Today's session, slight difference for the end of term, we all talk a little bit about this book today,
this instruction three per cent. The challenge for now. So thank you all so much for coming.
And I have great pleasure energy seeing my colleague, young heart of McClary,
who's professor of international politics and Department of Physical Science
at University in Oslo and the Norwegian National Defence University College.
But she specialises, particularly in European foreign and defence policy and in international security.
Her work is on the polarisation and fragmentation of modern European politics.
So we have a bit of work today. Once she aims to better understand the visions of European democracies today and
what causes them to become divided between you subjects close to of our hearts.
Importantly, between 1997 and year 2000, Yona served as the deputy foreign minister in Tokyo,
partner the to the Christian Democratic government when she took that position.
She was the first woman to hold a high government post Norway since apparently the Protestant Reformation,
and that's politically important for her because she's not supported after her work as deputy foreign minister.
She served on the Norwegian Parliament Commission is also proposing changes to Norwegian Constitution for its 200th anniversary.
She's worked as a member of the National Defence Commission of Norway, sits on the board of Trustees for the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights.
She's a prolific author. I won't go through quite all of the books, but I did want to mention just a couple.
One in particular was the United Kingdom's defence.
After Brexit, Britain's alliances, coalitions and partnerships, which she co-edited with some lunatic,
called Robert Johnson, and I came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.
She's also written a really significant work hold power in hard times.
Can Europe act strategically? Which came out the same year? She's have prolific and hard working.
Yanna really is. She's also written on Ukraine and the security challenges to Europe and indeed on intervention to human rights in Europe.
Back in 2002,
she's the holder of the St Benedict prise convert conferred by Benedict to increase its Financial Italia for her work on European culture,
politics and 2009. The Pope appointed her a lifelong member of the Pontifical Academy of Science Social Sciences branch.
She served on the Council for Justice and Peace and consults with the Council for the Family with the Vatican.
So you have an extraordinary, rich pedigree, Joanna, and more importantly,
your great colleague really good would have some type of staff with of the century.
We are going to have some interventions, I hope, from others. Let's see on this page.
One of our authors on Shauna, who also is one of our authors from the volume.
I am not going to say anything because make it too long a session, but perhaps you can kick us off that we started.
Thank you. So thank you very much for all that sounded like a very interesting person you are introducing, as, I think, really amazed.
Oh, I can counter these or meet these expectations that have now raised tremendously.
But I will try to say something about how this book was produced and the idea behind it, the rationale behind it.
And as Rob said, we have we have to expect colleagues from the staff colleagues of Norway, one in the flesh,
in the room commando as they are to shift from the Navy and the other one who is from air.
The Air Force is going to join us also digitally.
So I'm here in Oslo. I know it's edited.
I spoke with Rob.
It became a large book of 24 chapters, and the general idea was to discuss what is military strategy today, especially in the European context.
Do states do strategy all state leaders, governments able to think strategically,
if at all in a way, is political strategy something that the politicians still do?
Or is that a foreign notion? Almost. And then, of course, the key question related to that just military strategy making a difference.
Does it exist in various native countries?
Does it really matter because we often see that as citizens that it is argued in his book of war from the ground up?
The tactics seem to be. In a way where strategy ought to be on politics becomes the result of that,
what happens on the ground is something that hasn't been thought through strategically.
There is no specification of a meaningful and state political and state for the use of force or for other kinds of strategic activity.
And we think that this is so important that these days increasingly important because other states use force also increasingly for political ends.
What I will refer to as political warfare.
But whether that's a term that is so if we can just look at the sort of layout of the book to the three parts of the book,
if I'm not mistaken, it's a book with 24 chapters authors from various countries.
It's it has contains three parts.
One is the generic part of what you strategy.
The second one is the part on how how should we think about strategy that challenges the risks of threats today, particularly for Nature Europe?
And the third part is on the individual native countries not selected for in the way of full
representation that the major states of Europe are that the United United States naturally,
is that a NATO strategy is in a prominent chapter in that third part.
And in the third part, we ask all the country authors to to pose the question Does my country or this country I'm writing about?
Does it do? Military strategy in any meaningful way?
Does it matter? Is it just the sort of pro-forma exercise of planning or is there really strategic thinking that matters to the country question?
And as you can imagine, the replies to all the outcomes of these chapters varies a lot.
Uh. Well, then of course, you are going to ask, hopefully.
And I think logically, what do I mean by strategy and what do we mean by strategy?
And that's the first part of the book The Generic The Part.
