Secretary General, Ambassadors, Ladies and Gentlemen,
As NATO meets in Brussels this week, minds turn inevitably to the future. To a life beyond the pandemic. To “getting back” to how things were before.
However, if the last year has taught us anything it is that there is no going back to life before Covid. Rather, we must strengthen our institutions, in order to better manage the complex range of threats we face going forward.
If we are to contribute to stability, we must take action in the present, on the issues that we know we will face in the future. And we must do so by strengthening multilateral institutions like NATO. Stability is, after all, the sum of our collective responsibility.
The road ahead will be bumpy. Huge tectonic shifts are underway. Our world faces massive challenges, profoundly different to many of those we faced in the past.
Take Covid and climate change. Both have accelerated inequality, not just between rich countries and poor, but between the elite and the masses. Both have the potential to bend the world towards unilateralism and away from multilateralism. And both, if not collectively managed, bring huge geopolitical and security risks.
We are already seeing the geopolitical impact of warming temperatures, principally on mass migration. Unless we take action soon global warming will present a clear and present danger to our security and our way of life. And yet there remains a huge chasm to bridge between our rhetoric and our action.
Covid too was not a surprise to the scientists, the epidemiologists, the virologists. Yet here in Europe we were ill-prepared for its devastating effects, instead having to rely on crisis management and an unprecedented economic stimulus. We cannot make that mistake again. Stability in the future requires investment in the present. We must take the necessary steps today to prepare for the predictable shocks of tomorrow.
And, of course, in amongst these challenges, autocrats flex their muscles, threatening the stability of our rules-based system. They deploy advanced tools to destabilise, divide and disrupt. Third party proxies spread confusion and chaos, threaten the rule of law, and seek to undermine open and democratic societies.
Our adversaries have exploited public discontent, and successfully stoked anti-establishment, anti-institution feelings, fermenting a radically different geopolitical vision of the future in the process. The result is that what was once bubbling under the surface is now boiling in the pan.
Contributing to stability means taking action on these issues and others. Not waiting for tomorrow, not playing politics in pursuit of self-interest. Rather, grasping the nettle, and acting now.
NATO has a key role to play here. Our pledge to safeguard the shared foundations of our transatlantic bond, to defend our common interests in unity and solidarity, must now, more than ever, be more than words. Yes, our collective responsibility to maintain and strengthen international peace and stability cannot and should not tolerate new dividing lines. But we must also be a solutions-based organisation, building common understanding through collective action.
Our societies want leaders to step up and to act. We must not let them down.
