NATO Secretary General Mr. Jens Stoltenberg.
By Guido Lanfranchi.
On Thursday April 19th, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg delivered a speech at Leiden University’s Schouwburgstraat Campus in The Hague. He exposed NATO’s history, relevance, and adaptability, before answering a number of questions from the audience.
During his recent visit to The Hague, NATO Secretary General Mr. Jens Stoltenberg carved out some time on his agenda to talk with Leiden University’s students. When he arrived at the arranged location, Schouwburgstraat Campus of Leiden University in The Hague, the auditorium was packed with students and high-level guests. Among them, Mr. Carel Stolker, Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, H.E. Mrs. Mirsada Čolaković, Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to The Netherlands, and Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former NATO Secretary General and moderator of the event.
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer, who occupied Stoltenberg’s current position from 2004 to 2009, introduced the event and its main theme: “Adapting NATO to a changing world.” At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Stoltenberg expressed his gratitude to the organizers of the event, and briefly entertained the audience with some stories concerning his career. In particular, he surprised the audience when he confessed one of his biggest goals in life: to become a professor, just as Mr. de Hoop Scheffer did.
Then, the Secretary General started to delve into the event’s topic. Mr. Stoltenberg started off praising NATO’s success not only in winning the Cold War without bloodlessly, but also in being able to adapt to an ever changing international environment.
In outlining NATO’s history since its foundation in 1949, NATO’s current boss highlighted three turning points in which NATO adaptability was put into test. The first watershed was the end of the Cold War in 1989, when NATO lost its primary enemy, the Soviet Union, and reconfigured itself by expanding its reach beyond its own territory.
Then, in 2011 the 9/11 attacks came, and NATO triggered for the first and only time in its history the well-known Article 5, prompting the collective defense response in Afghanistan.
The third turning point was 2014, Mr. Stoltenberg’s first year as NATO’s Secretary General. In the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, NATO underwent another big shift in nature, trying to address traditional collective defense issues in Europe and adding an effort to stabilize its neighborhoods.
While approaching the end of his speech, Mr. Stoltenberg explicitly highlighted NATO’s defensive nature, which translates into NATO’s policy of “being strong, but without provoking” the counterpart. And, according to the Secretary General, being strong also means being flexible: in an increasingly dangerous world, NATO needs to be able to adapt in order to grant security to the citizens of all its allies.
After a warm round of applause for Mr. Stoltenberg, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer took the floor to moderate a Q&A session. Many students and attendees from the audience were able to ask their questions to Mr. Stoltenberg. The topics included: the dispute between Turkey and Greece, NATO’s nuclear deterrence, EU defense, political developments in the US, the relation between Finland and NATO, the 2% military spending requirement, the situation in the Artcic, and the Skripal case. The Secretary General steadily answered all the questions, until the Q&A session reached its conclusion.
After the event, Mr. Stoltenberg remained in Schouwburgstraat Campus’ reception hall, talking with the students and taking pictures with them.
When he left the building, many students and other participants remained at length in the campus discussing several of the themes that were touched during the event.
Definitely, Leiden University gave an incredible experience to its students today. Who knows whether some of them might in the future be in a position similar to Mr. Stoltenberg’s?.
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Photography by NATO
