 Where is NATO? What's the role of NATO in this unfolding situation and how confident are you that we are actually going to have something to celebrate in April? We will celebrate in April. But NATO's role is today fundamentally the same as it was back in 1949 and that is that we protect and defend each other, that we really believe that we are safer together than apart. NATO is based on the idea that it's one for all and all for one and that has kept us all safe and secure for 70 years. The big difference is that we are doing that in a very different world because for 40 years from 1949 to 1989 it was one well-defined threat and challenge and that was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Now neither the Soviet Union nor the Warsaw Pact exist actually eight of the Warsaw Pact members or eight they are they are now members of now there were eight members seven are members of NATO and the eight member the eight member doesn't exist anymore that was the Soviet Union. So we have to do a collective defense provide security in a very different world where we have many threats many challenges at the same time cyber terrorism we have proliferation of nuclear weapons weapons of mass destruction we have tendencies to great power competition between China Russia and the United States and we have also Russia which is much more assertive response responsible for aggressive actions from the Kirk Strait to the streets of Solskjaer using their agent there. So we have to do fundamentally the same in a very different security environment. The good news is that NATO is adapting and that's actually the reason why we should celebrate is that NATO has been able to change while the while the world is changing. We have implemented the biggest reinforcements of collective defense since the end of the Cold War with high readiness of forces we have deployed forces in the east and part of the Alliance for the first time in our history battle groups there and we are doing more together North America and United States and contrary to what many people believe the US is not leaving Europe they reduced their presence after the end of the Cold War and the last US battle tank left Europe in December 2013 but now the US is back with a full armored brigade so actually the US is now increasing their presence in Europe as response to the need to strengthen NATO and collective defense in Europe. European allies are also stepping up since 2016 they have increased defense spending across Europe and Canada by 41 billion US dollars. We had a NATO summit in July last year in July and there we agreed to further strengthen our efforts and we now see the results based on national plans coming in from all the allies they will add 100 billion US dollars by the end of next year so things are changing by 2024 we expect 350 billion US dollars so it has been a lot of focus from not least the US on burden sharing and my message to the United States is that actually we are improving burden sharing we see the results European allies are stepping up. The last thing I'll mention which we are the most immediate challenge we are faced with is the breakdown or the potential breakdown of the INF Treaty. The INF Treaty is a cornerstone for arms control for our security it's a treaty that was signed in 1987 it introduced the number of missiles it banned all missiles zero and it has served us all very well the problem now is that Russia is deploying new missiles in Europe violating the treaty the United States stated at the NATO foreign ministerial meeting in December last year that by the 2nd of February if Russia has not come back into compliance by then then they would start the process of withdrawing from that treaty we will meet Russia tomorrow in the NATO Russia Council in Brussels with NATO allies and our task our main goal is to continue to try to call on Russia to come back into compliance because these missiles are mobile they are nuclear capable they are hard to detect they they have short warning time they can reach european cities so they are by that also reducing the threshold for any potential use of nuclear weapons so there are many reasons for staying strong together in NATO also for the next seven years thank you yeah yes thank you very much that that's a that's an explanation of essentially a NATO as a healthy organization faced with serious challenges but let me turn to John Kerry I mean you know in my country in in Germany we had for the first time in decades newspaper paper articles not many but some that started arguing apparently we can no longer trust the United States maybe we should have you know a european or even a german bomb can we still rely on the united states what's your take on the health of this alliance and how it should be taken forward well wolfgang thank you but first of all thank you for asking me to join you here today this is a really timely and important topic I'm delighted to be with all of our panelists but I particularly want to say how a pleasure it is to be back with the ends and with Ursula we worked so closely together for such a long period of time without ranker and without insults gratuitous or otherwise and that's what I want to try to talk about today in the context of NATO and Europe and I ask you all of you to think about this discussion in a larger context NATO was created and the european project was created to stop europeans from killing each other bluntly put and if you go back to the 1940s and 50s and the challenge of a then soviet union um just because the nature of the entities have changed i.e soviet union to a russia to a federation and so forth europe etc um just because that's changed does not change the fundamental interests and values that underscore not just NATO but europe and and NATO is integrally a component of the european project it has to be viewed as such and there are countless