Lovely spring day. I come from Norway. We had -12 and -15 for the last few weeks.
We have an old house where the ceiling is high.
So to to heat it is almost impossible. So I carry sacks of wood from the cellar up on the fourth floor, so every every second day.
So this is the exercise me to go to a studio.
I've been here before several times. I was at a character of war program some years ago where I started on on a
book that will be published in May by Poudre Cold called Power in Hard Times.
While the title I think, can Europe Act Strategically?
So I have this keen interest in sort of rational policymaking.
Is it possible for governments in this sort of very confused age to act strategically?
So that's a interest of mine. I worked, as you noticed from the introduction, on various European issues.
My first job was with the Ministry of Oil and Energy, which is an important one in Norway.
So I did research on the non-existent EU energy policy too for my doctorate as I was getting more and more interested in the EU.
Not so much in energy. So there's a tip for you. If you haven't finished, you're not.
Just find the topic which interests you and twist it so that you can get to the of it.
And then European politics with activity in politics as deputy foreign minister,
although the the little presentation you had up here was a sort of bizarre Belarus policy,
etc., 12 states, states, states in the system that are quite, quite abnormal, so to speak.
Both of them.
I would like to present to you my thinking about defence cooperation, integration, what are the driving forces, what is happening in Europe today?
Because there are some paradoxes here.
On the one hand there is Russia prodding, testing, being sort of this speech by Putin last week was like saying Dr. Strangelove again,
sort of really odd for being in 2018, in rather peaceful Europe or having had having been peaceful for so long.
So this is the sort of the situation of hard power being on display China, Russia, North Korea,
something we haven't been used to for a long time in Europe 1990 until,
let's say, 2010, 15, 20 tens, this long 20 years of almost unprecedented peace.
One has this this recurrence of our policy and the use of military force in a
traditional way of enhancing state interests of of which which calls for deterrence,
maybe coercion, certainly not appeasement of classical strategic choices.
So this is happening in and around Europe.
Russia is neighbour, Norway's neighbour, neighbour, neighbours.
I speak, this is happening in Europe, while Europeans seem to be in a way in another completely different mindset.
This is a puzzle, this is a paradox. This is highly interesting.
My colleague and friend Christopher Coker writes about this as a cultural problem.
So this is a he says the real problem is cultural.
It is not the lack of money or the lack of ability to think strategically.
It is something that has happened to the European citizen and politician over these last 20 years, having to do with globalisation,
perhaps European integration so hard power with the military use of military force in the traditional way,
state by state, state versus state seems to be unknown territory.
So this is the background to my analysis and, and what comes subsequently.
So there is a need to do something about defence so to speak.
In Europe perspective here is,
is European because there are some areas of economics that work in the defence sector and you're all familiar with them I presume,
particularly those who are officers in the audience. There is always, not surprisingly, a lack of money for defence.
This is an age old, centuries old problem, but it is compounded today by the the cost of this new technology,
technology that is so costly that a states medium sized state cannot afford to keep up its capabilities.
Let's say we have about 30, 35 capabilities for land, sea and air plus space, plus cyber space.
There isn't the or the cost of renewing the force, so to speak, of keeping up with the competition is much higher than in the civilian sector.
So there is a cost problem that hits everybody. It's every country, but it hits the smaller countries first.
And the critical mass problem is where you see it.
If you can't afford more than two submarines, you probably should have none.
So this, as you're familiar with this leads to a change of the inventory.
Denmark has scrapped having submarines altogether sailing on that.
Yet Norway couldn't do that. So we are buying new ones, not from Germany and Cork.
But this is a general sort of iron law of defence economics.
One cannot afford the number of items that one needs, and therefore countries have to work together in new in a new way, in a way.
So new there's a new need for defence integration.
Then there is the political mindset. Liberal democracies are not set up to spend on defence.
There are a few NGOs, pressure groups that say we must have more for defence.
