Budget crunch opportunity for greater efficiency, says NATO Secretary General
On 21 June, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed the Annual Conference of the Security and Defence Agenda at the Concert Noble in Brussels, Belgium. He spoke about defence spending in financially challenging times.
In his speech entitled “Security Policy in a Era of Budgetary Constraints”, the Secretary General said that the budget crunch is “an unpleasant reality”, but that it is also “an opportunity to make NATO more efficient, and more effective. An opportunity to make the Alliance even better suited to tackle the unpredictable security environment that confronts us.”
He elaborated on three main points: how a stable, free and open market economy enhances security, why it is even more important to share the security burden in times of economic difficulty, and how to spend smarter to get greater return from defence spending.
Speaking about NATO-EU relations, the Secretary General said that, because these important institutions share 21 members and have complementary skills, “no other strategic partnership would offer so many benefits - both operationally and financially.“