Thank you so much, Dr. Buchanan, for that warm introduction.
It is really a great pleasure to be here today,
and to have this opportunity to address you all.
And it is a pleasure to be here for several reasons.
First of all, it is a honor to be
at this university, the Australian National University.
It's a highly recognized university.
And I know that this university has more Nobel laureates
than any other university in Australia,
including the Vise Chancellor of the university.
So it is an honor to be at this university.
Second, I have to tell you that I have a special feeling
every time I'm visiting an academic institution
or a university because originally, my plan
was to become a real academic to actually become a professor.
That was my ambition in life.
And I started actually to do some serious research work
at partly the University of Oslo,
and partly in this Central Bureau of Statistics in Norway
something of the econometrics, and statistics,
and mathematics.
And then, I was asked in 1990 to become Deputy Minister
for Environment.
And I was very much in doubt because I
understood that that would undermine my academic career.
So I promised myself to only be in politics
for a very few years and go back to do some serious business--
to do some serious research.
But I've been in politics since then,
so my academic career was very short.
And I was not very great.
So my advice to you is to stay here.
[LAUGHING]
If not, then you risk ending up in politics, which is also
quite interesting, but it's not as
serious as what you are doing.
So that's the reason why I think it's always nice to be back
and to feel the air of a academic institution
like this university.
And the third reason why I really
mean it when I say it's a pleasure to be here tonight
is that it gives me the opportunity
to share with you some thoughts about NATO
and some security challenges we face.
I will try to not be too long so we have some time afterwards
to have some interaction, some questions, and some answers
from my side.
I am here as part of an official visit to Australia.
And NATO, we are based in--
our headquarters is in Brussels.
NATO is a North Atlantic Alliance, Europe
and North America.
So we are, in many ways, ocean support, Australia and NATO.
But we are the closest of partners.
We have been working together, Australia on NATO,
for many, many years in many different missions
and operations, including in Afghanistan for many years.
And this morning, I went to the war memorial,
and I honored all those who have sacrificed
their lives in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
And we are extremely grateful for the support Australia
has given NATO for many years.
We appreciate the close cooperation with Australia.
And I strongly believe that the partnership between Australia
and Norway, and NATO has been very important,
but it's actually going to be even more
important in the years ahead.
Because the security challenges are
becoming more and more global.
It is less and less meaningful to speak about some challenges
for European nations and all the challenges
for nations in this part of the world.
We face the same challenges, the same threats,
and we need to face them and deal with them together.
And therefore, the partnership between Australia and NATO
will become even more important.
And let me just mention three challenges,
three areas where we see more integrated, more global
challenges which we have to deal with together, Australia
and NATO.
The first is increased great power competition.
What we have seen in the recent years
is that our global system and our values
have come under great pressure.
We have seen that from Crimea, the illegal annexation
of Crimea, the continued destabilization
of eastern Ukraine by Russia.
We have seen it in Syria, in the South China Sea,
and with the profession of nuclear weapons, and not least,
in North Korea.
So many of the values--
the rules based order we have tried to build in the decades
after the Second World War-- they are now under pressure.
And that is very much linked to the increased great power
competition that we are witnessing.
One very recent example--
and you mentioned that in the introduction--
is the demise of the INF Treaty.
Last Friday, a week ago, this treaty ceased to exist.
And the INF Treaty is the Intermediate Nuclear Forces
Treaty, which is a cornerstone for arms control.
It has been extremely important for security,
for especially European countries
for more than three decades.
And the treaty doesn't only reduce
the number of intermediate range weapons,
including nuclear weapons.
It bands them all.
And
We see now the demise of this treaty because Russia
has over the past years deployed missiles
in violation of the treaty.
These missiles are nuclear capable,
they can reach European cities within minutes,
they are hard to detect, they are mobile,
and they're lowering the warning time.
And therefore, also they are reducing the threshold
for any potential use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.
So this is one example of how the rules based order arms
control is undermined by the behavior of Russia
violating the treaty.
And it highlights the importance of trying
to support and work together to build up
again also arms control regime.
We have seen, as I mentioned also,
actions by Russia against neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine.
And it has been extremely important
that Australia has been so clear in showing support
in calling out to Russia's unacceptable actions,
and in promoting the rules based order.
We are also seeing the impact of the rise of China
as a stronger economic power, stronger military power.