ways and Jens could run through a long list of ways in which NATO has proven itself as a bulwark in support of the european project now writ large globally this is a moment in human history it's a moment in the in the in the movement of of of the challenges on this planet and they are massive and grown right now this is a moment for the world to be coming together not to be breaking apart and you have to measure the breaking apart whether it's a brexit whether it's the turmoil in several european countries uh the the sort of neopopulism slash i would say demagoguery that is uh pulling people into a place of fear again in europe you have to stop and measure history folks uh no place has done well when economies are become tense when people don't do well economically and shared prosperity of globalization when you have uh demonstrable discrimination uh and and fear promoted through uh through exploitation of religion or uh or sect or tribe or geography uh or uh you know background the history is not good when those forces are unleashed and then when you add to it a demagogue who comes along and wants to exploit it and i think all of you can find one or two or three or four demagogues at work today the fact is that uh there are leaders of major countries in the world uh who are promoting a new narrative about the liberal order of the west which is part of what nato is it's part of this bulwark that was built in the aftermath of world war two and the history of the 20th century and the numbers of people who died in that century world war one world war two vietnam so forth it it's you know vastly more killing than is taking place anywhere on the earth today and part of the reason for that is nato part of the reason for that are the values that are lived out in europe frankly it astonishes me and troubles me that there are greater and more voices in europe there are voices angle merkel macron people who stood up for europe but there aren't enough voices celebrating the extraordinary meaning of the last 70 years europe has the highest standard of living in the world europe has the best health care system in the world europe has high wages europe has the best education system in the world europe has a remarkable quality of life and the least violence in in the world and yet people are putting it at risk frankly it's incomprehensible and when you look at nato you know the united states of america was attacked from afghanistan europe is still with the united states of america in afghanistan now not in my judgment in the best strategic way today because i think we need to transition and transition away and there are ways to do that using a platform against terror that would benefit all of us without maintaining an unsupportable forever presence which i think is unsustainable but we're not trying to do that and we're not doing it and nato is the entity that would do it and is there right now i've sat at a table in in in uh brussels with 52 nations around the table we're maybe even more 50 sub nations extraordinary and each nation would report on what it was doing in afghanistan do the chinese or the russians call on the world to do that do we see the kind of response that nato has been able to promote in the interest of helping europe stabilize to some degree during the migration when we called on nato to become involved and deal with that and what about obviously the extraordinary efforts with respect to ukraine we pulled together a major major reassurance program for the front line states we made clear that we were serious about article five and the only nation in the world that i know of in the 21st century that has sent its military personnel in uniform though disguised across international lines is russia and russia is one of the countries promoting the notion that the liberal order of the west is dead and the united states of america is in decline among other things so folks this is a time to be pretty hard-nosed about about where our interests lie and how we protect our interests we are of common value values europe and the united states the trans atlantic alliance and what we anybody will tell you i think if you talk to a lot of republicans bob corker was here yesterday others they will tell you what is happening in our country today in in in this administration is uh it's an aberration it is it's even hard to predict for people in the administration where it's going to be tomorrow or the next day so yes there are legitimate questions being asked today of a president who attacked nato who personally insulted a chancellor of germany who pulled the rug out from under the prime minister britain who was trying to negotiate on brexit who has you know i mean you can run the list right and and the and the problem is yes there is a question about will this president in fact be there and that's why there's discussion about a hundred thousand troops and there's discussion but i i can guarantee the vast majority of the american people and every person i know on either side of the aisle bipartisan ly who has any chance of being a president of united states in the future believes that nato is critical and they would object to any movement away from it and they will support article five so i do not accept some of the literature i have read where people are saying irreparable damage to the transatlantic alliance no i don't believe that not irreparable i think much of it curable in a matter of days and weeks if not hours by reaffirmations by restatements of support by recommitments but what is important my friends is that europe itself begin to define these values and these interests and that europe itself articulate with greater strength the value of standing together to have partners in developing defense capacity in poland development defense capacity in in lithuania and latvia and estonia and so forth that's vital and having our