Global Courant
NATO BUSINESS: Jonas Gahr Støre had Jens Stoltenberg and NATO Foreign Ministers visiting Oslo on the last day of May this year.
According to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap), NATO’s new defense plans will demand more from Norway.
New defense plans for NATO require more than just a Norwegian defense budget.According to Støre, next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius will be the most important of our time. Decisions will be taken on the reorganization of NATO defence.Støre will travel to Lithuania together with Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt and Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram.The NATO concept of military mobility involves the rapid movement of heavy military equipment over great distances and across national borders.According to Støre, complex threats, such as climate and weather-related challenges, require an upgrade of crisis plans.view more– Next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius will be the most important of our time. It will be a historic summit, Støre tells VG.
– We will decide on a complete reorganization of NATO, adapted to the situation we find ourselves in, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. New regional defense plans are being drawn up. Countries that feel exposed will get troops. And we will include Finland and eventually Sweden in the plans, he adds.
On Monday he will travel to Lithuania together with Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap) and Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram (Sp).
VG has previously spoken about the content of the new defense plans.
read also
Store for NATO summit: Ukraine needs security guarantees
Ukraine will need security guarantees from the West when the war is over.
It is still unclear whether Turkey will now allow Sweden into the alliance. However, Støre says it’s only a matter of time before that happens, in any case.
A year ago, Store was also optimistic on behalf of Sweden. Read here what he said before the previous summit in Madrid last year.
Looking at military needs
Støre has previously said that Sweden and Finland in NATO are open to closer Nordic defense cooperation.
But Norway must come to the aid of Sweden and Finland in other ways as well:
– Much of our roads and traffic run between north and south. If Sweden and Finland are reinforced through Norwegian ports and airports, we have to see what is missing. The military needs will be part of the national transport plan that we will send to the Storting next year, says Støre.
– What does that mean concretely?
– The armed forces must identify their critical needs. But it could be to reinforce rail crossings, roads and bridges to withstand the transport of tanks, and supply routes to some airports, he says.
MEETING IN VILNIUS: Støre met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj in Helsinki in May. Next week they will meet again in Vilnius.Military mobility
The defense chiefs in the Nordic region have designated four main ports that can receive and forward Allied reinforcements from the US and Canada: Ofotfjorden, Trondheimsfjorden, the Gothenburg region and the port of Esbjerg in Denmark.
Finland is already reinforcing the railway bridges over Torne älv, the border river between Sweden and Finland in the north.
NATO calls it military mobility: heavy military equipment must be able to be moved quickly over great distances and across national borders.
Must upgrade plans
Støre says there are vulnerabilities in other areas as well; Alarms were raised in NATO last summer when gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea were blown up. Subsequently, a number of countries mobilized troops and ships to better care for the underwater cables in the North Sea, among other things.
Norway and Germany have asked NATO to set up a permanent staff to protect infrastructure on the seabed. It will also be formally decided in Vilnius.
– We used the past year to review our crisis plans in areas such as climate, weather and complex threats. And we see that plans need to be upgraded in almost all areas, says Støre.
read also
Støre: The threat from Russia determines the size of the Norwegian armed forces
GAUSTATOPPEN (VG) The Norwegian defense of the future must be dimensioned according to the threat from Russia, says Prime Minister Jonas…
War was not ruled out
– Much of the thinking about defense in NATO is now reminiscent of the idea behind the 2008 Norwegian Neighborhood Initiative, says Støre.
Then he was foreign minister and Jens Stoltenberg was prime minister.
– We argued that NATO should come back home. Back then, the soldiers knew more about the mountains of Afghanistan than about the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, to put it bluntly. We believed that war in Europe could not be ruled out and that we had to be prepared, he says.
published:Published: 08.07.23 at 22:30
Copy linkCopy linkShare on FacebookShare on FacebookShare via emailShare via emailNATO’s new defense plans: this is how it affects Norway
World News,Next Big Thing in Public Knowledg
#NATOs #defense #plans #affects #Norway
