Remarks

Moderator: Please join me in welcoming the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: So, thank you so much, Andrew, and many thanks to all of you for welcoming me here today.  As you mentioned, this is my third visit.  I remember last time, I think that’s three years ago, then we started to discuss whether I should come back and to give a speech, and we have struggled since then to find a time, but now we actually finally succeeded, so therefore I'm very glad that I'm able to be here once again, and this time to actually say some words and also to answer some questions.

At the entrance to NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels, a twisted piece of metal stands vigil.  It is a rusted, six foot section of a steel girder that was recovered from this spot, in the ruins of the Twin Towers.  This is a fragment of American history, which is also an important part of NATO’s history, and I want to thank the National September 11 Memorial for making it available to NATO.  It serves as a powerful symbol of the enduring partnership and friendship between the United States and its NATO Allies across Europe and Canada.  It is also a daily reminder of the deadly dangers posed by terrorism, the importance of standing together to protect our people and our values.

Coming here to Ground Zero is a time for solemn reflection, a time to pay tribute to the innocent victims of 9/11, a time to remember the suffering, the sorrow, and the staggering loss on that terrible day.  But let us also recall the sense of community and the common purpose that emerged from the wreckage.

The goal of terrorism is always to spread fear and to sow discord and division and disunity.  Our response to terrorism, in all its forms, wherever it appears, is to unite and stand up for our open and free societies.  We have many different tools in the fight against terrorism and we need to use them all, because terrorism comes in many different forms and wears many different guises.  It rears its head in conflicts far away, but also in our own cities.  To fight radicalisation at home, we need social workers, teachers and religious leaders, poets and artists, people from all walks of life.  We need our police and our intelligence services.  To bring an end to conflicts which fuel terrorism, we need political, diplomatic, and economic efforts.  And we need military might.  NATO’s involvement in the fight against terrorism stems directly from the 9/11 attacks on the United States.  For the first and only time in NATO’s history, we invoked our Article 5, our collective defence clause of our Founding Treaty, which states that an attack against one is an attack against all Allies.

In the days that followed the 9/11 attack, NATO planes helped to patrol American skies.  Soon after, troops from NATO Allies deployed to Afghanistan, to prevent that country from ever again becoming a safe haven for international terrorists.  Since then, hundreds of thousands of troops from America’s NATO Allies, and our partners, have stood shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers in Afghanistan.  More than 1,000 have paid the ultimate price.  And today, NATO Allies continue to stand with the United States, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  All NATO Allies take part in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. NATO provides surveillance aircraft and training.  We have fought counter-terrorism tactics in countries like Egypt, Mauritania and Morocco, and our troops are helping to develop Special Forces in Jordan and Tunisia.  We recently decided to boost NATO’s contribution to the fight against terrorism with a new training mission in Iraq and more support for our partners in the Middle East and North Africa.  We also agreed to sustain our military and financial support for Afghanistan.  Training local forces is one of the best weapons we have in the fight against terrorism, because prevention is better than intervention.  Instead of deploying large numbers of combat forces, in combat missions and operations, it is more sustainable to help our neighbours to stabilise their own countries.  If our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure.

Visiting this solemn space reminds us of what is at stake, so I want to thank you for creating this poignant and powerful memorial and museum, along with educational programmes about the 9/11 attacks and terrorism, helping to bolster our resilience and reminding us who we are.  Your guidance and inspiration have been helpful to other countries and communities that have suffered from terrorism.

I was Prime Minister of Norway on 22nd July 2011, a date that will live in infamy in the history of our small country.  Seventy-seven innocent men and women, boys and girls, were coldheartedly killed by a hate-filled white Norwegian, with an extremist ideology and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians.  In the years since then, Norway has benefited from the invaluable insights from the National September 11 Memorial, helping Norway to heal and to reaffirm our own memorials, in the strong resolve to preserve freedom and to end hatred and intolerance.  In Norway, at Utøya, the island that was attacked, we created a memory tree, inspired by the survivor tree here at Ground Zero.