ability to be able to move to arms control and other efforts that brings up a different topic i won't go there now but i think the uh you know we we we have two billion young people in the world about 15 years old to 24 many of them live in places where if they don't get enfranchisement and and a part of the world this globalized world that satisfies their knowledge of what everybody in the world has because everybody has a smartphone they may not have a job but they have a smartphone they may not have a future but they have a smartphone they may not have a vote but they have a smartphone and they see what everybody else has and i'm telling you with with 1.8 billion kids 15 years older younger 350 million of whom are not going to go to school and they live many of them in countries that do affect europe already as a consequence of conflict you need a nato and nato has the ability to adjust to those kinds of threats we shouldn't be limited just by what created nato we face threats going forward perhaps the biggest of all was mentioned cyber you can bring countries to their heels in nanoseconds pushing a button 20 people in a barn somewhere in eastern europe or somewhere else in the world who are properly funded have the ability to be able to terrorize the nation if not bring it to its heels that's our threat and we need an entity like nato that can help guide what our our protocol is going to be with respect to cyber going forward we began to do that with president obama but there's nothing happening today that convinces me that we are doing this kind of things we did to rein in nuclear weapons we're not doing that with cyber we need the same type of nuclear negotiation for cyber that we had to begin to go from 50 000 warheads pointing at each other in rekivik when uh when reagan and gorbachev sat down now we're down to 5 1500 and some and we propose going lower so nato is critical to the ability to give confidence to people about those values about those interests and and it is the strongest vehicle we have right now to provide cohesion to the defense and security of a critical friend ally trading block and value based uh uh alliance and i think that is irrefutably a moment of strength and something we should adhere to not seek to undermine and destroy thank you john thank you very impressive um now let me turn to the german defense minister um you know listening to john carrey one question that might come up is so if if it's like that why would we need a european army why do we need to talk about autonomy of europeans etc can you explain to us a little bit what the motivation is and to what extent these ideas about european capabilities are or are not helpful to the large nato effort please yes thank you um thank you john uh for and i can underline each of your words um you know nato if if you wouldn't have it today we should invent it it is an indispensable nato we do have and i'll reinforce what what you said we are totally aware that nato yes it is the strongest military alliance in the world but why do we have it because it is an alliance of values an alliance of democracy who have sworn to each other that we will defend each other undisputed and without any regard whether it's a mighty and large country or small and little country and um this this sentence of um and this feeling and nato that we are defending together values of democracy the freedom the rule of law the dignity of every single person humanity in humanity this these are the values why we came together as you pointed out 70 years ago but today if we look around those are all values that are under pressure again and therefore nato is again in a period of transformation indispensable and it's our task to make it um to have it adapted to the new challenges we do have now referring to your question nato is an alliance of 29 and uh we will as you said jens won for all and all for one um we will if one square centimeters being attacked in our territory we will stand up together be it montenegro or be it the united states you uh reminded us of the one time the article five five has been pulled the collective defense that was 9 11 and we all stood up together to defend the freedom and to fight terror so this principle is ironclad europe has always been asked to step up and to get organized europe now 28 countries is what defense matters are concerned has been for a very very long time very fragmented 28 different armed forces no planning process um a huge amount of different weapon systems so an enormously ineffective way to maintain them to train the personnel that is necessary for it to have the procurement to buy the procurement or to de-develop the procurement there was always the demand for um from our friends towards europe get organized and there's a second reason why europe is getting organized there are many many threats and situation where i do see nato without any question and you mentioned many of them i will not repeat them but there are places or problems that are of utmost important for europe but i do not see nato there one typical example is africa um this is our immediate neighborhood and europe has to act and react together with our neighborhood africa in what we call comprehensive security which is diplomacy economic development and the ability to stabilize by military or police up to two years a couple of years ago europe in general was not able to react to a crisis that concerned our interest in a timely manner because we had neither structures nor procedures for that now with the evolving crisis around us europe one and a half year ago decided to build the european defense union to get organized as europeans what our defense is concerned the planning process the european defense fund for funding that to harmonize the weapon systems and the different armed forces we do have and i'm deeply convinced it will not only strengthen