 So, Hannah, perhaps you might give us your opening of Oxma, please. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for this introduction. I'm really happy and honored to be here again. Just building on something you said, Nink, I fully agree. Small states can contribute. They do contribute. I wonder whether they also sometimes feel they have to contribute. I'm speaking about Finland, and I distinctly remember when Finland joined the EU for 25 years ago. There were doubts about Finland being a good member of the Union when it comes to foreign and security policy. And I think Finland did think that it has to contribute much more, it has to be really active to dispel the doubts, to show it is a good member. So, it compensated for its small size by being very active, and this has to some extent continued. I think Finland, if we can talk in terms of a national perception of a country, we do, in any case, Finland wants to be seen as a net contributor to security and defence in Europe, which perhaps sounds a bit much. But it sort of sees that it is a net contributor in the sense that it takes care of its own defence, manages to some extent at least, and it also takes part actively in all co-operative endeavours that there are for increasing security and defence in Europe. We'll be looking at many, many different forms of such endeavours. So, both taking care of its own defence and taking part in co-operation. I have to say these two sides have not always been seen as equally valuable. A certain discourse has been developed. So, as to say that they actually do not contradict each other, but they are mutually supportive. So, the more you participate, the better your own military capabilities will be that you use for the defence of your own country. So, by this kind of discourse formation, if we can say so, people have been educated to look at these two realms as belonging together and reinforcing each other. So, it's not necessarily for altruistic reasons that you take part because it is for your own benefit as well. Now, we also already heard that we are now in a very different situation when we think about defence, particularly because we are in a different situation when it comes to the security threats we are dealing with, cyber threats and hybrid forms of threats in particular, which means, speaking from the Finnish context again, more volatility in the security system, more unpredictability and need for higher readiness, but also need for more thinking about resilience, resilience of the society as a whole. So, threats change, yes, and the system changes as well. I already mentioned the great powers becoming more and more central again, some kind of a new great power politics time that we see. So, all these must have some kind of consequence for how cooperation is developing and how cooperation is understood. And for Finland, the consequences of these big changes are twofold, I would say. Cooperation is even more needed, but there are also many more options, seemingly at least, for cooperating with others. One might add also, when it comes to the specificity of small states, is that in some of these new threats, perhaps the smaller states are slightly more equal with the bigger ones than in others, because they are not encountered by only military means, and so you might have capacities where you actually, whether the size doesn't matter that much, perhaps we can discuss these later. Anyway, Finnish security and defence thinking changes quite a lot. You see a change in the past three years, I would say, into ways in particular. Cooperation becomes even more central for Finnish security and defence. It is part of national defence capabilities, and it means both providing and receiving military assistance, which is sort of new for a military non-aligned country, to speak very clearly and straightforwardly about providing and receiving military assistance. Finland has been rather slowly warming up to this and expressing this so clearly. It was only in 2017 that the legislation was changed so as to allow for proper providing military assistance. In the first place, so quite a long time after the Lisbon Treaty that actually is the basis for such action. So deeper cooperation, if you want, but also much-roaming cooperative initiatives when it comes to the sector of security and defence. What I just saw quickly before coming here was that the Ministry of Defence had just signed an agreement on defence industrial matters with its counterparts in India. And there are so many of these, mostly bilateral agreements, now that there is a long list of them. So cooperation in the field of defence with the UK, with the US, of course with Sweden to a very specific extent, and this we can talk later on about. But also with other countries. Sometimes trilateral forms, Sweden, Finland, the US, is a trilateral example. And then these mini-lateral formats that we all know led by France, Germany, and the UK respectively. Where in all of them you find Finland taking part. You might ask why these initiatives, Mushroom, whose interests they are actually reflecting and who takes the initiative for the other bilateral agreements in the first place. This is I think quite interesting. Finland, perhaps because of its small size, certainly does not say no to these possibilities of new kind of bilateral cooperation. Is this a way of sort of, are these the means to reach the goals of Finnish security and defence policy? If we look at the government's programme, it says that the goal of Finnish security and defence policy is to safeguard the national room for maneuver and keep all options open, which is rather interesting. And here we see