A month after the Twin Towers fell, workers uncovered the last living thing to emerge from the rubble.  Only a few signs of life, a few determined leaves remained.  For nine years, the survivor tree was lovingly nursed back to health and then returned here to the Memorial Plaza in 2010.  A Phoenix risen from the ashes.  You have donated seedlings from the survivor tree to communities that have been scarred by tragedies, here in the United States and abroad.  A living symbol of hope, renewal and rebirth.  And I am really honoured that you are donating one of the survivor tree seedlings to be planted at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, a living companion of that twisted piece of metal from the rubble of the Twin Towers.  It will commemorate the thousands of NATO soldiers who have given their lives in fighting terrorism.

So, now I would like to present two gifts of my own to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  One is a photograph of our 9/11 and Article 5 Memorial at the entrance to the NATO Headquarters.  The second is a copy of NATO’s Founding Treaty.  The Treaty enshrines the enduring partnership between North America and Europe, and a binding commitment to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, values that strengthen us and will help us prevail over hatred, violence and intolerance.  So, I don’t know who's going to receive the gift, but one of you have to come up and then all of you.  So, this is the picture and this is actually from here.  And we inaugurated this piece, this steel girder, at the NATO Summit, the NATO leaders’ meeting in May 2017.  So, that was a great event, and it stand there… everyone who goes into the NATO Headquarters, they have to pass this piece from the Twin Tower, and it's the 9/11 Article 5 Memorial, because as you said, this was the first and only time we invoked Article 5.  And so far, our biggest military operation ever is a direct consequence of the terrorist attacks here at Ground Zero.  So, that’s the first gift.

Moderator: That’s nice.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: Thank you.  And then I have one more and that is this one, this is actually our Founding Treaty.  The good thing is that actually there are many international treaties which are very long and very complicated, this is very brief and very easy to understand, so that shows - what shall I say - the greatness of the people who created the Washington Treaty back in 1949 and it actually briefly just says that if one Ally is attacked we are all under attack, so this is the NATO Founding Treaty.

Moderator: And in return, whenever we get gifts, we give trees back, but in return, the Secretary General did mention our intention to make the donation of the seedling, which will be planted at NATO Headquarters.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: Thank you so much.

Moderator: If you would take a seat.  Well, thank you again on all of our behalves for coming here and making time in your schedule.  You spoke to obvious moving effect, about the attack in Norway, your role as Prime Minister.  I wonder the impact that you saw that happening… that having within Norwegian society and the impact of that on you, particularly as you moved into the role of NATO Secretary General.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: The impact on Norway was I think that in one way we lost our innocence, because we thought that this was something that couldn’t happen in Norway.  Terrorism and terrorist attacks were something that could happen in other countries, but not in Norway.  And then suddenly it happened in Norway and it not only happened in Norway, but the scale and the scope of that terrorist attack is one of the biggest in Europe over many, many years.  So, of course, if you measure the number of casualties, it's much bigger what happened here, but if you measure against other terrorist attacks in Europe or against the size of the Norwegian population, five million, then this was really something really big, really awful, and also the character of the violence shocked us all.

The strength was… and what I think impressed us all, was the way the Norwegian people reacted, because instead of hatred and, in a way, revenge, it was about tolerance, democracy, openness, to guard those principles and those values that were under attack.  And there were many expressions of that, but one of the strongest expressions was what we called these, the Rose Marches - hundreds of thousands of people walking out in the streets, expressing their support for open and free Norwegian society, and I think we have been able to maintain a high level of trust and openness in Norway.

