Details

The conference is organized in cooperation with the NATO Headquarters, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Poland and Polish Institute of International Affairs. Approximately 120 invited guests - politicians and international experts - from more than 10 countries, will take part in the meeting.

In recent years, NATO has come under increasing fire for its structural constraints and expanding functions, shortcomings in burden sharing among its members, and disagreements about threat assessments and priorities. Experts assess these challenges and contend that NATO remains indispensable to the defense of the security and values of all the Allies.

Since the end of the Cold War, the NATO Allies have lacked a single unifying threat, but they have continued to work together and even enlarged their Alliance. Retaining their original missions of collective defense and dialogue with potential adversaries, they have also taken on new crisis management functions—including peacekeeping and intervention in foreign conflicts—as well as the pursuit of a cooperative security vision for democracy and peace in the Euro-Atlantic region and beyond, with many partnerships with non-NATO countries. Conference will evaluate the Alliance’s performance of these core tasks and reviews its members’ efforts to achieve the right balance among them.

Today each member must contribute to the Alliance’s overall capacity to deter and defend against direct threats to NATO territory it means that the commitment under NATO’s Article V to treat an attack against one as an attack against all cannot be rhetorical. The Alliance needs to bolster its capacities for defence and deterrence, based on an appropriate mix of conventional, nuclear and missile defence forces.

Due to Sinan Ülgen , Visiting Scholar Carnegie Europe the Alliance collectively and all allies individually should consider the following concrete steps:

• halt the decline in defence spending, with all members committing to spend at least 2% of GDP on defence by the end of this decade and to invest a significant share of their defence budget (in the range of 20%) in acquisitions of critical capabilities and in research and technology;
• improve the Alliance’s capability to defend all of its territory by expanding investment in scalable infrastructure and prepositioning military equipment;
• bolster the NATO Response Force to ensure it is more responsive and ready to be deployed at shorter notice;
• conduct more regular live exercises, at scale and including ‘snap’ exercises to test readiness, and undertake contingency planning adapted to the new situation and new types of threats;
• forward deploy air, ground and naval assets to the east of NATO territory for as long as the situation requires;

Following the introductory speech, the discussion will start on the base of freedom of expression and of ideas. The participants will be free to express their opinions, views, conclusions, along with comments on the topic’s introductory address. After the conference, the Institute for Strategic Studies plans to publish a report which will consist of the meetings summed conclusions. The Foundation will also render available the recording of the debate on its own website. Each change in the list of guests will be updated briefly.

Programmme

17th October (Friday)

10.30 – 10.45 Welcoming Remarks

Anna Szymańska-Klich, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Strategic Studies

10.45 – 12.00

Panel I “All for one” - collective defence policy

Bogdan Klich, Senator RP, former Minister of National Defence Republic of Poland

Robert Pszczel, Director of the NATO Information Office in Moscow

Prof. Andrew A. Michta, Adjunct Fellow CSIS, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Marcin Kozieł, Director, NATO Liaison Office, Ukraine

Chairman: Prof. Artur Gruszczak, Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University

12.00 - 12.30 Discussion

13.00 – 14.15

Panel II European Reassurance Initiative

Ellen Germain, United States Consul General in Krakow

Maciej Popowski, Deputy Secretary-General European External Action Service

Prof. Roman Kuźniar, Advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland

Ph.D. Marcin Zaborowski, Director, The Polish Institute of International Affairs, Warsaw

Chairman: Prof. Michał Chorośnicki, Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University

14.15 – 14.45 Discussion

14.45 – 15.45

Panel III Development of the forces and capabilities to NATO’s requirements

Ph.D. Robert Kupiecki, Under-Secretary of State for Defence Policy Ministry of National Defence Republic of Poland

Ph.D. James N. Miller, President of Adaptive Strategies, LLC, and former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Council

Ph.D. Karl-Heinz Kamp, Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik

Ph.D. Mike Winnerstig, Deputy Research Director, Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI)

Chairman: Michał Kobosko, Director, Atlantic Council Poland Office, Director, Wrocław Global Forum

15.45 – 16.15 Discussion

16.15 – Closing remarks