Defense. Please join me in welcoming the panel. [applause] welcome. Thank you very much. When mark twain, the humorist and essayist was asked by a reporter about rumors of his failing health, twain famously answered, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated and i think that nato officials can certainly empathize with twains reaction because over the past 75 years nato has had to navigate many serious tensions among its members. Some of these were rooted in differences inside nato, about, for example, Nuclear Strategy, the Alliance Structure and its operations and others flowed from disagreements over policies of or actions by one or more allies outside in regions or on issues outside of natos purview and just to give you a flavor of some of these not so important disagreements, during the 1950s, the allies were struggling over the questions of german rearmament and the succession into nato was the federal republic. The debate of the implications of a massive what was called the massive retaliation doctrine and that approach to Nuclear Strategy and very sharp divisions among washington, paris and london, during the 1956 suez crisis. The 1960s saw intense debates over the concepts of flexible response and very bitter and long lasting recriminations of frances withdrawal from the integrated military structure. In the 1970s, two nato allies, turkey and greece, nearly went to war over the cypress issue and the euro missiles affair of the 1980s brought to the surface long lasting tensions and disagreements among allied governments. This was fed by Massive Public protest that at times seemed to post an existential threat to the alliance itself. But its important, given that background, its important to keep in mind that ultimately the Alliance Remains strong during and after the cold war because its members did not allow their differences ever to override their enduring shared interests and values and i think interesting values are both important, both are important to nato. Of course, a lost has changed over the last 75 years so the question we have to ask is will the past with prologued and thats why we are going to have a twopart discussion, first sten and suzie will have more to say about the gold war and heidi will reflect on Lessons Learned from natos postcold war experiences and as mentioned out of area operations. Well then turn our attention to the current and future potential challenges facing the alliance and i have the clock here and i intend to reserve hopefully at least 30 minutes for questions from the audience. Let me start with sten. Congratulations on your recent book. As mentioned and it has been mentioned already, during the first two decades of the postcold war period, natos emphasis really did shift largely to Crisis Response and Crisis Management and counterterrorism in area of operations, but russias full scale invasion of 2022 certainly has put deterrents and collective defense back at the center of natos priorities. So kind of looking over the cold war period, how has natos approach to deterrents and collective defense during that cold war period influenced its structure, its assessments and its policies and actions today . Basically, whats changed fundamentally and whats happened . Thank you for that question. And let me, first of all, say what a pleasure it is to be here in georgetown today and to be on this panel with heidi and suzie. Change in continuity, in a way to bracket about 30 years of cooperation and security and say now were back and nato has come home, its collective defense. Its true there are many parallels and one of the parallels i like drawing on is back in the 80s we used to say that the europeans would say youre so lucky, america, you have president reagan, you have bob hope, you have johnny cash and europeans would say we have our heads of government, but we have no hope and no cash. And here we go again. And so there are many parallels, defense forward, reinforcements, group of commissions for the nuclear deterrents. Manage the central front and the flanks, manage the threshold and threats from the adversary, soviet union and russia. And essentially manage escalation. All of this is back, but i would put my emphasis on this continuity. And this has to do with the fact that for those 30 years of Crisis Management and cooperative security, the muscle memory in nato of collective defense went away and four structures became much smaller, much lighter. They were deployed out of area, and then especially to afghanistan, and nato was not set up to defend itself. It was no longer a collective Defense Organization in capacity. Of course, in name, it was. And now that its reinventing that collective defense capacity theyve gone from 16 allies in 1990 to 32. Theres a war going on, which was not the case back then. Theres limited defense. Europeans are waking up to the demands of not only mobilizing for defense in the middle of germany, but further east. The logistical challenge is so much greater and the 30 years of cooperative security with russia meant that in large, nato did not move western forces or military infrastructure eastward. There was nothing there, exis september the of course, the military forces of the new allies, limited as it was, all of that has to be invented. And theres a very poor connection between conventional defense today and Nuclear Deterrence. It was a weapon of last resort and Strategic Thinking during the cold war where you had, again, a theory of escalation that may have been imperfect and controversial, but at least, it was a coherent theory. Today, there is really no theory and theyre having to invent that as we heard ambassador smith say in slightly different words. All of this has to happen