that there are a number of options indeed. But it could also be that this kind of new mushrooming of initiatives might be a bit difficult to maneuver. And it could be a bit too rich in different options. Again, particularly for a small state to maneuver. Our research says that small states used to be where the proponents of multilateralism, exactly for that, that they didn't have to maneuver with large countries on a one-to-one basis. But they had these multilateral frameworks where they were safe, predictable, where they could control big powers. Now what is changing? Multilateralism is somehow going down because of the lessening interest by the great powers towards it, perhaps for other reasons. This is a big change for a country like Finland. Are these real alternatives to multilateralism? It might also be that the traditional multilateral settings are becoming more difficult to handle than what they used to be. And I'm thinking about the EU. We just had the Finnish EU presidency. And I think Finland was trying to make a contribution there. I saw ideas about developing European defence in new kinds of ideas, perhaps in this thought leadership way even. The defence ministers I hear were discussing climate change for the first time. Digitalisation and artificial intelligence were of course discussed hybrid threats, of course. But I don't know to what extent this actually was carried on. And when it came to the very concrete points on multi-annual financial framework, the EU's budget, there the end result was not that promising. If you think about a Finnish contribution and you think about a contribution of a country that always has been a very strong proponent of European security and defence policy. The compromise that Finland had to offer on defence on budget regarding defence was actually only about the half of the amounts that the Commission was proposing, both to the European Defence Fund and to the Peace Fund. And this was a big disappointment for many. Of course it was explained as a necessary compromise because you couldn't just achieve more. And one is also wondering whether that is really the case, whether it is so difficult to manage the system. So in the end, it looks like the traditionally so important multilateral setting and particularly the EU is now much more difficult to lead. It's hard to be on the driver's seat. But also it is a bit difficult for a country like Finland at least to choose between the seats. There are so many seats available and you want to be everywhere at the same time. So this might be a problem. Thank you very much. So it's a pleasure to welcome you back and to ask you to make some remarks to us now. Thank you very much for that very kind introduction and it's interesting to see that we go further back in history than we actually think. And thank you very much to the institute here for inviting me to contribute to the seminar and the timely topic on the role of smaller states in defence and security. The focus here is from a Stockholm perspective and the horizon and comments are made here in a personal capacity. Again, it is the first to describe very briefly the past few decades where we are today and what might lie in the near future. So the tremendous changes in European security landscape in the early 1990s led to fundamental changes in Swedish security policy, both in its stated doctrine and in practice. So from an official Cold War declaratory policy of non-alignment in peacetime with the aim to neutrality in wartime, the policy gravity changed to military non-alignment of today. And the declaration of solidarity given by the Swedish government in 2009 where we ought to give and receive military aid to European Union member states and Nordic states is a case in point here and it's very similar to what Finland has done as well. In parallel, this opened up for substantial contributions designed to stabilise Europe towards a new equilibrium pose in the Cold War. EU membership in 1994 was made possible as was cooperation with NATO through partnership of peace the same year. The 1990s was in many ways a slow farewell to the declared neutrality policy of the Cold War while perceptions of Swedish neutrality lingered on for many years. Two seminal developments during the 1990s influenced trends in defence and security policy. Firstly, the Balkan Wars during the first half of the decade where Sweden took part in a great power coalition under war-like conditions on the European continent. The Balkan Wars was indeed a steep learning curve and on the tactical operational as well as on the strategic level. Starting with the UN framework of unprofor cooperation with NATO followed with participation in I-4 and K-4 peacekeeping developed over peace support operations to crisis management operations in open conflicts. The second substantial focus was support for the sovereignty of the three Baltic states who had regained their independence in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire the border of Western Europe moved 400 kilometres to the east and helped stabilise the Baltic Sea region. It led to a trajectory where civil rights normal economic development and the rule of law was gradually established. Baltic EU and NATO membership followed on this development. The first Gulf War in 1991 also appeared to show that a new world order with the UN at the centre had emerged. The liberal world order was further supported by increased trade. Peace would follow from globalisation. As a consequence of these optimistic trends the Swedish defence spending could be cut similar to many other European nations. Gradually the spending went from about 2.5% of GDP in the late 1980s