Then you asked me…

Moderator: About the Secretary General's role.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: To be honest, it has been extremely useful.  And perhaps that’s the wrong thing to say, but I think that, for me, it is useful to have been so close to a terrorist attack, because when I came to NATO, of course it was about a more assertive Russia, Ukraine and the challenges in the East, but I came to NATO when we really had to step up in the fight against Daesh/ISIS, in Iraq/Syria, when we saw many serious terrorist attacks in our own streets, in Paris, in Brussels, in London, and elsewhere.  So, terrorism came very high on my agenda and I met and I talked to many political leaders in other NATO Allies [sic] who suffered terrorist attacks, and for me to be able to share with them the experience, the importance of unite against our values.  I remember for instance, we marched in the streets of Paris, there were many political leaders from European countries and elsewhere, and that was not the same as the Rose Marches in Oslo, but it was something similar.  People going out in the streets, saying that we don’t want to be intimidated, we don’t want to be scared, we want to protect the normal life of people living in Paris, going to cafes, living normal lives.  So, it has been an advantage for me to have my experience from Norway when I discuss these issues with political leaders in other NATO Allied countries, as Secretary General of NATO.

Moderator: Yes, you speak about the importance of values, and these are what underpin NATO.  You talk about these efforts to remember, it's also a matter of remembering who we are.  And yet, I wonder if you find, given the political turmoil in many countries, the tensions within all kinds of societies, do you think that we, whoever we are, do we still agree on what our values are, or is there something fundamentally being contested right now?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: Fundamentally, I think we agree and understand the value of open, free societies, depending a bit on who we are. So… and at least I think that as soon as those values are under real threat, at least we understand how important they are, either under real threat from terrorist organisations, from terrorist threats, or from governments or adversaries.  So, I think the danger is that sometimes when you take these values for granted, it's easy to forget how important it is to uphold them and to defend them.

Then I think what we have to admit is that sometimes we have different views on how we best protect them and actually how we practice these values in the best possible way.  And this is of course a bit sensitive, because this is also a discussion inside the Alliance, but fundamentally I think that there is a broad understanding of the value of open, free societies.  And the main response from NATO Allies when they are under terrorist attack, is to unite around those values.

Moderator: You spoke about the challenges that the Alliance faces and I wanted to turn immediately to the question of Russia, and obviously Russia is an adversary, if that’s the right word, to the United States of course, to the NATO Alliance.  Describe if you would, the strategy that you see the Russians putting into play here, whether it’s in terms of military efforts or in terms of efforts to undermine the confidence of societies, in the values you’ve just described.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: So, what we see is a more assertive Russia, and Russia uses both the tools you mentioned.  They use military efforts, military capabilities.  We have seen that in Ukraine, illegally annexing Crimea.  We have seen it, for instance, in Syria, where they also provide strong and very powerful support for the Assad Regime, with military means.  But they also use what we call hybrid techniques or tactics, which is, you know, more covert tools or activities, meddling in political processes in different member states and partner nations of NATO, disinformation and propaganda.  And the whole thing is that if one NATO Ally is under attack, armed attack, then we trigger Article 5 and we defend each other.  And we have done a lot over the recent years to improve our capability to do exactly that.  The challenge now is that we are challenged with what we call tools or activities below Article 5.  So, it's not so serious, not so visible, not so overt that we can react by invoking Article 5.  For instance, disinformation - we saw the Skripal case.  We saw recently Greece expelled some Russian officials that were meddling in the political process in Greece related to the name agreement between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia¹, a very important issue in that part of Europe.  So, NATO has to be able to respond both to an armed attack, which is something we have prepared for and planned for, for 70 years, but we also need to be able to respond to something which is below a full armed attack.  And that’s about intelligence, that’s about cyber, improving our cyber defences.  That’s about also meeting the disinformation and the propaganda, and that’s partly about NATO providing facts and countering some of the disinformation which is out there, or helping member states to do so.  But I think one of the most important things we do to counter disinformation and propaganda is to stand up for a free and open press, or a free and open media, because at the end of the day it has to be the media, journalists, that ask the difficult questions, that check their sources, and are able to discover when another state tries to meddle in political processes, in one or another NATO Ally.