in an alliance thats more complex, not only 32 allies, but theres so much else going on the alliance. Theres the southern flank, which is about terrorism, and if anything has caused a lot of headache in nato in the 2010s, its really not crimea in 2014 annexation, its the civil war in syria and how that estranged turkey, the u. S. And france and left president macron to say that nato had become brain dead. That that was syria, that was not russia. So the southern flank is a lot more than during the cold war and then on top of that, china now in the strategic concept answer again, we heard ambassador smith say that, emphasize this, and the need, therefore, to develop partnerships with the key u. S. Allies in the indopacific. And that was a frame work around u. S. Allies and elsewhere. All of this at a time when russia is conducting major war in europe. So the complexity compared to the cold war is much greater. The muscle memory is low to nonexistent and the need for leadership is therefore, much greater. And when i say leadership, i dont just mean in the high pace of summit that nato has come to depend on. I think theres a limited amount of leadership in those summits. When i say leadership, i mean clear priorities for how nato is going to manage this very complex agenda. It cannot address all of these issues and say, now, thats leadership. It has to prioritize. And thats a work in progress. Well, you mentioned the nuclear subject and let me turn to suzie. Nato, of course, does not own Nuclear Weapons. Its the weapons of the three Nuclear Allies, the United States, france, and the u. K. That formed the basis for the nato strategy. The goals of natos early Nuclear Policy which were to deter aggression and Nuclear Allies did not fundamentally change during the cold war, but the strategic balance has changed during that time and nato had to make important, sometimes very painful adjustments. Youve chronicled some of these in your excellent book which id recommend to our audience here under your missile saga of the 1970s and the 1980s. Its a long and complicated subject, but id like to ask you if you could describe the key considerations, that shaped natos Nuclear Posture and its policies during the cold war, and how those have evolved during the first 20 years or so of the post cold war period. Yeah, its so when you think about natos Nuclear Posture, and we start from these two principles. The core objectives on one hand of deturing aggression in the north act streety area and then as a compliment to that, providing reassurance to each and every significant tri of the treaty regardless of their size or geographic location and when we put it in those terms, its simple, except that the geography of the treaty area is hard to defend. Now, what those two components mean in deterring aggression and providing reassurance change and evolve over time. In part thats because the landscape changes. You have changes in Nuclear Weapons technology, and capabilities as well as in the threat perception particularly of the soviet union and then of course its core success of the Russian Federation after 1991. And so the alliance as in so many places needs to adapt. There are a few different areas or in key themes we might pull out in natos Nuclear Posture over the years. The first being changes in doctrine and strategy here so at the time of the signing of the north atlantic treaty in april 1949 the United States is the only Nuclear Power on the planet. That changes only a few months later when the soviet union detonates its first atomic weapon and, of course, thats a very different landscape if you think about how you deter aggression or provide reassurance than ones with the use nuclear met. By the early 1950s nato decided to rely heavily on Nuclear Weapons including stationing u. S. Battlefield weapons in europe and relied on a strategy leo refer to of retaliation. Essential you going to go from zero to 60 very quickly. Throughout the the 1950s, te 1960s the viability of that massive retaliation strategy was heavily debated and contested as many allies wondered whether the changing strategic balance between the soviet union and the United States, the change of weaponry meant that massive retaliation would really protect them. By 1967 the lights had adopted a new strategy of flexible response based on the principles of escalation. They use all these hokey metaphors to describe it, a ladder with various wrongs, a chain with various links connecting it. My favorite british system, a a robe, seamless robe of deterrence. There were no snags within it. At the end of the cold war, the alliances Nuclear Posture changed dramatically and was considerably reduced given changes in the overall Threat Prevention cups of significant cuts to Nuclear Weapons at nato across fidgety weaponry down the battlefield weaponry but also a move treaty Nuclear Weapons as weapons of last resort come something that is still lingering in natos Nuclear Posture today. So through all these changes and doctor strategy thats only one piece of the posture puzzle. Another is about reassurance. And reassurance is not easily calculated. It is in the eye of the beholder and everchanging, and data lines of large and unwieldy as nato you have a lot of actors with different perceptions of what will, in fact, reassure them. So natos Nuclear Posture is shaped by a series of proposals, successful and failed over the years to share control and ensure greater input in the alliance about what weapons would be fielded, where they would be deployed and, of course, how and when they might be used. I could point to the atomic stockpile proposals of the late 1950s or the Multilateral Force and Atlantic Nuclear force proposals that failed in the