the ability and the credibility of europe to act and react in its immediate neighborhood or when its interests are concerned but it will also and is also strengthening nato because of course we are complementary to nato as i'm sitting here as a german defense minister i have the nato had a member of nato and a member of the european union and we do have i do have one single set of forces that is the bundesphere and of course it is sensible and effective to work together with our friends in europe and together with our friends in nato that each of the two structures is able to work complementary together but we have different fields where we are called upon so nato will always be collective defense nato will always be article five but the european defense union will represent in future the ability of the european union to protect europe and to act in a comprehensive way with diplomacy economic economic development and if necessary military means i'm looking at our clock which is ticking and i think we need to try to speed up a little bit in order to have sufficient time for our q and a session um turning to the polish foreign minister um maybe a question that would go directly you know to poland is the following question about 20 years ago 21 years ago or so we negotiated the so-called nato russia founding act which contains strict limitations for example no nuclear weapons in new member states of future new name member states etc etc i would be interested in your view should we given russian behavior over the last four almost five years in ukraine etc should we now stick to the nato russia founding act to this agreement should we adhere to the limitations or should we as some are proposing should we throw that overboard and do even more in terms of bolstering countries like your own very important question i think that it's right to ask this question but let me just start by saying that we will celebrate this year the 70th anniversary of the creation of nato but also very important anniversary for poland and other countries from our region which is 20th anniversary of joining nato poland together with hungarian check republic will celebrate that anniversary in march and it was a very important step since that time we feel really secure and safe in europe we joined community of free democratic states it was very fortunate decision because after that time russia started to change its foreign policy becoming more aggressive it is now we can call this policy as revisionist policy with aggression georgia 2008 and then also ukraine so it was very good decision maybe today would be much more difficult to simply have acceptance to that enlargement of nato very important decision was taken in at Warsaw summit 2016 to deploy forces from nato countries in bolting states poland through mania in order to guarantee and to demonstrate to russia that aggression will not go unnoticed or unpunished so for us nato is very important to deter russian forces now we asked about about nato russia founding act of course it's a similarity in FGT to certain extent both parties should obey to what they what they decided should follow russia broke that act and in our opinion you can you cannot break something which is already broken therefore we have a right to defend ourselves and to deploy forces it was already provided in the treaty one division or what what does it mean substantial forces poland does not share with germany france other countries in the west the same security or threat perception we share that threat perception with the countries from our region we simply fear russian aggressive policy therefore we are more much more so to say we want more american deployment of troops because in our opinion transatlantic bonds and american army is the only deterrent russia takes into consideration when they think about its foreign policy we are not against european army it's very just and justified action to mobilize countries within the european union to spend more on defense and to create forces which can act on their own but in our opinion only transatlantic links therefore only nato is a real security guarantor for our countries so this is how we see the situation so i can just summarize my short introduction that in europe there there are different threat perceptions and countries to the east close to the east of flanco nato have kind of a different priorities therefore for us american cooperation with the united states in the field of militaries crucial and also poland is decided to spend much more on defense and we will increase from two percent now to two percent point five in future in order to take also our burden to invest in common defense thank you very much thank you kishore you published a book not not so long ago with the very provocative title has the west lost it so here's my question about a copy here so here's my question has the west lost it when you listen to this discussion or to put it a little more i i guess intelligently what role do you see as a as as looking at nato and our region from the outside from an asian perspective what role do you see for the transit landing alliance in a in the evolving international system in this new landscape of quote unquote great power competition etc etc kishore well i don't be brave i know i know you're watching the clock so i'll make three very quick points to answer your question directly the first point i want to make and it's an important point i think from the point of view of the rest of the world at a time when everything is changing right we are entering a new era of world history and just to give you a how dramatic the changes you had 200 years of western domination of world history today in ppp terms the number one economy is china number two is united states number three is india number four is japan not one european country in the top four it's a different world so