Few demonstrators outside Parliament are calling for more defence spending and the politicians
are basically uninterested in this field because it isn't something you get re-elected by.
It's not something popular, it's something very unpleasant.
It's an unpleasant topic. It's frightening. It is not something where you see results.
It is best. Defence is best when not used, of course.
So it is the age of problem the Kings had.
They could raise taxes. Dictators can spend.
Russia can. China can. But liberal democracies have great difficulty justifying spending on defence.
And we see that in the empirical reality of things.
By the debate about the 2% GDP defence spending where President Trump has intensified,
the demand put on the Europeans and the Europeans themselves have agreed on this 2%.
It's not an American administration directly.
It is European governments that Cardiff agreed to to reach 2% by 2024, and this goal is being abandoned almost as we speak.
The Germans are not going to go go towards 2% anyway.
The as per the Social Democrats,
both Steinmeier and and Schultz and now Goglia and the prime minister they state this publicly that the Social Democrats will not go for 2%,
which is a remarkable thing for a governing party in a centre, a real important European country to two states publicly.
Most of us don't take it. They say we will.
In time, we will reach 2%. The Norwegian government has just changed the text.
Before the election it was 2% quickly and certainly by 2024.
Now it is sometime in the future.
In 2024 has been taken out of the government declaration and this is a country with Russia as a neighbour with a definite need for a strong nature.
So there is something here that maybe can be explained by the competition for comes.
But my mind shouldn't give you the conclusion.
But my thinking about this is that it must be much more cultural or mindset oriented than than rational,
because one can say there are the external risks, if not threats, there is the need for more money because of the procurement cost.
There is the sovereignty consideration that every government must, must discuss and think about.
How much do you want to integrate with other countries if you want to remain a sovereign country?
And this is a country this is a debate that isn't very explicit.
I don't think it really exists. Now, let's look at what we have presently in Europe.
And this is we could say at least most of this on this slide is bottom up.
It is driven by the need for hope, for force, saving money, not death is the Nordic Defence Cooperation Scheme.
It is definitely intended to save money among the.
Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.
Denmark joined also this. But they fear that it could be something the Americans wouldn't like.
So they weren't sure at the beginning. But this is a typical example of cooperation to to save money, on exercises,
on training, on maybe buying, having having the same equipment to some extent.
And of course, the boats are getting more into this now.
So this this makes sense. And it is vitally important to find ways of cooperating to save money and maybe to exercise and train and so on.
The Swedes have have downsized their army and their general military apparatus tremendously, and it has basically very little left,
and they've just reintroduced conscription after having abandoned it two or three years ago.
So Sweden, they're sort of trying to turn the ship quickly because of Russia.
Finland has a cheap defence model based on sometimes we say they have a new bicycle, new bicycle for the army once, once in a while.
But the fans are very good fighters.
I believe in the traditional mobility concept and believe that this is what deters Russia with a certain winter war experience.
The Baltics are eager to co-operators but not get knocked back or will, of course,
never go beyond a certain sort of low level of cooperation because of the nature of membership of some of the countries.
So this is this is not a strategic type of defence cooperation.
The same goes for EU initiatives and I'll say more about the EU later reasons
initiatives that have been presented with much fanfare in Brussels and beyond Brussels,
as I call sometimes an EU defence union.
And the EU now has a strategy.
The EU has a common defence solidarity clause already in the Lisbon Treaty, but the reality is that this is also to save money bottom up,
although there and there is now fresh sort of joint joint funding money for this European Defence Fund,
and I'll say so about it, PESCO, 26 EU countries.
So it's bottom up. Where could we do something more rationally, so to speak?
Germany, which is the richest country in Europe, has one of the lowest defence spending percentages.
1.3 I think it is, or even less. Germany has has decided to be a framework nation.
They to get others to cooperate in the military industrial in a way integration schemes framework nation.
This is also planning and processing and trying to reach rational cooperation, so to speak, which is important, but it's also the bottom up.
