NATO Secretary General: in times of austerity, allies need to pool resources

The Czech Parliament has just been hosting an annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which serves as a consulting body to the alliance. Much of the debate was devoted to the financing of the armed forces at a time of economic austerity. So how can NATO’s defence capabilities be maintained when member states are cutting their defence budgets? That’s a question Czech Radio’s Pavel Novák put to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, photo: CTK

“We need efficient investments in defence and it is a matter of concern to see declining defence budgets. There is a lower limit of how little a country can spend on defence and still live up to NATO commitments. But my point is that realistically speaking, we cannot expect much more money for defence in the near future because of the economic austerity. So in that situation, we have to make a more efficient use of our resources.

“The way to do that is to help each other. Instead of going for national solutions, we can go for multi-national solutions and introduce more cooperation. It will be increasingly difficult for individual allies to purchase expensive military equipment in the coming years but if they help each other, if they pool and share resources, then they can. And that’s, in my opinion, the only way to ensure that we can acquire the necessary military capabilities in the near future.”

Photo: archive of the Czech Government

So for instance, the Czech and Slovak plan to buy a joint radio-location system and share it – is that a good example of smart defence and sharing resources?

“Yes, absolutely. The bilateral cooperation between the Czech Republic and Slovakia is an excellent example of how you can get more for your defence funds. In general, I appreciate that the Czech Republic has taken such leadership in promoting more regional cooperation within the Visegrad Group, and I think that regional cooperation could be one of the ways forward.”

In the near future, the Czech Republic will have to make a decision whether to buy or lease fighter aircraft. We now use the Gripen fighters that we have leased but now there is a debate whether we should pursue other options: approach the Eurofighter company or the US, for instance, or to ask the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency for assistance. Do you think it’s a good idea to do it via this agency?

Photo: Czech Army

“That’s a national decision and I’m not going to interfere with that. Seen from the NATO perspective, what counts for us, is that each individual ally lives up to its obligations within NATO. We have seen individual allies acquiring different weapons system and different aircraft and fighters; that’s really a national decision. The most important thing is that these weapons systems and aircraft can actually work together. So provided that an ally lives up to our requirements and makes sure the national defence can cooperate with other NATO military forces, then it’s for each individual nation to decide how to achieve its goals.”