Moderator: This meddling in the political processes is said to be part of the Russian strategy, Putin's strategy, to essentially put a wedge into the Alliance, so that some members become weaker.  And as we say, you're only as strong as your weakest link.  Would you agree with that assessment and do you think he has… or the Russians have made headway in that regard?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I think Russia tries to divide us, Russia doesn’t like NATO, that’s the end of it. And that’s fair enough, they disagree with us, they don’t like that we stand together, and that’s a Russian position.  And of course, they would regard it as a great success if they were able to divide us.  And, to be honest, we see some divisions between Allies, not only initiated by Russia, but for different reasons we see differences between NATO Allies.  What I say, when I'm confronted with that, is that NATO is an alliance of 29 democracies, on both sides of the Atlantic, and there has been and there will be differences between different, independent nations, with different culture, different history, different political parties in government.  So, there will be differences.  The strength of NATO is that we, despite these differences, have always been able to unite around our core task, and that is to protect and defend each other.  So, as long as we are able to continue to do that, we can live with differences.  Actually, differences, open discussions, disagreements, it's not always a sign of weakness, it's very often a sign of strength, as long as we are able to unite around our core task.  And I'm afraid this answer is a bit long, but let me add then…

Moderator: Please.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: Because sometimes we forget that we have seen serious disagreements between NATO Allies before.  You know, I watch the TV series, The Crown, so I learn a lot from that.  TV series are very… don’t tell anyone, but it's very useful to watch.  And one of the episodes there is about, you know, the Suez Crisis, which was a big crisis in the relationship between US and France and United Kingdom, they went into military action against Egypt, and United States was against and it was really a bad… it really created a really bad relationship between the United States and two main European NATO Allies, and it was a political crisis in UK.  Well, that was during the coldest period of the Cold War, and NATO continued to deliver deterrence and defence, despite the Suez Crisis.  Ten years later, you know, NATO used to have its headquarters not in Brussels, but in Paris, and I've seen the beautiful building where the NATO Headquarters used to be, with a view to the Eiffel Tower, and we had both our civilian headquarters and our military headquarters in Paris. Then, in 1967, the relationship between President Johnson and President De Gaulle turned not so very constructive, so we just had to leave.  And we left.  And I was not attending NATO meetings at that time, but I guess the meetings were not the best atmosphere we have seen.  And then, some years later, we disagreed on the Iraq war.  Some Allies were heavily involved in the Iraq war in 2003, other Allies were strongly against.  We have overcome… we have been able to overcome all these differences and disagreements and still be the most successful, the strongest alliance, in history, protecting each other.  So, we cannot guarantee that NATO will always be able to overcome disagreements, but at least we have proven that we are able to do it and my ambition, my task, my responsibility is to make sure that, despite the differences we see, we should be able to do it also in the future.

Moderator: Thank you.  Speaking of some differences, there's been talk about the contribution of various NATO members to the budgets of their own militaries, and therefore to the Alliance.  I wonder if you could speak about the NATO response to the President's comments about this.  And also, in relation to that, whether you think the bottom line of budget contributions is the way to assess the value of the Alliance.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: First, NATO Allies had agreed to invest more in defence, not to appease the United States but because it is in our own security interest to strengthen our collective defence.  Then, in addition, when European Allies and Canada invest more, we also contribute to a fairer burden-sharing within the Alliance, which I think is fair, because the burden-sharing now is imbalanced.  The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is approximately as big as the Gross Domestic Product of European NATO Allies.  Despite that, the US spends more than twice as much on defence.  So, therefore we had agreed that those who are spending less than 2% of GDP on defence should increase and reach the 2% guideline.  The good news is that that’s exactly what the European Allies have started to do.  They have a long way to go, but after years of cutting, of declines in defence budgets, we now see an increase.  Last year, we had the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, more than 5%.  And just over the two last years, we had more than 41billion extra US dollars from Canada and the United States invested in defence.  I agree we needed a fairer burden-sharing.  The good news is that we have started to deliver on that, but still we have a long way to go.  In 2014, when we made this decision, it was actually only three Allies that met the 2% guideline, and this year we expect eight Allies to meet the 2% guideline, and even those who are below have started to move towards the 2% guidelines, so it's going in the right direction.