And China's role and influence is another sign of increasing
global power competition.
Its economic rise is powering global growth,
and it's quickly becoming a technological leader
in many fields.
This brings many opportunities, financially and politically,
for Australia, for European countries,
from foreign countries all over the world.
But at the same time, it also means
that we are faced with some new challenges.
And while China represents a very different challenge
than Russia, it also has some implications
for the global rules based order, and for our security.
We see this in the South China Sea,
in cyberspace, and in Chinese investments
in critical infrastructure.
So we need to better understand the consequences of the rise
of China for our security.
And one of the reasons why I think it's important
that we work together with countries
in this part of the world with Australia
is actually to help each other, to understand, and also
to deal with the consequences of the rise of China
as an economic and military power.
So increased great power competition
is one of the areas where we see that the security is
interlinked, and where we see the value of working
with a country like Australia.
And not the area where we see the same kind of challenge
is when it comes to fighting terrorism.
That's a truly global challenge.
And NATO has played a key role in fighting terrorism ever
since the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
And we have been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years
together with forces from Australia.
And we do that because it is extremely important
to make sure that Afghanistan doesn't once again become
a safe haven for international terrorists
where they can train, plan, organize terrorist attacks
on our countries.
And we strongly believe that prevention
is better than intervention.
So therefore, we do whatever we can
to try to build local capacity, train local forces, so they
can stabilize their own countries and fight terrorism
themselves.
Therefore, we have turned the mission
in Afghanistan, which was a big combat
operation with tens of thousands of NATO troops,
including Australian troops--
or as NATO [? important ?] countries--
into a trained assistant advise mission
where we train the Afghan forces so they
can fight terrorism themselves, and stabilize
their own country.
The good news is that this has created a condition for--
the reason why NATO is in Afghanistan
is to create the conditions for a peaceful negotiated political
solution.
And the good news is that we are now
closer to a political solution, a peace
settlement in Afghanistan than we have ever been before.
And we strongly support efforts to find a political solution
because we strongly believe that the only
lasting solution to the conflict in Afghanistan
is a political solution.
Our military presence is to underpin
a political and peaceful solution.
Taliban has to understand that they will never
win on the battlefield, that they
had to sit down at the negotiating table,
and that's the reason why we continue our military presence
as our way to support the efforts to find
a political solution.
The idea of training local forces as a way
to fight terrorism is also the reason
why we do training in Iraq.
We have made a lot of progress in the fight against terrorism,
especially in Iraq and Syria.
We have to remember that not so many months ago,
ISIS or Darwish controlled the territory as big as the United
Kingdom in Iraq and Syria.
They were threatening, actually, Baghdad.
And then, the global coalition to defeat ISIS--
Australia is part of that, NATO is part of that--
we have helped to liberate all the territory that ISIS held.
And therefore, we have made significant progress
in the fight against terrorism also in Iraq and Syria.
The fight is not over.
Darwish or ISIS is still there.
But at least, this a great achievement
to make sure that they don't control any territory any more.
So that's another example of how we work together with Australia
in addressing a truly global security
challenge fighting terrorism.
The third area I will mention is cyber.
Cyber is really global.
Geography distance doesn't matter.
And we have seen more and more cyber attacks.
We have seen cyber being used to try
to undermine our democratic institutions in the fair
and in elections.
And therefore, we need to make sure
that we have safe and secure cyber networks.
And NATO has done a lot to strengthen our cyber defenses.
We have developed rapid response teams
on 27 standby that can help NATO countries under attack.
And we are setting up a cyber operations center
at our headquarters in months.
And we are actually decided that cyber is now
a military domain alongside air, sea, and land, recognizing
that cyber is as important as any other element
of a potential armed conflict.
And it's absolutely impossible to envisage
any kind of military conflict without a very important cyber
element.
That's also an area where we see a great potential for working
closer with Australia.
I signed a Cooperation Program with the defense minister
yesterday.
And one of the areas we have identified
where we can work more closely with Australia
is exactly cyber.
So my message is that when we face
a more unpredictable world--
new threats, new challenges-- it is even more important
that we have strong international institutions
and strong partnerships as we have with Australia to deal
with the consequences of increased great power
competition, international terrorism,
and threats from cyberspace.
That's the best way to keep us safe also
in a more uncertain world.
[APPLAUSE]