It's a lot of politics as usual. Now we need to say now we need to cooperate.
French British cooperation has elements of this, but it is also a strategic type of cooperation.
Now, Russia. Now, I want to try to probe how what are the drivers here?
What what's happening beyond this? This is a book I was a co-editor of this last year on the and the long list due to the algorithms.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is how the editors these days, the publishing houses,
they want titles where if you write Ukraine probably not beyond Ukraine.
Russia strategy secure. Europe. Either of these terms, you get the title on the screen so they can sell more.
And this goes hand in hand with the abandonment of royalties, which is what they do these days.
And I shouldn't say this perhaps, but one of the contributors to this book is either Satyajit Ray from Russi,
who was one of the spies alleged spy swap in 2010, along with this unfortunate kernel of yesterday.
So when I saw the news, I thought, Oh my God,
I hope the FSB is not too interested in our book because Sutyagin got in there because we needed somebody who knew Russian strategy,
and I didn't have any connections in that direction.
So it was just a piece of advice from somebody, another British scholar.
So so this is maybe it's a selling point for Palgrave.
We shall see. We should then expect if a strategy is of any interest to European politicians,
we should expect that to be a major effect from Russia's activities since Crimea.
And what we see is that there is an effect in Northern Europe, but not in the south, not in southern Europe.
Francis interests are not in any kind of confrontation with Russia, but in as much partnership as possible,
which is a historical interest, of course, and has worked well for France in the past.
France is a very able strategic actor.
I'll get to play more about France later. But in the south of Europe, its strategic interests are definitely not in the north,
not in confronting or deterring Russia, for that matter, but in the south.
But we see Russia's human, say, forward leaning activities that are really political,
sort of very tough political rhetoric combined with military probing.
For instance, when Finland joined the host nation support scheme of NATO in 2015 or 16,
can't remember the dates, there was a strong Russian reaction verbally.
And then for six days thereafter, every second day there was a violation of Finnish airspace.
So this is the political signalling of flying, of airspace violation.
So and we know that Britain plays now the key role in sort of deterring Russia in in developing strategy on what to do.
And we see the Northern Group which is a diplomatic started underlying Fox the diplomatic suggestion to get countries like minded countries together.
The northern group now has about every country in northern Europe as members also sweets and friends.
And the much more interesting military joint expeditionary force led by Britain, now also has Swedes and Finns thus as contributing members.
And this gives, of course, these countries a certain security, I would say guarantee, but it's it's who trades together, can fight together, etc.
So this is very interesting.
All of this defence integration, so to speak, that is not primarily happening because of economic motives but strategic common interest.
And this is indeed one of the major theme of a of a book that Rob and I will publish later this year on coalitions, partnerships as a,
as a mode of cooperation that the multi lateral organisations themselves EU
Naoto you ask about that matter you of the UN is basically the mandate provider,
the enabler of legitimacy for NATO.
We see that NATO's a large 29 coalition of states, a military alliance bound by Article five, which is a very strong bond.
It's a very strong obligation.
These 29 states are nonetheless extremely diverse in terms of security assessment interests, strategic interests and so on.
So NATO has for some time clearly become a platform for coalitions,
platform for coalitions of like minded states where the Northern Group, or rather, Jeff, is the foremost example today.
And the EU. Also 2028 member states is also extremely diversified and it's well known that one has these different memberships.
Shannon PESCO Now CFP, the euro, the EU is like a sort of landscape of circles that overlaps to some extent,
although there is something that they all participate in.
Like Article five, NATO, namely the internal market.
As you Brits now experience how sacrosanct the internal market is as the set of ideas and rules.
So I would suggest that we should think about and analyse defence what happens in terms of countries cooperation and integration with each other,
either as the bottom up, sort of a pragmatic cost based activity, or armed or as something else,
something strategic, where you start by saying, do we have common strategic interests?
Then we have a basis for serious military cooperation in terms of war fighting.
