Thank you.
The smart defence initiative was launched in February last year by the Secretary General during the Munich security conference. The smart defence initiative rests firmly on three pillars: prioritization, specialization, and multinational cooperation. The objective is not to reduce capabilities or suggest that we should spend less on defence. The objective is to make sure that despite the fiscal difficulties that all our nations are having, we can deliver the capabilities we need to fulfill the missions that were decided by the 28 members.
On prioritization, we need to make sure there is no possible conflict between a national priority and an alliance priority. We need to define it and discuss it as much as we can upfront.
Specialization does not mean that NATO would ask a nation to abandon anything, or order a nation to do something specifically. We want to build on the strengths nations already have and are ready to share with others, and make sure that the strengths of a nation can be made available to others that could then concentrate on other issues that are their own strengths.
Multinational cooperation is a matter of how much we can work on capability development together. Today most capability programs, that is, procurement programs, are national. Some are multinational, but not many. We would like to see a change in the mindset in the longer term, where nations would first consider going multinational. It could be more the rule than the exception it is today.
The approach concerns every single nation. When a nation thinks it is in her own interest and within her own resources to continue being able to address the whole spectrum, NATO will never say no. It's a sovereign decision by the nation. The problem is probably more for those nations that cannot afford it and become so thin in every part of the spectrum that the effectiveness is not there. Some nations just cannot. Some nations would never have access to a given capability if they did not go multinational. So going multinational enables nations to develop new capabilities as needed, modernize existing ones, and sometimes even save capabilities that we need, despite the financial crisis.