And of course, we have a standard definition of strategy. Ways and means strategic interaction being key.
That's planning is one thing. It's a linear activity.
It's a means to an end. But his strategy there will be competitors, adversaries and even enemies.
Therefore, strategic planning is risky as I develop in my chapter in that in the past, and the risks are not welcome to most politicians,
but also a strategy is difficult because the outcome the end will never be as the strategy has or date.
Yet without a strategy, one is completely clueless in the midst of battle in a way.
And we also discuss then and to what extent can one plan?
There seems to be an inherent contradiction in strategic planning,
emphasising plan and then the versatility of a strategy, the need for being able to adapt.
So we have two chapters in that first section on the so-called adaptive strategy,
and one can raise the question to what extent is that something you at all?
Is it a new line in old bottles or is it an heightened awareness of the need for adaptation that it's very difficult to specify a political end goal,
for instance, for Afghanistan, but it's not being a good example of the lack of a better strategy.
A lot of tactical operational planning, a lot of good outcomes at the tactical and operational level, at least for quite some time.
Then sort of the major problem from the very beginning of this 20 year old operation,
namely the lack of a meaningful political goals for it and creating democracy, etc.
Our colleague, Ivan the outgoing Typekit,
wrote an article about Afghanistan entitled Afghanistan as a whole with h o l e and that was not a misspelling.
So in a way, the the. Difficulty in the complex in complex environments says almost all are specifying a goal beforehand
is something that preoccupies those that do research on this adaptive model of strategy.
In the second part of the book, we try to analyse challenges, risks and threat picture.
And I think here it's very interesting to note is that for Europe, on the one hand,
there is a heightened sort of conventional risk with Russia massive forces for the
second time this year on the Ukrainian border by more than a hundred thousand troops.
This is conventional. I mean, the one that might argue that Russia is quite conventional.
It's there isn't that big difference between conventional Article five kind of risk in France and great or so Article five of political warfare,
a sign I will refer to it using George Kennedy's term for it.
So in a way, we have a heightened conventional risk, so to speak, for NATO.
So there's a need to deter Russia to to to be strong in the conventional strategic sense.
But at the same time, there is an everyday warfare going on, which we could turn a political warfare.
So Article five, which requires sophisticated strategic thinking,
and I think that's where we find Europeans much less prepared and this is where Europeans are themselves in charge, so to speak.
A good example is the testing of NATO countries pressures migrants as weapons,
and that has been used by Russia twice and Norway, Finland, which is 60 now Lukashenko by Morocco and against Spain.
It was last year a clear political political testing, political pressure sometimes bordering on using force.
Military force, sometimes not. So is this very interesting picture of on the one hand, they hide the need for understanding the use of force.
On the other hand, the heightened political nature of this.
Even though I would say when Russia stirs tension in the US, it's still deniable.
It's being denied. Yet the reason is not to own a piece of Ukraine.
The reason is to have a negotiating card. So in the reason this ostensibly political, it's not tied to the territory yet.
The meetings are very conventional military means of using the army and the special forces.
So. So is Europe prepared for tackling this?
Is the risk of cheating ability for dealing with what Ron Johnson and his real include chapter.
In this part, I think it's Chapter six or nine.
I'm not sure of where it has. This may take some states cooperate.
Normal for Europeans, states compete. Also normal for European diplomacy, so to speak.
But then is another see coercion and force, seeing confrontation and the conflicts of things.
So there's a whole spectrum of interaction between states today that is not benign,
but it's not classifiable as being cooperation or even competition, but is confrontation.
And I think it's very clear that most European states not able to prepare really for this kind of political warfare.
So in this chapter, we have in this part, we have chapters on nuclear risk threats,
conventional risk threats, favourites or political terrorist threats, et cetera.
And in the third part of the book, and a very interesting analysis of NATO's strategic thinking and work on a new military strategy,
which is, of course, classified, but also the run up to the strategic concept and all the US role in NATO's.
I think the conclusion to the book,
the main conclusion has really been or is really that there's the need for strategic seriousness in Europe at present,
and I have the last slide, if I recall from making them yesterday is really using Ukraine as an example of that euro to call Naito, Naito or Europe.
I'm sure the state Senator Martin, a surly, doesn't have a strategy for Ukraine,
Georgia and these states that Russia regarded within the sphere of interest, but which Western countries certainly cannot regard in this way.
But we are not going to involve ourselves militarily, although there are complaints that the rumours in the press talk in nature.
What I heard yesterday from an ambassador there of strong U.S. involvement on the military side by now.