So these are the risk willing and able. The risk.
So so the willing and able category of states where you have an ability militarily, you have a culture of risk,
willingness of military culture, strategic culture, and you have the the common interests that motivates such integration.
And these two modes of cooperation do not necessarily overlap at all.
The bottom up, economically motivated one is much less serious, much less important.
So this is the book where we've just finished a manuscript.
The last chapter will be in next week, and it has this provisional title of this and it should be spelled properly,
I guess, I believe publish it and it has coalitions and partnerships.
And we found it very interesting because clearly in the role of of these sector organisations that are really the result after World War Two,
when all these international organisations were familiar with EU, NATO, the European Council of Europe always said the nature of the UN,
how do you at public all this conversation solve this signed largely by the Americans all the West
after World War two and multilateral diplomacy become sort of a place where there is predictability,
where one follows the rules, where process matters more than results.
And now we are in a situation where this is no longer true. There is much more emphasis on what's in it for me, what you bring to the table.
Do we have common interests? Shall we use the EU format?
Shall we use the NATO's platform, so to speak, to launch our cooperation to do what we want to do?
And Trump's diplomacy, America.
The Americans have always been much more upfront about this, of course.
What do you bring to the table? That's the story from NATO.
My friend, who was like Ambassador Ada, tells the story of the sitting between the American and British ambassadors at the nice Mackinac meeting,
and the Belgian ambassador took the floor constantly pronouncing on every other, every issue it was.
Belgium had this adopted convention and then the American leans in front of the Norwegian, talking to the voice that makes.
So what do they contribute? That is the Belgians.
So in a way, it's it's more much more now with Trump.
It's much more what's, you know, what's in it for you and what's in it for me.
And that's cooperate. But I think in security and defence, there's always been this element of if you're not up to it, you're not.
We don't need you. Maybe your flag, but that's all.
So what we do in this book is to have expert authors write a Frenchman writing on how the French think about the British nowadays,
the French British cooperation and American writing about the special relationship and rock writing about specially about Britain as such.
And we look. The Partnerships and the Northern Group Coalition.
I think we find it is attractive that the willing and able that this is becoming much more important.
But those affected by Russian revisionism get together and find a way of working on this together.
And of course the Jeff will, as the one sort of tactical level chapter in the book, will show written by to Marine officers.
They show that there is a strategic advantage possibly to having this military integration also that you get you get more room for manoeuvre.
But the point is to really look in detail at the sort of the growing importance of partnerships, coalitions, something that isn't new in nature,
but it's more pronounced now and how this doesn't really affect or isn't really affected by Brexit, because Brexit how?
However, whatever one says about Brexit politically, it remains a fact that the EU needs reform in security defence more so than vice versa.
So there is sort of this is a call for sort of being honest about the facts in this relationship.
Now, this is the hard power in hard times. Gloomy, gloomy picture.
I think we saw we saw in, I think what they call in English to stop times from invading must be some somewhere in the middle of open public.
This is coming out in May.
And this is related to the general topic here because in in my book on Hard Power,
I tried to and what I study tried to study was that it is this factor of military strategic culture in actors,
in European actors who are the willing and able.
And I edited that for a previous book on May two where we studied the NATO's willing and able.
Who are they in Europe? The European members.
And we said, well, we concluded we saw this weakness France, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
I don't know whether either of us presented who would contest that, but that was the general conclusion.
These are the countries that are fighting together often and in places.
Libya, we have great in France, Denmark, Norway, very,
very active with our air forces to such an extent that Robert Gates was very critical of Poland for not having contributed and Poland
sort of made a mistake about contributed because they didn't think the Americans would be would have a major role in that operation.
It would be led by the French, as it looks in the beginning.
Now, that wasn't the case because leading from behind what the Americans called it was very much an indispensable activity.
But you know very, very well, these are countries that are recurring in NATO's operations and also operations that are non-NATO operations.