with everything changing it's good to have some pillars of stability in the world right and since the west created in many ways the global architecture post 1945 which is still i think working and holding the world together and i spent 10 years as ambassador the u n so i know that there's these many of these global multilateral institutions work and they rest on the transatlantic alliance as the substructure of the global governance architecture so the rest of the world doesn't want to see these transatlantic alliance being shaken it's good if it stays together but my second point at the same time is that at the end of the day an alliance is about threats now threats as you know we are talking about geopolitical threats the word geopolitical means geography political now the geography of europe is very different from the geography of the united states or north america and the number one threat that europe is going to face in the 21st century is not the number one threat that america is going to face in 21st century to put it very bluntly what the what europe's going to face in 1950 europe's population was twice that of african today african population is twice that of europe's by 2100 it's going to be 10 times the size of europe i guarantee you you've already seen a few what a few boats have done right they have distorted the whole political process in europe you've had this populist parties coming in because people are frightened of these boats coming and the leaders haven't paid attention to the people's fears the people are not worried about russian tanks coming tomorrow they're more worried about the african migrants coming and here a secretary of state john carrey is absolutely right when he talks about the young p two billion people with a smartphone more and more of them are going to come and how do you keep them out so that brings me to my third point you got to do you got to develop africa economically there's only one solution and who's the number one potential partner for europe for the economic development of africa who's the number one investor in africa today it's china so it's quite to be quite natural if you look at geography political geopolitical uh interest there's a convergence of interest within europe and china to develop africa economically and hold back the both people but i grant you and that's what my next book is about in the next 10 years there will be a spike in us china rivalry no number one power gives up is number one power that easily and china's economy in nominal market terms will become number one in 10 to 15 years there will be a tremendous sino-american geopolitical struggle coming and then where does europe stand does it look after its own geographic interest and work with china in africa or does it work with united states to counterbalance china and sacrifice its interest now these are hard questions there are no easy answers but what i would recommend to the transatlantic alliance since we want you to continue we want you to remain strong please have some very hard-headed discussions among yourself about how you keep this transatlantic alliance strong in a 21st century which is completely different from the 20th century great thank you very much that's that's a thought-provoking point that you're making we are now uh inviting all of you to ask question who would like to ask the first question again please identify yourself if you could thank you my name is Ludmila Batura i'm global shaper from minskap i have a question to mr stoltenberg mr carrey and mr zaputovic recently in foreign media in press there has been a dispute whether russia will occupy Belarus so i was wondering what is your opinion whether this will happen how this will happen whether it will be like a military aggression or not and if it will happen what could be the response of natum thank you all right jens first of all i think that we have to just assume that that will not happen so because i think it's extremely important to stand up for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity for every nation in europe having said that we have seen that russia has violated the territorial integrity of several neighbors russia has troops in maldoa without the consent of the government in shishinau they have troops in two parts of georgia abkhazia and salt osetia and of course they have illegally annexed the Crimea and and they are destabilizing eastern ukraine and we have seen the aggressive actions of of russia in the in the in the sea of asov what NATO is doing is that as a response not least to more assertive russia and more and these are aggressive actions of russia we have as i said significantly strengthen the readiness of our forces increased our presence in east and part of the alliance and european allies are now investing more in defense and us is increasing their presence in in in europe and the reason why we do that is to prevent conflict the main reason for NATO's deterrence is to send a clear signal to any potential adversary that if any ally is attacked the whole of nature will be there and that's the best way to avoid any conflict and and so NATO is responding and and and we are ready then to of course defend any NATO ally the russia is not a member of NATO john you want to add something to that i think that covers that covers it if i may just add to this of course bilalas is a very important neighbor of poland and we support sovereignty territorial integrity independence of bilalas i think that's also there is a role for the european union to support pro european orientation in the country and we will celebrate this year indeed we do we do it already the 10th anniversary of eastern partnership program so we have to be creative and try to somehow simply support society of course you ask about some dramatic events concerning aggression breach of international law by russia if it happens