated political vision of what the alliance should do. We on the military side take this document, which is informed by the concept of the most recent analysis of a strategic environment, into these requirements for the future.