Iraq, for instance, had Denmark being very active.
Norway didn't show up because of domestic political disagreements in the government,
but would normally have been the Enduring Freedom Afghanistan 2001.
Most of these countries had special forces going and so on.
So there is a rather big literature on strategic military culture that one can draw on to sort of certain whether this is true or not,
these conclusions. And it's very clear that Germany lacks this kind of culture.
One could say Germany had too much of its two world wars, and now it is still under sort of this pacifism.
And in domestic politics, although there are changes in Germany, is a sort of movement in this direction of being able to leave militarily.
We are hard from that situation. One is far from from a political, should one say, willingness maturity to do so.
And this is this illustrates the importance of this factor.
I think this the single most important factors of domestic politics of these.
Countries in terms of being willing to take risk, have losses, use military force as a deterrent, maybe also as a coercive tool of states.
And this is the Clausewitz sort of dictum that when one achieves political ends through the use of force in these ways,
usually deterrence is the most sort of useful and the most desirable way of using military force.
But this is a whole tradition of statecraft that is rather unknown in many countries today in Europe, but exists it persists, I should say, in some.
And what countries get together, PESCO or whatever format to save money?
This is an entirely different matter, really. One will not move from PESCO to Defence Union.
So what we find and what I find is that the sort of old fashioned strategic partnerships that the
logic of external threats and risk moves you to act together and like minded countries act together.
That remains, of course, it's it's a fact of life.
This is how it works in this system. And therefore,
that's a very sort of misplaced emphasis on this current EU defence union policy sort of that is presented as if the EU is replacing NATO's.
We're competing with myself because there simply isn't the substance behind there isn't any substance behind it.
It is very much sort of just wishful thinking, I believe.
And this has implications for how things will go in the future in the larger picture of transatlantic relations.
There is, in a way, an axis Washington, London, Poland, Norway, the northern countries, those that are in the willing and able category.
We like to think from Norway's side. We like to think we have an alliance in the alliance, a special relationship.
You have at least you like to think very much that you have a very special relationship and you do compare to everybody else.
And there's nothing to suggest that that will be diminished. I think for the Americans, it is sort of what do you bring to the table?
How useful are you? Do we have common interests?
What how can we sort of the intelligence close very close intelligence relationship that you have with Washington, that we have with Washington.
In that sense, we say Norway's NATO's in the north, meaning Norway provides the US with exceptional intelligence on Russia in the north.
So it is these facts that matter and they have to do with trust between governments and services.
And that is something entirely different from an open ended political process of 28 or 29 countries.
So depending on what sort of which needs we will have in security depends in the time ahead.
This will become, I think the this the C London Northern Europe dimension will become increasingly important and one
could say Sweden and Finland trying to insert themselves as much as they ever come in Washington,
London and with us in Norway, because we're NATO's testifies to this, because if Sweden and Finland believed in the Lisbon Treaty, they should.
You know, when you read this Article 42, six or 42 seven, I keep forgetting which what it what it was.
So I think if you read the text, it is much more obliging, it's much more serious, it's much more sort of clear than Article five or later.
It's actually says that all EU countries will assist each other militarily if one is threatened.
So it's sort of it's a wonderful text,
but the text Cosmo substantial although backing by anyone and France invoke that text after Friday Friday the 13th 2015.
On the when there was terror attack at Bataclan France in.
Volk But to Germany and other EU members say, now we need your solidarity.
What are you doing to sort of support us with. And the Germans were quite taken aback by this.
So clearly what is stated, what's even written into a treaty doesn't really matter very much unless there is this culture of saying,
yes, perhaps this is substantially important to us and we will honour these commitments.
And I'm reminded of that very much when I read EU documents on the Defence Union.
On how the EU now has a strategy.
There's a new global strategy for the EU that was adopted in June 2016.
You should read that because it says absolutely nothing strategic.
There's no strategy at all in the text. It's very much like a pep talk to to journalists.