therefore i think the reaction of international communities should be strong and NATO both european union other actors should give clear signals to russia that it will be not tolerated uh hello i'm trisha de borger i'm a freelance writer i just wanted to ask you in terms of um the cohesion of europe and and standing and and standing up for its own and to be uh legitimately looked at in the world as a force for good and power could could you comment a little bit on what its relationship should be to um a divisive country such as iran now who will take that question any any takers if i made sorry please well let me i want to preface my answer to that and i'll answer it very directly um by also stating that um as i talk about the strength of europe the importance of europe and the importance of the values and the interest being represented i don't close my eyes to the notion that europe needs to uh make some reforms and engage in some significant discussion about so some of the uh institutional atrophy if you will a little bit um or you know i think angela merkel in our speech yesterday made some comments about this so i would agree with it and i think the same thing with respect to um looking at these threats the the the fact is that if suddenly we're out of the i and f treaty and you you have a new kind of arms race that's just going to put an exclamation point of why you need a nato because that's a geo political threat and and so i think that the arguments build rather than diminish now with respect to iran um europe played a very important role i mean this was a partnership which is again an argument for multilateralism russia china even in the midst of ukraine russia cooperated worked very closely in order to get the nuclear arms agreement with the brand and and to help create a structure where we had a responsible use of of enriched uranium and we we dealt with the challenge in a multilateral way and and seven countries signed this agreement and what's significant about the agreement in iran is that those countries are working very hard right now to keep that agreement alive they still believe in it what is it that president she and president putin and president mackerel and president and chancellor merkel and and prime minister may know about the iran deal that donald trump doesn't actually maybe i shouldn't ask that question but i mean seriously think about it they're all staking even as they know iran is mischievous and is doing things in yemen doing things with missiles doing things with hezbollah threatening israel engaged in iraq all of which we object to and the obama administration objected to by the way we did things about it we kept the sanctions in place on each of those things we raised the sanctions because they were doing it and i agree with the notion that we need a follow on agreement with respect to what iran is doing but are you stronger getting a follow on agreement by coming to the europeans and others who signed the agreement and say to them hey guys i don't like this deal and i'm prepared to get out of it but i'm going to do it any year and i'm going to call on you to join me to get a follow on agreement from the iranians with respect to hezbollah and missiles and other things don't you think we're stronger going into that together to leverage the the the follow on agreement that's not what we did president just pulled out walked away and has engaged in effort to create such rigid application of secondary sanctions and other things that what he's really engaged in is a regime change initiative that's obvious to anybody who understands this but in effect what it has done is strengthen the irgc strengthen the very people who didn't want a nuclear agreement and who said to the supreme leader don't negotiate with the united states you can't trust them so it's turned everything on its ear in a way that will not achieve the very goal we want to achieve with respect to iran so i look i think you also have to look inside iran you can't just be you know blanket statement about whole nation there are huge differences between arab sunni and shia persian and people don't acknowledge that in any way whatsoever when they start talking about hegemony in the region and this and that it's not going to happen so you know particularly with the united states locked in with our other friends in the region and making it clear we're not going to let that happen so false threats should not command the attention of of and i'm not saying the missiles are real threat the the transfer of weapons are real threats but in other ways some things have been exaggerated that i think make it very difficult to to find a way forward that the world merits in this kind of situation iran uh i i in many ways i tried to get around and saudi arabia to send out and king salman actually said to me yeah i think we couldn't make that happen we should and it's never happened one of the things i learned fighting in a war as a young man was before you commit your people to go fight somewhere you really owe it to them to exhaust the opportunities of diplomacy not rush the war but we were before we got the iran deal rushing to conflict there are three major leaders of countries who came to us and said you have to bomb iran and president mama said you know what i'm going to do diplomacy before we do that and look what happened so that's how i think we manage iran by building our alliance with our friends by working in a way that cohesively leverages the diplomatic outcome that you want to get rather than just unilaterally going off and pulling out of paris pulling out of tpp pulling out of this pulling out of iran pulling out of syria uh i mean that's not what happened to the greatest negotiator if i may add to this picture within the european union foreign ministers council we discuss very often the situation if iran and i think that we