Jens Stoltenberg, who served as NATO’s Secretary-General over 2014-2024, addressed the Warsaw Security Forum on Oct. 1. He stressed that European nations’ military build-up and financial support for Ukraine is more important than European nations’ health, education, and infrastructure projects—fully endorsing the European Union’s intensifying austerity push that gouges the civilian economy to transfer the resources to the military economy. Stoltenberg, now Norway’s Finance Minister, stated: “I know that one additional billion to Ukraine or €1 billion extra to national defense is €1 billion less to other good purposes like health, education and infrastructure. But we must remember that the highest cost is to let Putin win.”
Other participants at the Warsaw Security Forum, held Sept. 29-30 in Warsaw, included Ukraine’s acting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybhia; Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul; Lord Vernon Coaker, Minister of State for Defense for the United Kingdom, and either the Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, or Security-related Minister of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Albania, Norway, Denmark, and Poland; and Lieutenant General (retired) Keith Kellogg from the United States.
The Warsaw Security Forum is hard-wired into the NATO leadership, including as its current participants: German General Ingo Gerhartz, current Commander of the NATO Allied Joint Force Command; Dutch Admiral (retired) Rob Bauer, Chair of the NATO Military Committee (2021–2025); and U.S. General (retired) Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander (2013-16).