Then you asked me whether defence spending is the only way to measure.  No, of course not.  NATO is a political and military alliance.  We need to deliver military strength, collective defence, but we need also to deliver political efforts, diplomatic efforts.  I am strongly in favour with dialogue with Russia, for instance, to try to diffuse tensions, to avoid a new arms race, so we have many other tasks than just delivering military strength.  And let me also add that I was Minister of Finance back in the 1990s in Norway and I was able to cut defence budgets.  I am really good at that, I know exactly how to do it, and it's just to contrast military spending with healthcare. So, I know… and I'm not ashamed of that, because the thing is that it's possible to reduce defence spending when tensions are going down, and after the end of the Cold War, after the Berlin Wall came down and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, then it was actually the right thing to do, to cut or reduce defence spending.  So, you can do that when tensions are going down, as long as you are able to increase defence spending when tensions are going up, as they are doing now.  So, therefore, I am now a strong advocate for increased investments in defence.

Moderator: You mentioned Afghanistan in your remarks and it's 17 years that combat has been underway there, with the United States and its NATO Allies.  In this country certainly there is a sense of, does this ever end?  Are we going to be there forever, because we’ve been there the longest military engagement we've had?  What do you see as the end game in Afghanistan?  And this debate in the US that I've mentioned, about whether we should continue this commitment, do you see that debate being duplicated in some of the NATO countries that have been there for so long as well?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: We have there for 17 years and I think it's fair and right to ask questions about whether it's right to continue, because we should not only continue just because we have been there.  We need a deliberate decision, we need some real assessments about whether to stay or not, before we make our decisions.  And we have done that, and we need of course also to continue to do that, but the conclusion has been that we should stay.  Mainly because … there are high costs related to staying in Afghanistan.  We have more than 16,000 NATO troops there in a train, assist and advise mission.  It's a high financial cost and it's a political cost, and of course it is a human cost; we still have some casualties.  But when you compare the cost of staying with the cost of leaving, our conclusion is that the cost of leaving is higher.  Because if we leave Afghanistan, I think we have to be prepared for that Taliban will come back, and ISIS is in Afghanistan and they will try to re-establish the caliphate they lost in Iraq and Syria, they will re-establish in Afghanistan.  So, that’s the most likely outcome if we leave.  So, then if we leave, we have to be prepared to stay out of Afghanistan, even though Afghanistan once again becomes a safe haven for international terrorists, and they start to train, organise, plan, finance terrorist attacks, on our own countries from Afghanistan.  And if we were able to promise ourselves that, despite that, we will not go back, then it's possible to leave.  But I don’t think we will not be willing to watch that happen.  So then we leave, stay out for some years, and be forced back again.  And that’s the worst possible alternative.  And we have to remember that the reason why we are in Afghanistan is very much because of what happened here.  We have to remember that… not NATO, because NATO was not present as an Alliance, but NATO Allies left Iraq in 2011, then a few years later we were all back, all of us, from the left to the right, everyone.  And so, I was against Iraq war in 2003.  All those politicians I know who were against the Iraq war in 2003, they were in favour of going back now.  So, it's only if you really believe that we are willing to stay out and watch ISIS Khorasan, which is the Afghan branch of ISIS, take over and say, no, no, just continue, and not go back, then you can leave.  So, I'm back to my main point, there is no easy way out, there is no easy solution, there's no solution in Afghanistan without costs.  But the cost of leaving is, best of my best judgment, higher than the cost of staying.  Add to that that our presence in Afghanistan now is totally different from what it was at the beginning.  Because, for many years, we had a big combat operation in Afghanistan, where we had more than 100,000 troops and, when there was a Taliban attack, it was US forces or Danish forces or Norwegian forces that went out and responded to the Taliban attack.  Now it's the Afghans themselves.  They go out.  They are in the frontline.  We help them, we train them, we fund them, but we have gone from more than 100,000 troops in the combat operation to 16,000 troops in the train, assist and advise mission.  US do some counter-terrorism on top of that, but still it's a totally different presence and therefore a much more enduring and sustainable presence, and that’s the reason why I said in my speech that prevention is better than intervention.  The best thing we can do to fight international terrorism is to train local forces, as we have done in Afghanistan, and help them.  The last thing about Afghanistan, it is really serious, I mean the Taliban is there, ISIS is there, many different terrorist groups are there, so I'm not saying that this is a straightforward easy way, but I'm saying that the alternative is worse.

