NATO HQ Brussels 6 Dec 2002

Interview with Dr. Edgar Buckley NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defence Planning and Operations Q: Dr. Edgar Buckley, good morning. Edgar Buckley: Good morning. Q: You are the Assistant Secretary General for Defence Planning and Operations at NATO Headquarters and you've very kindly accepted to explain to us today the outcome of the Prague Summit regarding military capabilities. At Prague Heads of State and Government, launched a new capabilities initiative called the Prague Capabilities Commitment. Could you highlight the key aspects of this initiative? Buckley: Yeah, I'm pleased to do so. It's a very important initiative and it concentrates on four main areas. First of all, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence. Secondly, command, communications and information superiority. And then thirdly, interoperability and key aspects of combat effectiveness. And finally, readiness, deployability, rapid deployment and sustainability of forces. Q: Which gaps does this initiative seek to address? Buckley: Well, within the areas I've defined, and which were defined by ministers, we're talking about commitments to improve capabilities in areas such as outsized strategic airlift. These are large, wide-bodied aircraft that are needed to transport military equipment quickly to their operations that may take place. We've only got four of these in Europe at the moment. The Americans have got around 200. As a result of the commitments that we've got here we're going to quadruple the number of these aircraft fairly shortly in Europe and that's going to make a difference. And we'll continue with that sort of thing. Equally, in the area of air-to-air refuelling, where the European allies do not have enough of these tanker aircraft to keep operations running, and there's a Spanish initiative there to produce a multi-national fleet of aircraft to perform that task. Precision-guided munitions, we'll need many more of these if we're going to be able to conduct our operations in the way in which our publics expect them to be conducted, with minimal collateral damage. So that's another area. Assured access to sealift is another area where we need to see improvements. And in each of the areas there are a large number of shortfalls which have been identified by our strategic commanders, which we're collecting commitments to address. And we won't stop this process. We will continue to address these shortfalls to try and produce the capability that NATO needs. Q: Right, so how does it actually differ from the previous program, the Defence Capabilities Initiative? Buckley: There are three main differences. First of all, it's more focused than the DCI was on these four areas. Secondly, it's got a much bigger emphasis on multinational co-operation and on all specialization. And thirdly -- this is the most important -- whereas the Defence Capabilities Initiative was an agreement by all the allies that they would all do a number of things, 58 things actually, this is an agreement by individual nations that they themselves will do specific things. So as we know, if everybody agrees to do everything that means nobody agrees to do anything. This time 'round we know who's agreed to do what, and we will monitor their implementation of their commitments. Q: I see. How will... will progress be actually reviewed? If so, how often? Buckley: Progress is going to be reviewed by a group of representatives from each of the countries meeting together at NATO Headquarters on a regular basis. The responsibility of the international staff will be to invite them, invite each country, to give us information on how their commitments are being implemented. And where we see any divergence from what they have told us that they will do, then we will ask them to explain, clarify what's going on. But we will then produce regular reports for the ministers collectively on how things are going. So we will certainly monitor it and we'll call attention to any problems as they arise. Q: How can NATO guarantee that the Prague Capabilities Commitment will be more successful than its predecessor? Buckley: A good question. We can't. We can't guarantee it. All we can do is to invite the Heads of State and Government, as we have done, to make firm political commitments that their governments will improve the capabilities. We can then monitor it and where we see any divergence from what's been promised, committed, then we will draw attention to the Heads of State and Government concerned. I'm confident that this is going to be a solid mechanism for producing the turnaround in this area that we need. Q: Okay. Dr. Buckley, thank you very much. Buckley: Thank you.