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Next question is from the US. And it's about NATO's narrative, something I was more focused
on in my previous job as spokesman. His question is, “Is the narrative for NATO, the justification
for NATO fading away with the end of the Cold War. What's the new narrative for the Alliance?
What are we here for? And what do we want to do?”
And this is the classic and very important question. I don't mean classic in an old-fashioned
sense. We debate this here all the time. I personally don't have too many questions about
What we don't have is a good slogan. In the early days of the Cold War, one NATO Secretary
General defined NATO's purpose as "keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the
Germans down." That was the post-Second World War conception. Since the end of the Cold
War, those things aren't really necessary. The Americans are in. We don't need the Russians
out. Actually, we have them as partners. And the Germans are, of course, strong and vibrant
members of this Alliance and of Europe and of the world, without there being anything
negative, only positive things about that.
So we never found a good new slogan. And I can assure the new Secretary General has encouraged
us to look for one. But to my mind, NATO is about what it is and then about what it does.
What it is, is a collection of democracies that is uniquely capable militarily. No other
organization can do what NATO can do militarily. You saw it in Libya. You see it in Afghanistan.
And that's a priceless thing because there are times when you need that capability as
an international community. We can't get rid of it.
And it's also a place where we consult politically. All these 28 countries are here every single
day and discussing and debating all sorts of issues. And by the way, with a very wide
group of partners now as well. So it is a unique political forum and a very important
one.
What do we do? We do three things. We do collective defense. That's the ultimate mission of NATO,
to defend the Allies. Second, crisis management. I mentioned Libya, I mentioned Afghanistan.
I can mention Kosovo. I can mention counter piracy missions. And third we do collective
security. Building trust and confidence and inter-operability in the broadest political
sense as well as technical sense with partners around the globe. So all of that I think is
a very important role. But I can't think of the slogan to define it, and I tried for a
long time. I came up with a lot of bad ones, but I never came up with a good one.