Moderator: Let me follow up on that because, you know, implicit in your remarks that if we go the Taliban will succeed, it casts some question about the effectiveness of the training operation, how long this will go on and whether or not, under any circumstances and under any length of time, it can be effective.  So, how do you assess the effectiveness of that mission and whether or not, at some point, there will be a possibility of a further reduction of NATO troops, if not a complete withdrawal?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I think that, if there is any lesson have learned from Afghanistan is that we should have started the training and the capacity-building earlier.  But we have at least succeeded in building and training Afghan forces and the police, which are now … they are able to hold the main cities, the ground and most of the provinces in Afghanistan.  Again, it's not easy, but for instance, the stated goal of Taliban this year was to take control over one of the provincial capitals; they have not succeeded in that.  Taliban controls territory in Afghanistan, they pose a constant threat, but at least we have the Afghan army and security forces being in the frontline, being responsible for security in their own country.  Well, the way to leave Afghanistan is to be able to reach a political solution, and therefore we strongly support the bold and new initiatives by President Ghani to really engage in a political peace process with Taliban.  The US is also engaging now in political process, or peace efforts, with Taliban, and hopefully that can lead to something.  I don’t think that we will ever see Afghanistan, you know, as stable and as peaceful as, you know, our own countries, but at least that we can come in a situation where it's responsible to leave.  We will not stay longer in Afghanistan than necessary, but we will stay as long as is needed to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for international terrorists.  And we are staying there now to also send a clear message to the Taliban that they will not win on the battlefield, so they have to sit down at the negotiating table and then reach a political compromise with the government in Kabul.

Moderator: Let me ask, as Secretary General you obviously get a very strong sense of the impact of the fighting in Afghanistan on the different partner militaries.  Two questions, and these have been raised in relation to the United States military and its role in fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq; one, certainly the capacities to fight this kind of war seem to have improved and so there is a more effective way of doing this it seems, over time.  On the other hand, it takes you away from, in the case of NATO, what the core business is, which is the defence of Europe and certainly the original idea of this Soviet/Russian threat.  So, how would you assess the impact on the militaries that have been in Afghanistan for these 17 years, in these two senses?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I think that what happened after 9/11 and when NATO started… well, it actually started to happen a bit before, because it started when we went into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, very different but at least we started then to have military operations out of area.  And for people who are as old as I am, I remember that, in the 80s, it was a big discussion whether NATO should go out of area, meaning go out of the… so, have any military presence outside NATO Allied territory.  And why we had this more theoretical debate, we suddenly saw the Berlin Wall came down and people started to ask, do we need NATO anymore.  Because the reason why we existed was in a way the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and that just disappeared.  And then people said that NATO either had to go out of area, meaning beyond NATO territory, or out of business.  And we went not out of business, but out of area, first helping to end two wars in the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia, and then later on Afghanistan and fighting piracy and elsewhere.  What that did with our armed forces is that we transformed our armed forces for more static collective defence, heavy armour, heavy troops, high-end capabilities in Europe, to more light expeditionary forces in the mountains of Afghanistan.  And that’s a totally difference concept, totally different equipment, totally different training, so we transformed it from collective defence in Europe to expeditionary forces able to deploy quickly all over the world, or far away.  And it also increased what we call interoperability because we had, for the first time in our history then, troops from different NATO Allies and partner countries really working together in military operations.  NATO had not fired one single shot before we went beyond NATO territory, into the Balkans and later in Afghanistan.  So, that developed our military capabilities.  The challenge was that it weakened our ability to do the traditional collective defence in Europe for, as I said, … [inaudible] good reasons, because tensions went down.  We didn’t see Russia as a real challenge anymore, so we could divert our resources to something else.  The challenge now is that we have to go back to do more collective defence, more of the old traditional deterrence and defence in Europe, with armour, with heavy equipment, with all that.  But at the same time we need to continue to manage crisis beyond our borders.  So, for 40 years, NATO did only one thing, that was collective defence in Europe, from 1949 to 1989.  Then, for 25 years, we reduced our focus on collective defence, we were an expeditionary alliance, doing something far away.  Now, we have to continue to be far away in operations, like Afghanistan, and to do collective defence in Europe at the same time.  So, for the first time in NATO's history, we need to do crisis management and collective defence at the same time, and that’s the big transformation of NATO which has taken place over the last four or five years, and which we have so far successfully been able to implement.