share the europeans and the americans the share assessment of the and the role of iran which is a problem in the middle east we do not agree on how to deal with that poland together with other EU member states says that jcpoa is has positive impact and we stand by that agreement the united states decided to withdraw now the problem is that in my opinion only acting together as a transatlantic community we can we can be effective in generally dealing with the middle east therefore myself with mike pompeo we invited ministers from all over the world to the conference in war so it will be heard the 13th or 14th of february to discuss that issue so we will listen to ministers to countries of the region how they see the problem because we think that again transatlantic community is a value and we have to find the possibility to work together and to address that very important problem today good it's an important point osla funderlein thank you john again for your words because if i may refer to your brilliant analysis yes there are the two superpowers the united states and china but you were asking where is the role of europe in between well the european experience is the experience that if we have a club of egoists and if we fight each other we're all losing so um our bitter experience of the last century was if we work together it might be slower it might be bumpy and messy sometimes and loud and chaotic but in the very end it's a win-win situation for all of us the middle powers and countries and therefore it is a question of do we want a zero sum game that always needs one winner who needs a loser or do we want to invest in the win-win situation that can occur they are slower as i said and they need a lot of diplomacy they need a lot of compromises but i think over time this is going to be what's this is going to be the model that's going to keep our world peaceful and inclusive and therefore i see a european role in promoting this logic of win-win situation and in promoting because we are 28 very different countries in promoting the value in itself of multilateralism a vibrant multilateralism to be a vanguard for that principle and this is a role which i expect europe to play just just one like that we completely supported but please show some determination okay well if i may just say that when i was born there were six countries in the european union today i'm 60 years old we have 28 it's a huge success story it's an economic so i agree i agree so 500 million people um peacefully together uh after reunification our friends who joined us it was a win-win situation for all of us prosperity rose so there is a lot of dedication behind it and we want to complete this and write on this success story in the security and defense sector but always keeping in mind that multilateralism is the foundation of our work there was somebody back there yes please hi my name is alvaro sainz and my question is directed to the minister of defense of germany so one of the things you mentioned about was that nato was the coming of of common values and democracies and the survival of the alliance is clearly important and top of mind for for you all how do you deal with a member of nato who is no longer sharing the values of democracy putting thousands of people in jail including many journalists and it it has become a pseudo democracy a a you know a strong money if you will um pretending to be a a democracy how do you deal with that because you have the survival of nato but you also have members who will start not sharing the values you have yeah um the the principle of an alliance is that um and the the examples you are pointing out if you look at the history of nato we had over and over these situations where one member state um took a wrong turning if i may say so and the principle always was it is better to have the country in our alliance and to work over time to find the road back to democracy and our values than to have it excluded and uh as an opponent and uh there are many many people in the countries you're referring to that are thriving for democracy that are working for these values so it's worth to work hard together we have different issues without any question but the discussion about these issues and the work together to find back to the cohesion within the alliance concerning these values is 100 times more worth it than exclusion and then conflicts that are almost unsolvable i think we have time for maybe one very brief question but really just a sentence or so and one brief answer because we're practically running out of time now my name is Lain I'm from Singapore my question is with the enthusiasm from the eastern european countries the nato members in china's belt and road initiative do you see this weakening of unity within the nato members okay who wants to take that one yes i don't see any weakening of unity in within the nato actually i i see the opposite but but having said that we have to understand the following nato is the alliance of 29 allies they are different they have different history different backgrounds some from north america many of them from europe different political leaders are elected sometimes they disagree on important issues as trade or or climate or or many other issues and they choose different parts on many different things but they unite around the core task of nato and that is that we defend and protect each other because especially in a world with more uncertainties more threats and more challenges this is extremely important and some are concerned about the size of china well china is big that's fair but but nato meaning one billion people europe and north america together is really a big alliance which is able to cope with all threats and challenges we face in the world today as long as you stand together i think that was a pretty good closing remark thank you very much so thank you