Day 1 NATO Defence Ministerial

Not much on Smart Defence and nothing on Nuclear Planning
 
By Nigel Chamberlain, NATO Watch
 
Having delivered his ‘doorstep statement’ in opening the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen fielded a highly topical and relevant question from Reuters.  Given the morning’s discussion on defence capabilities, the journalist asked “would a merger of BAE and EADS in your view contribute to a better use of scarce defence resources?”  The Secretary General’s response, while seeming to be non-committal, did appear to endorse the logic of the question:
 
First of all, let me stress that I consider such a merger a commercial decision and it's for shareholders and involved governments to figure that out.  It's their decision.  NATO does not interfere with such decisions.  But let me stress that in general I'm in favour of restructuring European defence industries with a view to making them more competitive and more effective. 
 
Deutsche Press-Agentur raised the issue of common funding which “governments have been at loggerheads” for years and asked “whether costs should lie where they fall or whether there should be common funding”?  Accepting that there will be “another stock-taking exercise today”, the journalist asked “does that mean that there is no progress at all”?
 
Stressing that the Ministers would not be making concrete decisions about the use of common funding, the Secretary General said there would be discussions about “whether we can use common funding in more efficient ways, use common funding to promote some of the multilateral projects, use common funding to promote our smart defence and connected forces initiatives”. 
 
Session 1 - Defence Capabilities
 
Recognising that defence expenditure was constrained by economic necessity, the Secretary General urged Member States to work more cooperatively on planning, training and exercises in an effort to maintain and enhance capabilities.  He added that he saw security as the foundation for prosperity.
 
Ministers discussed how to keep up the momentum on Smart Defence and seek more ways to become more efficient in defence spending with multinational projects, as agreed at the Chicago Summit, but no decisions were taken at the meeting.
 
Session 2 – Nuclear Planning
 
No report available.
 
Evening Press Conference  
 
Opening his press conference later in the day, the Secretary General said: “We need smart spending. And even more, we need sufficient spending”.
 
Responding to a question from Reuters about differences on the possible uses of some of the money in the NATO central military budget, the Secretary General sidestepped the issue by saying that he had “not witnessed any disagreement on the need for using our resources more efficiently and more effectively which also includes more multinational cooperation; also a better use of our common funding mechanisms”.
 
The Spanish News Agency Europa Press sought more detail about common funding for financing multinational projects that are seen as a priority for maintaining critical capabilities. The Secretary General reiterated that there had been no concrete decisions taken at the meeting but he personally felt that:
 
Common funding actually serves as what I would call a force multiplier within NATO. We can do things together that we couldn't do individually. So we are now looking closer into how we can make some more efficient use of our common funding to the benefit of individual Allies.
 
There were no questions about nuclear planning.