Moderator: Thank you.  We’re going to take a couple of questions and we have seated a couple in the audience.  We have, as you know, students from the High School of Economics and Finance, and the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management, and we’ve asked those schools each to prepare a question.  So, I'm going to call first on Jessica, where are you Jessica?  Somewhere.  There you are.  Please stand up.  We'll take the microphone, and ask the question please, for the Secretary General.

Question: What do you think the challenges are for the next 10 to 15 years?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: You know, I think it's very hard to predict because, all those people who are in the business of predicting, they are normally totally wrong.  I mean in one way, it's a big surprise how many people who can have so many exams and PhDs and in so many different fields, and they are always wrong.

Moderator: That’s very reassuring.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: No, no … not always, but at least they are not very clever at predicting the future.  And I also I worked for two years in the Central Bureau of Statistics in Norway, and then I worked together with some people that were predicting oil prices.  That was a total catastrophe. What we started to do, and now we have done that for some years, because we are very dependent on oil prices in Norway, and we have started to do something I think which is very interesting: we are looking backwards and then we compare our predictions 5, 10, 20 years ago, with what actually happened, and it illustrates that there's a totally big gap.  The reality is that when prices are going up, we predict they will continue to go up.  And when they're going down, we will predict they will continue to go down.  Approximately something like that.  But we pay a lot for all this analysis.  But then you have social sciences, as economists we love mathematics and we have models and so on, but we are still wrong.  On the oil prices.  Not always wrong, but on the oil prices.  You know, I remember a debate in Norway with some experts on foreign and security issues, in Spring 1989.  And I will not mention the names of those experts, because that will be an insult.  They were sitting there and they were asked, do you think the Berlin Wall can come down?  No, no, no.  No way.  Perestroika and the glasnost, that’s possible that will change Russia as the Soviet Union, but the Berlin Wall, that will still… it will stand.  Then, months later, it just went down.  And then the same experts are experts in explaining why it went down. And we pay them for that too. So, they get that business as well.  And then the Arab Spring or 9/11, I mean when we in NATO analysed what kind of threats and challenges we were going to face, not many people were able to predict 9/11.  And if you asked experts - I was not going around in NATO - but I think very much if you asked experts back in 2001 when will be… or before 9/11, what will be the first case when NATO invokes Article 5, no-one would have said a terrorist attack on the United States.  The whole idea with Article 5 was to defend European Allies against Soviet Union sending the battle tanks over something called the Fulda Gap in Germany.  So, the reason why I say all this is that when you hear people start to predict what will happen in 10/15 years, you should always be very suspicious. But what we can do is to be prepared for the unforeseen, to have a strategy to deal with surprises, to have a strategy to deal with uncertainty.  And what we did in Norway was that we were less focused on our ability to predict oil prices, because we were always wrong about that, but we developed a strategy on how to deal with fluctuations in oil prices, and fluctuation on revenues.  So, we invented a pension fund, which is a beautiful thing in Norway. So then, I'm not saying it doesn’t matter, but since we’re not able to predict 10/15 years about the oil price, we created a mechanism to deal with uncertainty.  And that’s exactly the same we have to when it comes to security.  But I cannot tell you exactly what will be the main challenge or the main threat or the main something in 10/15 years, but I can tell you that, if we stand together, if we have a strong transatlantic bond, North America and Europe together, then we are much more capable of dealing with those threats, challenges, whatever they may be.  And that if we have capable forces, high readiness, good intelligence, situational awareness, then we can deal with short-term and long-term surprises.  So, we have a more assertive Russia, we have terrorism and we have cyber, it's easy to list a lot of potential things that may or may not happen.  My focus is less on trying to predict that, because I will not be able to do so, more on how to be able to react to deal with and manage, if and when surprises happen.

