Q&A following speech by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Maritime Academy, Odesa. The speech is part of the engagements of the two-day North Atlantic Council visit to Ukraine.
Transcript
Your Excellency, thank you very much for your opening remarks. We appreciate that and let me, from your permission, to start the hour Q&A session, and from your permission I would like to start, I will ask you the first question, if you don’t mind, sir. We have a lot of conversation in our Ukrainian society about membership to NATO, and the most common question for us is your view. What is your view on the, our perspectives of membership to NATO, and what are the most important challenges which we are facing from your perspective, on the way?
My view on the question of Ukrainian membership is NATO is the same as the NATO view, and that is that we made a decision in Bucharest at the NATO summit back in 2008. And I remember very well, because I was there as a Norwegian Prime Minister participating in that NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. And they were decided that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and this decision still stands. We have reiterated that decision many times. At the same time, the main focus now is on reforms, is on how can we help you, support you, in meeting the NATO standards, strengthening your defense and secured institutions, improving what we call interoperability as a meaning, the ability for your forces to work together with our forces, and the fact that we are exercising more together, that we are working more together. That NATO participates in this academy, providing support to this academy, teaching English, all of that is part of moving you forward towards membership of the NATO Alliance. So that’s the first thing I will say. The focus on reform is the best way to move towards membership. The second thing I will say about Ukrainian membership of NATO is that that’s the decision, that is a decision for Ukraine and the 29 existing members of the alliance to take. No one else has the right to interfere in such a decision. Because sometimes you get the impression that whether Ukraine should be a member of NATO or not, is for Russia to decide. Russia don’t have a say. They should not have any, what’s to say, they don’t have any, what to say, legal and real platform to have any influence over such a decision, because it is enshrined in documents, which also Russia has signed to, for instance, STANDEX, LAC and many other documents that it’s, its for each and every nation to decide their own path. So every nation has the right to decide what kind of security arrangements they would like to be part of, or not be part of. So, it’s up to Ukraine to decide whether they want to aspire for membership, whether you want to apply for membership, and then it’s for the 29 members, soon to be 30 with North Macedonia, to decide whether you meet the NATO standards and can become a member. No other country in the world has any right to try to deny Ukraine that right. So therefore, I am encouraged by the commitment, the will, the strength in your efforts to modernize, to improve your society to implement reforms. That’s good for Ukraine, regardless of membership, but is also important because that’s the best way to move towards membership of the NATO Alliance. This is a very long answer to very short question, but I will add one more thing. And that is that NATO’s door remains open. We have proven that. Just since over the last two years, we have also in 2017 Montenegro became a member of NATO, and North Macedonia will become a member within months.
Thank you, sir. It’s absolutely comprehensive answer for that question, and I would like to give opportunity, our cadets and here in the audience to have the questions, so, yeah, I see on the left side, please.
[Participant] Cadet of Odessa Military Academy. Sir, I’ve got such a question. Don’t you think that the process of making decisions during the NATO conversations, is going for too long, which is making impossible to react quickly on modern dangers, which are creating by the NATO opponents, as the Russian Federation, actually.
NATO is an alliance based on consensus. So sometimes, as I mean you’ve got, all allies, all 29 allies have to agree when we make decisions. You cannot have majority vote voting down the minority. So, if NATO’s going to make a decision, for instance, on enlargement or a new mission in Afghanistan or somewhere else, we need all 29 allies to agree. The good thing with that is that also small nations, and all nations, have the same vote. The same mandate and the same power within the alliance. So, for instance, I, myself, come from a small NATO ally, Norway, we have the same seat, the same vote as a big NATO ally, the United States, France, or Germany, or United Kingdom, or some other big nations. So that’s the good thing. Of course, the challenge, the problem is that sometimes it’s quite difficult to get 29 allies to agree. And I can be honest with you that being Secretary General, sometimes it is a bit frustrating that I have, I don’t, it’s not enough to have a majority, but I need all 29 to agree. But I think that’s the only way, because that’s the only way we can have people agreeing to really defending and protecting each other is that we all need to be together and decide, and agree when we make decisions about war, peace, conflict, the use of military force. Then your question was about whether that makes it impossible for us to act quickly. Well, first of all, I think that we have proven before that we can act quickly, when needed. For instance, when we, for the first and only time in our history, invoked our Article Five, as their collective defense code, saying that is one, if one ally is attacked, that is regarded as an attack against all, one for all, all for one. When the U.S. was attacked by a terrorist’s act, 9/11, 2001, in less than, I’ll say less than 24 hours, we agreed that we were going to invoke Article Five, and that all allies came to assistance and support of United States. We also, in a couple of days, were able to agree and make decisions, for instance, related to the air operations over Libya, in back in 2011, and you also have to know that as soon as we make decisions through activate NATO plans, we also have pre-agreement, or pre-designed plans on how to implement, for instance, military operations and secure, now commanders have a mandate which they can use if there is a need. The last thing I will say is of course that if there is a need, we can convene the decision-making bodies in NATO immediately, and what we have seen is that, when needed, we are able to make decisions very quickly to stand up for our values and our collective defense.