But that's beside my point.
My point is simply that without them, the map of a strategy without having thought about strategy, to what extent will one get involved?
On the one hand, one cannot say from the western side that it's OK to do as you please because these are not the EU and NATO members.
On the other hand, and one doesn't want to owe Ukraine will get involved militarily.
So a strategy has to be found where whereby western states use other means, economic means,
political pressure, etc. and that has to be thought about before the package.
Now we will maybe again be caught in a reactive mode, having to scramble to find the way forward.
So the need for strategic thinking on the political side and for the use of force as the states ultimately will not always will ultimate.
But the states too is indeed quite lacking in many European states,
although France and Britain are certainly exceptions to this with a very recent comprehensive strategic documents.
So Rome, I think that was my introduction, and I leave the floor to you and to the others, and I will be happy to discuss and take questions.
You know, it's very, very kind of you. Thank you so much. I'm not sure who's going to go next, whether you can go.
OK, so, so hold on others. We'll come to you quite soon.
But let me introduce briefing sheets.
Steinitz, also captain section head of military strategy and joint operations at the Norwegian Defence University and Staff College,
and also lots of service, both in international and the Norwegian national staffs.
He served a Norwegian joint headquarters, and I should just point out as well that he's been part of the UK's own maritime battle staff,
combined joint operations, the Sea Centre of Excellence in Norfolk, Virginia. So he's had an American experience too.
And it's we should probably just use the expression Ubiquiti, I think,
to describe naval officers in future because you've served everywhere in every ocean.
Do you want to just say a few words to a stone about your own work? You did, you know?
And thank you very much for the nice introduction,
and I have to add to that that I've just joined the staff colleagues from the joint headquarters when this book was sort of starting to to be.
People want the idea and I was dragged into it, and I really it was a really, really interesting experience.
I have to say and represent what this book actually is.
I will have to say it's a nice piece of work that brings practitioners and academics
together in order to have a balanced view on the challenges and the idea for this chapter,
which was basically the maritime strategy, NATO's maritime strategy and challenges.
It was captured when I was deployed on a German frigate doing an American led coalition
operations CTF 150 in an operation Norway strategically didn't support CTF 150.
Yes, hunting terrorists in the middle of the time where pirates and the pirate situation sort of bloomed in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean,
and suddenly you came along and dared to counter piracy operations and Naito came along.
And we all know that who is contributing, which ships to NATO and to EU and to American?
LED coalition operations, it's more it's a lot of the same nations,
and there is a challenge related to how do they do this and what they need to actually do.
What was this? The target aim for Naito to be in in the Gulf of Aden?
Unless, you know, it's all about being relevant, which probably is a good reason for why they did it.
So that was the idea. I was curious about that.
So, so and we have to remember that us, it's not that long ago, even though it is 1990.
Admiral Kelso, CNO, U.S. Navy, said that we don't need a national strategy anymore.
Cold War was over. There is no competition in the maritime domain.
And when we did maritime security operations, the Naito Maritime Strategy is actually from 2011.
So in the middle of the time when Naito and others were doing maritime security operations, they developed their strategy.
So this it's no surprise that this strategy is very much focussing on on maritime security operations.
So when the eu-nato on all of us, we're sort of hunting terrorists chasing pirates in the Gulf of Aden,
Russian Navy was undergoing modernisation of process missiles, submarines and it was not paid a lot of attention to.
It wasn't unknown, but it was not in the focus of people that develop strategies and plans.
So. Yeah.
Naito had a strategy from 2010 11, U.S., U.K. also, her maritime strategy is U.S. still have maritime strategy,
and they're doing a little bit of comparing the demands on strategies in the chapter.
And U.S. strategies are still naval, still maritime.
UK strategies are sort of being brought in towards an all of government strategy looking into the total picture.
Global Britain being may be the last piece in that respect.
So when we looked into this, the question we asked What about technology?
Is technology actually and adversary technology and developing of that I challenge solid submarines,
long range missiles introduced by Russia and China.
We look into those and basically they are they have an impact and that would have an impact on how we develop maritime strategies also in nature.
But even the only Chinese not representing a direct threat to NATO, I mean, the U.S. is very focussed on China.
And if the US is focussed on China, it will have an implication for NATO that it's out of the question.
We think no. The conclusion we made to make this a short and brief romp is that the technology is definitely a challenge,
but we ended up with the fact that gold plating maritime structures in nature and in the western world is extremely expensive.