Moderator: Thank you.  Now also, speaking of uncertainty and preparing for it, we have a question from Emmanuel from the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management.  So, where is Emmanuel?

Question: So, you said that it can be difficult to tell what the main issues or like the main problems you might face in the future are, so just to narrow that down, what effects do you think the current US Administration will have on NATO in the future?

Moderator: We left the best for last.

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: I think what we see now is that, well we are an alliance of 29 nations, with different political leaders, with different political opinions about many things.  And we also see that there are some serious disagreements between different NATO Allies, but also sometimes between the US and other NATO Allies, on important issues as trade tariffs, the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and other issues.  My strategy, or my response to that is that well, the best thing would be if we were able to solve those disagreements on trade, on climate change.  But as long as we are not able to solve these disagreements on trade tariffs, climate, whatever, then it is my and NATO's responsibility to make sure that those disagreements don’t undermine the core of the transatlantic partnership, that we protect and defend each other.  So, meaning that yes, there are differences, but so far - and I really believe that we will be able to do that also in the future - we have been able to maintain the security cooperation.  Meaning that what we see now is actually that the United States is not withdrawing its presence or reducing its presence in Europe, but actually the United States is increasing its military presence in Europe.  For the first time after many, many years, where the United States actually reduced its presence, the United States is now increasing its military presence in Europe.  So, actions speak louder than words.  The US has more troops, more exercise - they’ve recently just announced some more troops to Germany - more prepositioned equipment, even in Norway now the US has submarines.  So, those who question the security relationship between Europe and North America, my answer to them is that no, actually we deliver, we had a successful summit, where we made more than 100 concrete decision, on high readiness, on new command structure, on reforming NATO, on a new training mission in Iraq.  So, actually we decided that North America and Europe should do more together, not less, and the US is proving that by what they actually do on the ground in Europe.  So, I'm not absolutely certain what you asked be about, but the thing is that there are differences and we saw that also during the General Debate in the UN yesterday, there are differences on issues between NATO Allies, and also with the United States and President Trump, but we have proven that we are able to maintain, and not only maintain but strengthen, the cooperation within NATO.  I would just add one thing, which is not related to this, but I think it's important for me to say it, about Russia, because we are responding to Russia.  We are not mirroring exactly, plane-by-plane or tank-by-tank or whatever, what Russia does, but we are responding to the actions of Russia in Ukraine, in Georgia, and elsewhere.  But we want to avoid a new Cold War, we want to avoid a new arms race, and we are striving for a better relationship with Russia.  And I strongly believe in dialogue with Russia because Russia is there to stay, Russia is our neighbour and we need to find a way to live with Russia.  We will all be losers if we move into a new Cold War.  And therefore, the strategy of NATO towards Russia is what we call deterrence, defence and dialogue.  I met with Minister Lavrov yesterday, and we disagree on many issues, for instance Ukraine, but we agree on the need for political dialogue between NATO and Russia, because we need to diffuse tensions.

Moderator: Thank you.  That is all we have time for.  Please join me in thanking the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

1. Turkey recognises the Republic of Macedonia with its constitutional name.