down to just about 1% of GDP today. The Cold War tasks of defence of the realm in an existential and apocalyptic World War III type scenario shifted to a near exclusive focus on peace support operations and the stabilisation of conflict probe regions far away from home. The substantial civil defence organisation was entirely disbanded. The size and military capability shrunk substantially between 80 and 90% of all the wartime units in the wartime organisation were disbanded along with conscription in favour of small full-time armed forces. All this seemed to work well during the 1990s and well into the first decade of the new millennium. But gradually the security climbed the worsen and it was realised that Russia would no longer be a part of the updated European security order or fall of the agreements it had entered into in the 1990s. Russia was returning to old patterns. The disdain for American dominance, the aim for a Cordon sanitaire and a version of 19th century spheres of interest were smaller neighbours would exist at the mercy of Moscow. The attack on Georgia in 2008 followed. This was noticed in the west but most pressed snooze on the alarm clock and failed to draw the right conclusions of what had happened and went back to sleep. While Sweden prolonged its process towards a new defence build as a result changes were mostly rhetorical. Georgia was in many ways a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing to quote Neville Chamberlain. These trends continued and in 2014 a rude awakening followed with the Russian occupation and subsequently legal annexation of Crimea. The war in eastern Ukraine that followed led and supported by Russia continues to this day. For Sweden the war in Ukraine led to new stones in defence and security. The shift in emphasis towards territorial defence was clear international crisis management operations were no longer the primary focus in the defence build of 2015. Unfortunately the defence build was underfunded and difficult political negotiations led to supplementary budgets to help fill the gaps in defence that frequently appeared. As a result the scaling up of defence capabilities could not be fully met within the five year period. Valuable time was lost. The current defence planning process will lead to a new defence build this year covering 2021 to 2026. All indications are that spending will increase substantially and a number of organisations or reforms will be included. In parallel with the process towards a stronger defence an effort that deeper and more cohesive international defence cooperation began. The realisation that the combination of military technological developments meaning longer range, higher precision, network systems and shorter advance warning times plus the returning threat from Russia meant that the Nordic Baltic region was now one strategic space. Engagement in the region from the Obama administration also contributed substantially to this trend. Today Finnish-Swedish defence and security cooperation complemented with a trilateral US Finnish-Swedish detail has developed substantially and is even talk of a Swedish-Finnish formal alliance. In addition a Norwegian-Swedish Finnish cooperation is also on the way. Sweden, the UK and the UK has a programme of defence cooperation, closer defence cooperation since 2016. There's also a closer defence dialogue with Denmark, Germany and Poland. Cooperation with the Baltic states forms yet another part of the pattern. The Nordics have also breathed a new life into Nordefko, Nordic defence cooperation organisation where defence cooperation and material acquisitions are discussed. On top of all this the northern group of nations discusses hard security issues and as well the joint expeditionary force is there as another forum with a membership that goes beyond the Nordic region. Relations to NATO are further enhanced and Sweden entered into the enhanced opportunities partnership a few years ago. Full membership in NATO is currently not on the agenda. So taken together these cooperative efforts can be described as a grapple hook defence and security policy aimed at anchoring Sweden firmly in preparation for possibly worse times to come. So what are future trends? The current strategic situation seems to worsen. The 1945 order, modified in the early 1990s looks distinctly shaky. Geopolitical tensions due to the large scale shifts and relative power on the grand strategic level leads to a lower degree of predictability in the international system. This has clear impacts on the Nordic both the region and elsewhere. As a result the international long-term order and the multilateral system is on the threat. While multilateral arrangements help promote and strengthen rules-based world order with long-term norm-building as a central component the hopes for further developing these in the current international climate seems to be dimming. Focus will probably shift towards ensuring the survival of these institutional arrangements over the longer term. So what conclusions can you draw from this? Smaller nations need to adapt to this lower degree of predictability in the international system. How do we ensure that we sufficiently quickly and clearly observe and react to such events? Firstly, sudden events will have to be managed in direct cooperation with others and not necessarily exclusively through well-established multilateral organizations. The recent tragic shooting down of a Ukraine international airlines flight PS 752 near Tehran with the death of 176 civilians led to an almost immediate formation of an international coalition to manage the aftermath. Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Afghanistan all pulled together to pressure the Iranian regime for a speedy, transparent and fully cooperative inquiry and compensation. This is one example of what could become a pattern for a less predictable situation issue-focused and temporary arrangements to manage security challenges. Secondly, in defense acquisition I think we are getting closer to a point where the usual routines for the sometimes very long development periods will have to be shortened and simplified. A stronger defense capability and increased number of units is needed urgently, not in 10 to 15 years' time. Thirdly, the grand strategic system which many assume will remain a constant factor cannot be taken for granted. It may suffer further shocks which could have serious follow-on effects for Europe. For example, what if the transatlantic link central to Euroclantic security would be seriously and suddenly weakened? This is just one of several possible events that would negatively impact on the security climate in our part of the world. It is our task as security analysts to ponder such possibilities and what would then be our plan B or plan C or plan D. Lastly, the main conclusion I draw from the Swedish experience from the past three decades is that in international security a too optimistic view of long-term trends can lead to increased risks. A priority must be to avoid becoming a security deficit. The smaller the nation is, the higher the risks of mortgaging the taunt is. Thank you. Our thanks also go to Nick for his press and to all of our panelists who I think really have framed the discussion in a very helpful way, a very practical way with a number of very rich ideas there. I'll just mention a few of them, very briefly pick up a few of them just before we open the floor to Q&A. Beginning with Nick, a couple of points. You referred to Ireland's tradition of international engagement. I think you were focusing very much on the peacekeeping and crisis management aspect which I think is very important. I'd add to that other niche areas such as experience of conflict, conflict prevention and resolution. We're doing a lot of work at the moment in relation to the peace process in Columbia and in other places as well. Drawing on and sharing to the extent that this may be relevant and welcome by the parties concerned on our own experience. Also the developed cooperation program like the root or the source of many of the threats that we face in the EU lies in instability in our neighborhoods. And where you see instability you generally find authoritarian government under oppression, denial of human rights, poverty also threats from climate, poor governance and corruption as well. The programs that Ireland and other smaller states are very much geared at building capacity, trying to promote good governance, respect for the rule of law and these make an important each contribution. You referred to the high tech expertise which is certainly important. I think we just need to note and I think we did in the earlier session this also brings responsibilities and vulnerabilities as well from our point of view. The resilience that we can develop and show in relation to our cyber infrastructure. That goes to a point that Hannah made about the importance of ensuring the resilience of your society in the face of threats. Also a very important point which I think Hannah made was taking care of your own defense looking after your own patch. This will obviously vary in its implications for member states according to their geography but still need to ensure that you look after your own area from a security point of view. Hannah made the point that small states can sometimes have more room for maneuver be more acceptable and comfortable interlocutors for third countries than perhaps larger member states that may have more baggage. Then a series of points from Nicholas I thought was interesting the way you traced the evolution from a policy of military neutrality towards one of non alignment declaration of solidarity in 2009. I think that's an interesting point of reference in terms of our own debate here. Also outlined a veritable mosaic of security and defense cooperative arrangements that Sweden is engaged in. This I think does raise a wider point which is that I think there's a growing consensus or at least awareness that Europe needs to do more for its own security and defense amid the increasing threats it faces and the uncertainties around the commitment of the US administration. But there are questions around how this might best be organized and what the distribution of responsibility might be between the existing organizations whether to some extent we need to envisage new formations or structures. You mentioned ad hoc coalitions on different areas in defense of the international rules based order. I just note as well you talk about the need just note as well just a final point before we open it up in terms of where the focus of small state efforts might be the candidate's speech by commission president Ursula von der Leyen to the European Parliament emphasized a few things first of all that NATO remains the cornerstone of collective territorial defense in Europe and that the EU work on security and defense is embedded in comprehensive security that stabilization always comes with diplomacy reconciliation and reconstruction. So I think this is an interesting answer whether to what extent the EU can remain in this space to what extent there may be vacuums elsewhere which one may have to look at member states may look at filling in different ways whether it's European intervention initiatives or other ideas like the European Security Council.