We have some examples in the chapter tied 42 to type 45 in the UK, 14 to six.
There are several examples of the single class big ideas of 32 ships,
ending up with three due to cost and challenges the Gerald Ford class carrier extremely expensive.
You've had your discussions in the UK as well related to carriers, carrier strike groups and the consequences of having an operational carrier.
Strike groups is brings basically with it the rest of the Navy.
When you are deploying it, so technology high end front edge is expensive.
Numbers are getting reduced. It leaves big gaps.
Open gaps when Queen Elizabeth goes to the Far East.
What is left in Europe, that is sort of questions where we are looking into and the challenge the biggest challenge relate to.
Basically, we say it's about numbers, it's quantity versus quality.
Mathematically, shapes can do the same when it comes to technology.
Number of missiles, range and everything. But if you only have that number of ships, it gets very difficult for Naito to have a maritime strategy.
And we have seen a lot of examples, all native not able to fill its standing naval groups.
Why is that? Well, it can be priorities for four nations, but mainly it turns out again to be about numbers available.
Numbers for native Norway had command of S&M and you want standing Naval Maritime Group one just recently.
As of two many months of that year, the Norwegian frigate, the command ship,
sailed alone with a German tanker going into the Baltic Sea, showing the flag.
I don't know if that you think deterrence by that, but you know, very small group.
And why isn't nations actually filling up as they are supposed to do?
That's the question we are asking, and it turns out to be novice.
I think I'll stop there. Thank you much to Super.
A useful illustration of just one of the chapters and some of the dilemmas and problems that we sort of face on this.
I'm hoping that you are on the line. Let me just briefings you see if you're still there. Anders is a colonel,
currently associate professor in pedagogy at Norwegian Police University College and Norwegian Defence University College and DCU in Oslo.
He's formerly been the research and development director of the Command of Staff College Pass Programme,
director of the UK's Master's Programme in Military Studies.
He's editor in Chief of the Spring, A Handbook of Military Sciences.
He's the president of the International Society of Military Sciences.
Is AMS as Wales, as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Armed Forces and Society.
And we've got all sorts of plans, some great plans underway, which we'll hear about this morning.
Anders, do give us your pitch, please.
Oh, Rob, and all the rest of you. Well, and as Robert saying at the time of death, the chapter of this book was developing.
I was there. I was the programme director of the Master's Studies in Military Studies at Innovation Defence University College in Oslo.
The reason why I'm mentioning this is because the chapter we wrote, making sure I have a short presentation of it and I'll do well before I start.
So I hope you can see see the slides that we can.
Yes, go ahead. So, so I'll accept it was the making of military strategy, the gravity of an equal dialogue.
I co-wrote this with my colleague working on this, and the reason why we did it was partly because from our teaching, our staff,
college students may just be coming to town colonels we had over the years under
the impression that they were struggling with the concept of military strategy.
What is it here? Doesn't belong to what we put into it?
Where does it come in into action?
So at the same time, many of our students had served in the Baltics, Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have sort of encountered,
is this this mismatch between the political aims that they were reading about in the newspapers and the tasks they were given on the ground?
So when you learn that the approach this project said that they wanted people to write in it, we suggested the chapter on on on this topic.
So I'm not going to go to the chapter you are able to read about, but I'm just going to give you a quick teaser, enter into it,
and I'm going to do this by showing you this sort of so you and to these small groups of figures that you draw within the group for
the project and what you are talking about and the challenges that that are where they're just military strategy they belong to,
to the political side of the discussion agenda, the political agenda between the military and the civilian society, or does it belong to the military?
That was the first sort of issue that our our students were facing.
And as you think about the military strategy seen from dawn to pass from a political perspective,
military strategy is sort of just it's all over the bottom layers of deal of the day every day dealing with real conflicts.
So they think about military strategy as something that they can department lies down to the military.
Well, the military's military strategy becomes sort of the top echelon of operational art.
So in the military, you stretch up tours. Then you talk about military strategy.
So already there is a sort of a disconnect between how we talk about military strategy in those two communities.
So we tried to kind of try to discuss a bit about it.
How how, how is this and what are the consequences of such an understanding?
So, so we think about military strategy in this chapter as containing both civilian and military elements,
and they belong somewhere in the nexus between statecraft and operational art.
So that's sort of our starting point. Let me try to look into some of them,
some of the doctrines and to see if there is consistency in how we talk about it and how we and how it is to U.S. markets in the region.