The EU will be a world leader in this. The EU will do that, will promote these values.
It's a sort of litany of good intentions, but there is no strategic interaction with anybody.
There is no specification of which military needs.
Does the EU then have? How will it prioritise its strategic interests at this time?
With all the talk about the Defence Union. What does that require a defence union?
How do you specify the army needs for the Defence Union?
What will be the doctrines? And so on? The EU to EU strategy strategy documents.
They have a span of 13 years between them.
The one was first was in 2003 called it EU strategy was 16 pages a very big print in a way very airy documents that speak in that sense also.
And that was spurred by 2001 and Manhattan.
So it looked in the risk and threat assessment like the American security strategy at the time.
And then 13 years passes the pass and you get a new global strategy.
So this is the sort of the only really important question about the EU security and defence ambition
I think is the and the role of France with France in a way in all what would France prefer,
what are, what is the French thinking? And to provide you with an answer to that.
I looked at the review stratégique July, the France from November 2017.
It's maybe in English now on the Web page.
It's a very, very I would say it's a beautiful document.
I mean, it's beautiful in the logical sense of how it is structure, because it is it says these these are the requirements of sovereignty for us.
France is sovereign to the extent that it doesn't need anybody else, which is an interesting way of putting it.
We are we have the nuclear deterrence.
Therefore, we are able to be sovereign. We are not depending on anybody.
So this is very different from a German statement, which would probably be something like we are integrated in the EU, therefore we are sovereign.
Therefore we have thought of this. We couldn't be anything outside of the multilateral setting.
Now, this document is not very different from the from the level of law from 13 2013, which is familiar to you probably.
So this is a shorter piece.
But most important, I think, is that it says what what matters to us is the risk winning relevant military partners, the willing and able category.
We can only cooperate with countries that are able to fight professionally,
take risks, take losses, and with whom we with which we share interests, of course.
So it has a long path on Britain's importance on the US importance.
And then it says about the EU that the EU should also have autonomous military capability.
That is of course not defined really by anybody.
But the thinking in France from de Gaulle onwards, has always been that Europe should be upholding the multipolar.
Our system being able to deter, coerce militarily as well as economically.
So there is a I think that's a continuity in this way of thinking.
But France was reportedly very dismayed that this PESCO, which was supposed to get more money out of the spending, make it more rational,
more R&D that would do away with all these various weapons systems of Europe that 26 countries signed up to that.
Because the moment you have such a large group, it is a slow kind of process.
So I would say this very specific shows the the difference between the sort of bottom up money saving and the strategic cooperation.
And in this document, that's a very, very interesting figure on page 69,
which details what kind of cooperation can France enter into with countries where it has no sort of alliance obligations?
What are that? What does sovereignty require?
Which is the key question, of course, for every country.
What does sovereignty require in terms of how far you can go in the in various types of cooperation, integration?
And that is the sort of famous elephant, infamous elephant in the room, the debate that few politicians,
I think, are able to or willing to bear, neither able or willing to have that debate.
It's a very difficult debate, of course, because one come up again as I started,
by saying one cannot afford what one should afford in order to have traditional sovereignty anymore.
And here in Britain, you have a tortuous debate about course defence cuts for the time being.
So to to conclude the EU.
What's really most disconcerting about the EU is statements you'll get,
you'll get who always talks about the sort of uniqueness of the humanitarian act of the EU, that it's a soft power actor.
He even stated Soft power is not enough.
We need military power, which is sort of how will you square that with the sort of humanitarian image of the soft power actor, the normative actor.
But what's disconcerting is that the talk about these things union strategy, autonomous military capacity, it's so easy.
It's so superficial. There's no specification.
It's as if those who talk about smuggling, you name you don't get even tusk do not realise the seriousness of this, what this requires.
Which tells us something about sort of EU policy making it possible to make
statements to this effect without serious planning for what the implications are.
