National Defence committee  Indeed, and I'd highlight three points. I've mentioned them all, but I'll just come back to them. First is the focus on crisis management, in particular collective security—in other words, partnership. Those things are really new. Second is all the new threats, cyber, but also

National Defence committee  NATO's perspective on the EU has changed fundamentally in the time that I've been there. A few years ago a lot of allies were concerned that the EU would be too strong, and it would compete and suck away resources. Now people are concerned that the EU isn't going to be strong eno

National Defence committee  On North Korea, there's basically nothing. It's not a NATO role. On Iran, NATO has not taken any formal steps. There is a process taking place in other fora. Were Iran to become a threat to the alliance or to NATO territory, of course it would be in a different ball game. The 30

National Defence committee  When I had my first day as the spokesman of NATO many years ago, the secretary general at the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said, “Okay, here are your instructions: never answer a question that begins with 'if'.” I never did, so I won't start now. I can say that based on what yo

National Defence committee  I think the short answer to that is yes and yes. I share the view that it's lower on the agenda. It doesn't get talked about as much, and it doesn't get talked about as much by ministers, presidents, and prime ministers. I think to a large extent that's for two reasons. One is

National Defence committee  Thanks. You saved the best for last. Belarus is going backwards in terms of democratic development in human rights. The allies would like that to be different, but the bottom line, if I can be as open as I can in this forum, is it's going backwards. Russia has enormous control

National Defence committee  I think what we have to see, from my point of view, is the example that Turkey shows. When I travel through the region, again and again what one hears is—well, not from all parties—“we want to be like them”, or, in other words, proudly Muslim, proudly religious, and secular in th

National Defence committee  That may be his strength. His strength is that he is proudly religious and still carrying out a secular government. Nobody in the Arab world can impugn him for that. So I think he has a lot of potential to inspire positive change—not him, but his government. It has a lot of poten

National Defence committee  There are three things. One, we think it's a good thing that the United States is also focusing more on Asia. It doesn't mean they're not focusing on Europe. But we should want the United States to continue to play a strong role in Asia in stabilizing it. We cannot afford a situa

National Defence committee  —but we are reaching out to them. Third—and this the secretary general said recently in his speech—we think it's important that the European allies also have a global view, that they're not just focused on their own issues, which are important, and not just focused on their imme

National Defence committee  Absolutely. There are two essential ingredients for NATO to play a role. One is a UN mandate. The second is a request from the Libyan government. Neither of those is there. The Libyan government has not asked for support and the UN has not provided a mandate. When our mandate end

National Defence committee  You hit on an important point. To cut directly to the chase, my own view is that it doesn't complicate our relations with most Arab countries. We have deepening relations with the Arab League, with the African Union. We've had contact with the Organization of the Islamic Conferen

National Defence committee  I think in essence this is principally an American and Russian discussion. Anything else is relevant and important, but when we're talking about this particular issue in a NATO context or a Euro-Atlantic context, these are the two big players. They're the ones that own them. The

National Defence committee  I will first say that because of that declaration in 2008, we do have formal liaison and very deep relations, which never existed before. So we're at a totally different level of trust. Second, on Libya, we were in discussion with the United Nations every single day and multiple

National Defence committee  I don't know the answer to that. NATO doesn't have boots on the ground. We do not monitor Libya's development in a formal way. We do not have assets there. When our mission came to an end, it came to an end. There are many analysts on the ground. You might want to ask UN colleagu