Joint Operation Doctrine describes describes military strategy as about translating politics and political ambitions into military strategy,
objectives and ambitions. So if it sounds pretty much like survey ends ways and means discussion,
but then in this sort of very talented Tony and we're looking at the divide between the civil society and military society.
So the sense in the recent way of theorising about this is that there is a sort of a line drawn in the sand.
It said it, it's like a war, but it's just it's a line drawn in the sand.
You know, militaries don't cross it over to the civilian side and the civilians don't cross over to the military.
Well, we of course, know that this is just an arc to.
The goal they are looking at, it is not necessarily the way it is in reality, so so when we look further into it,
for instance, we look at the UK perspective the way the UK sort of described it in their joint publications 001 from 2014.
They say the military strategy has a role to play in developing policy through delivering military advice,
including ultimately the advice delivered by Chief of Defence Staff to the Prime Minister.
It's not that it's completely different from an invasion perspective, but it's it emphasises the military role as an adviser.
And it depicts a much clearer responsibility to participate in the building of policy.
Television innovation in the framing does so in a sense.
We've actually talking more of something like this. So it crosses each other's boundaries, though,
so it's more like a grey zone and and you call this sort of political ambiguity that we have to discuss.
So in the chapter, we try to try to discuss the phenomenon of military strategy,
and the last stories of the British perspective is much more like all of its perspective of how we see the British Intelligence Society.
So this is basically what the chapter does. It discusses this way of looking at military strategy.
Where does it belong? What does it entail and how?
How do we make sense of it?
I think I'll stop there from our role because I think that gives sort of a broad understanding of the chapter on and this very,
very kind of been very clearly done us as classically you do.
You've got a very thorough understanding of how theory can be understood through practise and vice versa, which is very useful.
I'm not going to add anything at all to the bottom because these guys have done such a super job.
It's no, well, I race where we're sort of up to time ready.
We've had interesting discussion about military strategy.
What is it? How is it implemented? Why is it missing in action, which I think was this time one of the phrases that you all use, right?
The very beginning of all our projects. We've heard a bit about civil military.
I'm not gonna say cooperation, but at least differences of policy, differences of perspective.
And one of these, essentially there, is that there are always differences of primacy that's not new, regardless of the international situation.
Civil servants, those unsung heroes and heroines of, you know, of the UK government and our governments, they the continuity people, you know,
ministers may have particular agendas in a very short period of time, but they are they were important figures in in this process, too.
And so that signature dialogue is not just in politicians and military personnel.
Let's just keep that in mind as well. I think we got three things like we came out of this strategy we're hearing it's become rather defensive
for Europeans and for most people whom I think might even have become no more than risk management,
which is quite worried because that's not what it originally set out to be at all.
It's used by some actors that risk management risk is used as leverage.
And I think that's a really interesting problem for us to solve is how willing
certain actors are in the world at the moment to use risk to their advantage.
And we heard about political warfare in great depth. You know, George Cannon's work seems to echoed still down the ages for us.
Suddenly, we was about strategy as executing policy for foreign policy goals, maximising freedom of action.
Maximising choice, I think is important for Western democratic nations.
And it's funny we have to wait and see. But this is the strategy is about decisions.
And maybe the lack of strategy is a lack of courage to make really difficult decisions
at the moment in a geopolitical environment because seven years since the 1990s,
we've actually forgotten how to take these really, really tough decisions.
But ultimately, if you excuse the fact the British prime minister thinks there's a Peppa Pig strategy, forgive me.
Forgive me, forgive me. That actually is a reminder that war is far too serious.
A business and strategy supports business to leave only to politicians.
Military personnel have a role to play. But the encouraging one I want you to get away with is that actually,
perhaps the reason there isn't a clear military strategy for native nations is because NATO's already won.
It's already got what it wants, which is a peaceful world.
Rules based international system, international by design and its military forces are rather like a fleet in being it exists.
And that is itself the success story the nightmare been. Since 1949.
So I want to say thank you to on Norwegian team, who are only one small fraction of the alliance effort.
When is this potential? First, this short as we have our Canadian sort of attention with this is.
So thank you to all of you for the project and particularly to the Norwegian government who actually put up the money to do this.
So I'm really grateful for those are my fellow authors, particularly China.
Anders Yang and all the others who are not here represent say thank you to Hearst as well.
And if you are looking for a Christmas present for the price of a small bottle
of wine or even a fraction of a bottle of champagne thirteen pounds on Amazon,
apparently you can get yourself a military strategy in 21st century, the challenge for next time, and we're always happy to sign copies for you.
Thank you very much. Thank.