NATO defense ministers, meeting in Brussels yesterday on the first of two days of meetings, endorsed what NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described afterwards as “a new overarching plan to defend our Alliance in crisis and conflict, to make sure that we continue to have the right forces at the right place, at the right time, to protect our one billion people from any threat.” The new plan includes: “significant improvements to our air and missile defenses, strengthening our conventional capabilities with fifth generation jets, adapting our exercises and intelligence, and improving the readiness and effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.”
“What we did today was to address and also make important decisions on how NATO should respond to a more competitive world, where we see more state-to-state rivalry, and where actually we see the whole global balance of power is shifting because of the rise of China,” Stoltenberg said when asked about China. “So when you address this whole new security environment with new threats and new challenges, of course, part of that picture is China. And the fact that China is heavily modernizing its military capabilities, including advanced nuclear systems and long-range missile systems, and also that we see China coming much closer to us, not least in cyberspace. So that’s what we actually are addressing.”
Regarding Russia, Stoltenberg reported that the alliance has been increasing its presence in the Black Sea “because the Black Sea is of strategic importance for NATO.” He further said that “we are constantly assessing what more we can do, partly by increasing the presence but also partly by increasing our ability to quickly deploy forces if needed. And that’s exactly why we need high readiness of our forces.”
