Page 11 - North Atlantic and Nordic Defense

North European and North Atlantic Defense: The Challenges Return

And then first part of the 21st century, we’ve had Sweden being integrated into NATO operations, for
instance in Afghanistan.

This has had a significant impact on Swedish thinking.

And now we see, with the latest exercise, Aurora ’17, the Swedes applying NATO standards to their forces to
ensure greater interoperability with its NATO neighbors.

And you can see that they are seamlessly operating together with NATO forces in this exercise.

Finland is of course not integrated to the same level.
But Finland comes with a much different and much bigger defense organization, which at the same time offers
new and flexible capabilities to counter hybrid warfare.

It is quite interesting to see that one of the things that was exercised in Aurora ’17 was actually for Finland to
reinforce the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic.

For the Finns it is crucial that Sweden is able to control and secure Gotland in a time of crisis, let alone a time
of war.

The island is in reality an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

Question: To conclude, how do we shape an effective path forward?

Hans Tino Hansen: In spite of the challenges we need to combine military modernization which can integrate
capabilities throughout the Northern European security zone with effective crisis management tools and
approaches.

Without credible conventional, or for that matter nuclear, but let’s leave the nuclear out for the sake of the
argument, if we do not have credible conventional tools that we can use both in peacetime, in crisis, and in
war, there won’t be a deterrence effect.
And then we face a significant risk of something that moves from doing the crisis back from, can actually it
kind of morph into a warlike situation.

And that’s is not what we want to see.

The Perspective of the Norwegian Defense Minister

Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide’s opening remarks: Leangkollenseminaret 2017

February 13, 2017
By Minister of Defence Ine Eriksen Søreide

Norwegian Minister of Defence Ine Eriksen Søreide held these remarks at the Security Seminar at Leangkollen
February 13th 2017.

Distinguished collegues, former ministers, guests, ladies and gentlemen,

It’s good to be back here at the annual Leangkollen seminar. I want to thank the Norwegian Atlantic
Committee, Kate and her good associates for pulling it off – in style – once again. This has become an
important venue for addressing key security issues, and I’m happy to see such a great turnout.

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