“Public Promotion of the NATO Smart Defence Model”
21 November 2011, Army Hall, Skopje

Honored Minister Besimi,

Excellencies,

Generals, representatives of the MoD and the Army of the Republic of Macedonia,

Dear friends,

Firstly, I would like to greet you for responding the invitation of the Euro-Atlantic Council of Macedonia and for being part of first public promotion of the new NATO Concept – Smart Defence. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Minister Besimi and the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Macedonia for the support of this event, as well as to the British, French and Dutch embassies for their partnership in this event.

The Smart Defence Concept was launched by the NATO Secretary General, Rasmussen this year on the well-known Munich Conference. This concept is an expression of the big difficulties facing the Alliance in building modern military capacities which are supposed to respond to the more complicated security challenges. These complex issues that the Alliance is facing with can be especially seen in the past several years, after the beginning of the world financial crisis that had a very negative influence over the military budgets of NATO member-states especially in the European part of the Alliance.

All the countries, even the bigger ones, have limited resources at their disposal for building military capacities. NATO, being the system of collective defence, understands a mutual building of these capacities in order to be able to efficiently respond to the more dynamic changes in the security environment. This means that each member-state and partner of the Alliance must carry their own part of the burden. If one or more countries do not participate equally within the frames of their undertaken obligations, then they will threaten the basic functions of the collective security and thus, the principal rights and freedoms of their citizens.

In order to prevent this kind of situation, especially in times of crisis, the countries should invest what they already invest in the defence, in a wiser manner. And having in mind that today's military technology is more complex, meaning, more expensive, there is a logical need for the countries to join in order to build faster and cheaper certain joint military capacities that will meet the standards of the modern warfare and will efficiently respond to the threats.

Therefore, the Smart Defence concept firstly represents a more efficient use of the defence budgets by forcing the multi-national concept. In that way, with efficient use and resource management, decreasing the double expenses and a bigger coordination between the Allies, using the same amount of money we will be able to achieve bigger effects for the security of our citizens.

The first real step in building this process is the political will. I am happy to hear the support from the minister Besimi, especially because it is the first one of this kind in the country. Last week in Tirana I heard the same support from the Albanian minister of defence, and I know that the other countries in the region share the same opinion. This points out to an awareness; that the countries in the region, being aware for their limits in view of the modern security, are slowly preparing to enter this new phase of building their military forces. After having received the political support, the operational phase will follow and it will explore and identify the possible projects and processes for Smart Defence. In that line, a good example for this is the Declaration for cooperation in the security signed between the biggest European armies, France and Great Britain , in November last year by the President Sarkozy and Prime-Minister Cameron. I believe that the respective ambassadors will give us more details on this.

The Smart Defence approach signifies opening a new window to the new possibilities. Through it, the global reality on security and the manners of military facing with the threats will be easier for understanding, and I believe that with a serious implementation of the approach on long term, it will have a serious positive feedback to the future transformation of the structure of the forces in all the armies.

On this occasion, I would like to turn to the Macedonian military budget. In the past several years it has been drastically decreased, by 40%. If, additionally, we take into consideration the very structure of the budget out of which the bigger part is intended for wages and maintenance of the old equipment and objects, then I think that all of you will agree that a large part of the processes for building a modern army with all the capacities necessary, are threatened. I believe that there is no Smart Defence that can compensate for this low level of the military budget and I will agree with the assessment made by SG Rasmussen given for the European defence: if this budgeting trend continues, Europe is taking risks to transfer the financial crisis into a security crisis.

We believe that this is a serious concept for the future of the Macedonian defence and therefore, and that is the reason why we had decided to promote this concept. In this starting phase, that is educational as well as informative, the space for debate is open and welcome. I invite you to part of this debate. The Euro-Atlantic Council of Macedonia will continue to address this issue in future.

Thank you.

translation from Macedonian: Stefanija Madzoska