early 1960s. Instead, the alliance decided to great a committee of nuclear piney group, or in pg, which is still with us. And instead move towards other forms of reassurance. So we could take him for example, the station of u. S. Weapons in europe in early 1980s like the contentious the other piece i would like is that arms control has played a central role in natos Nuclear Posture. In large part to signal allies intentions. And often it has relied on a paired approach with their modernize or feel new weapons also propose armscontrol talks alongside that to manage the cost of those deployments. Thats really drawing on a broader principle an ally to thinking that as long roots but was enshrined in the report in 1967, pairing dialogue and defense. And so its this approach that forms the basis of the 1979 dual track decision which calls for the deployment of those i mentioned a second ago. As a concluding note i would say i focused primarily on the cold war. Like because Nuclear Posture so much less than born in the postcold war period. Its centrally the Alliance Receives considerably in the 1990s. I think this something we are grappling with no sort of Nuclear Weapons and nuclear questions, the theory of deterrence is back to work i did forget how much, much of the old cold war context can and should inform the conversations today. We will come back and a second round here about looking ahead to some of the nuclear challenges. Id mentioned this period heidi since the end of the cold war up until arguably two years ago with the russian fullscale invasion of ukraine. Theres been this parentheses were nato is focused are heavily on out of area operations, just remind everyone bostick a complaint in kosovo, serbia and libya, and stabilization and training efforts in afghanistan. One could add training into Iraqi Security forces. Just to remind you, we all suffer a little bit from amnesia here, at its high point the natoled operation in afghanistan included approximately a little bit more than 130,000 military personnel. 90,000 of whom were american, and 40,000 from allies and partners. 30,000 strictly from allies, canada and the europeans. And the were at one time were six of our nato allies that suffered per capita more killed and wounded in action. Not to minimize the contributions and sacrifices of the american forces, but we shouldnt forget that bravery and also the losses were not a monopoly of the United States during this, what was a very long war. I think it is fair to say felt that is operations had mixed results. And you have written a book trying to look at how nato in about trying to learn from these operational experiences. Lets start with the question did the allies even agree on where the mitchard teaching errors . Or what they accomplished through these operations . One of which of course is ongoing and that nato presence in kosovo. Although much reduce since the postwar period. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here to speak. To this point about learning, one of the things that was quite surprising for me in doing the research on learning in nato context was nato actually relative to other International Organizations that are out there does have quite significant institutionalization. You do have a lot of different offices. You have multiple places within the organizations bureaucracy for opportunities to learn here and entire nato lesson process but what a surprise about that was despite of course a Strong Military culture in this Political Military Alliance is that so much of the learning happens in the corridors in the informal spaces, and that there was actually, despite i think interviewed 120 officials across the alliance in act, aco, nato headquarters, et cetera, was that much of that learning was through these Interpersonal Networks and relying heavily on oldtimers, many of whom as weve heard earlier have retired, sten mention come at a rotating out. Oldtimers who are becoming suddenly very important for the knowledge that they have as the socalled cold war warriors. What does that mean . Well, that means that learning still matters. The advantage of having Lessons Learned processes is that it encourages people to think and talk about learning. I think one of the big takeaways is we should maintain these bureaucratic structures, but, unfortunately, we see a large reticence to seek out and read the state. So to answer your question yes, there is consensus. Yes, there have been numerous strategic lessons that have been put out. I think much of the value i would say is in some of the internal documents. I would just that im speaking of my personal capacity since i work for the state department, nato desk at the time of the ukraine war, but that in itself is very important. Having and creating spaces for learning to happen, even though you have extreme time pressure and nato has a quite significant reactive culture to maybe reference what you were mentioning. What are some of those lessons they came away from my research . So first of all when we think about afghanistan in particular, one of the questions that i asked was what do you think in anything all of these officials is a biggest strategical, biggest failure that we should reflect on . And typically this is done before the taliban took over. This is several years back. But the key take away was civilian casualty, that we wod address that the importance of civilian casualties. Whats interesting about that is subsequently weve seen Scholarly Research that is come out to show that on a subnational level scholars have been able to trace how specific incidences of violence against civilians then has translated to higher rates of radicalization in those areas within afghanistan. So certainl