And that's is a problem because the Americans listen to this and they are quite irritated, to say the least.
Mattis and Munich demanded a clarification from the EU that it wouldn't duplicate NATO's in any way.
And it was at Munich. The Security Council conference was now in February.
There was so much hype about these EU plans and of course there's a lot of anti-American sentiment among European politicians due to Trump,
which lends itself to sort of wishful dreaming about an alternative EU defence capability.
And I think that but I think that the key actor in all of this is and remains France.
It's not Germany so much because Germany doesn't really think much work much on on the strategy.
At least it does. It has a formidable military industry, but that's something else.
And to end to conclude on the more even more disconcerting note,
all of the governments that are in the unwilling and unable category, those for whom strategy makes is unnecessary.
If it doesn't make sense that this unpleasantness of Russia particularly is something one can maybe just disregard.
It's much better. Had to be in denial that you have to think seriously about deterrence, about defence, national defence, about spending on defence.
And most NATO member states are in this category.
They are not very interested in this. It's nice to have Article five, but we don't have to think much about it.
And of course, the fact the modern change in character war today is of course, that Article five is the least likely to happen to you.
What's likely is a hit rate. It is strategic attack, a testing.
It is whatever Clausewitz could have taught us about how to use military force
without too much risk of escalation to Article five and then achieve your assaults.
And there are some very interesting articles analysing the enhanced forward presence in the Baltics along these lines,
saying that Russia could easily maybe get a situation of conflicts on the ground,
sort of conflict among civilians in the Baltic states imply involving some NATO's personnel that
could that that would be possible for the to to have this kind of a subversive performance.
Russia could also test Article five by a quick in and out and would then the 29 NATO members get together in Brussels and declare Article five?
The answer, of course, is no. When Ukraine happened, Crimea happened.
There was great confusion in the NSC and we think in similar terms.
What about Svalbard or Spitsbergen could have balance both where there are 800 Russian workers.
Maybe they needed a little protection for some days by Russian soldiers and this non-military, demilitarised archipelago.
What would happen in Brussels then? Would that be sort of an instant Article five declaration?
No, no. So if one wanted to sort of test this Article five business, there are there are legion ways of doing so.
And to sort of detect what happens, to be prepared to act on national security is a national national obligation.
It's not something the Americans will fly in to do for you. So I think this is there's a lot of sort of sleepwalking in Europe for the time being.
One hopes that all of this isn't really so serious won't happen.
And so because the the whole idea of Article five is that large scale, clear war situation, a high end scenario.
And of course, if I were an adversary of wanting to effect political influence in Europe various ways, I would use all other means.
But that and the Russians are very clever strategically, tactically.
So they undoubtedly have thought about this. So and just to remind ourselves in this article, this 2%, 2% spending is an imperial,
is an empirical indicator of how uninterested European governments are.
It's not the money that is not the 2%.
That is the magical number, but it is is just you solemnly declare at Wales you will reach this goal by 2024 and that well doesn't really matter.
And we should also remember that looking back at Crimea, the case 2014.
The two things that happened as a political reaction to Crimea, to the annexation of Crimea and the war fighting in Luhansk,
Donetsk is sanctions US the US made the sanctions, the US decided on the sanctions and imposed them on the EU.
The EU Europeans themselves did not make up the sanctions.
So it is that the policy leadership was American.
The same for the deterrence of with military conventional military force in Europe that currently is in place.
It was an American decision. Related one, but an American decision to spend and deploy, redeploy to Poland and rotate in East Central Europe.
And then the Europeans came along after that decision at the Warsaw Summit in 2016.
With these three battalions in the Baltic states.
So it is also disconcerting that it is U.S. leadership again and again and again for Europe.
Even if one were to it tremendously, this is where there isn't this sort of it's as if what doesn't fly now if they mean it.
We rarely criticise Trump and all of us. Let's be serious ourselves.
Thank you so much. And now we will have thoughts which the probability.