As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the Euro-Atlantic area, NATO is becoming one of the first responders in this civil security crisis. Through its mechanisms, in which the key one is the Euroatlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC), the Alliance already had experience assisting in tackling epidemics and pandemics, from Ebola to H1N1.

As the world faces the novel coronavirus pandemic as a global challenge in which the key issues are security and the reduction of human mobility, NATO has facilitated access to supplies and transport routes, border crossings, and responded to requests for support all over the world. Among other things, it helped deliver much-needed ventilators and protective masks to Europe’s two hardest hit countries, Spain and Italy.

In an exclusive interview for N1 Television, NATO’s Deputy Secretary General, Mircea Geoana, talked with our foreign affairs editor, Ivana Dragicevic.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mr Geoana, when we talk about NATO, everyone is usually focused on conventional defense and deterrence, but its role in civil crises – such as the outbreak of COVID-19 – is often overlooked. Today we see the crucial role of EADRCC, together with other mechanisms, as they are deployed to help international assistance. What actions has NATO taken so far?

NATO, in its 71 years of existence, has always been proven as a very agile and adaptable organisation. In the last few years, to give you an example, we declared cyber (security) as an operational domain for NATO. We have declared outer space as another operational domain, just last December, when our leaders met in London.

We are also incorporating in our thinking the impact of new technologies. And of course, this dramatic pandemic that is affecting all of us around the world and also here in Europe is also another dimension that needs to be incorporated more in our work.

The first thing we need to do is to be a good friend and ally, to show solidarity, not only in words but also in deeds. And you’re right in saying that some of the mechanisms that NATO has as its disposal have already been used by our allies. The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Relief Coordination Centre (EADRCC), which is a platform of coordination among allies. Or the Strategic Airlift Capacity, which has been used by some allies to transport cargo for medical supplies from more distant areas, like Asia and Pacific.

Or, as we are now preparing for our defence ministers meeting, we’ll see what the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Tod D. Walters – the top military official in the Alliance – will be presenting as fresh ideas, for the defence ministers of NATO for approval.

So even if we are not a front-line organisation – there are others that have more explicit capabilities and mission – NATO is stepping up to this task. I also wanted to use this opportunity to express my personal and our compassion for victims and losses of the earthquake Croatia has been affected by, and to wish the best of luck to the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council, which is now in very difficult circumstances.

We know that NATO is going through the so-called “reflection process” about its policies. It seems that security issues like global health, climate change, migration, disinformation, and hybrid threats, will be more urgent in the futurere, compared to “hard” or conventional threats. We know that these can have a huge impact in terms of people’s access to medical supplies, food, water, and other resources that we think of as basic and central to human security. Are you assessing long-term consequences of these factors for the Alliance, in the broader geo-strategic picture, in terms of its resilience and strategies?

Yes you’re right. We are already starting to look into the lessons learned, and also the longer-term implications of this pandemic. And there is no doubt that there would be geo-political, geo-economic, but also societal consequences. We have to make sure that this crisis makes us stronger.

NATO has developed over the years an important capacity to look into resilience, what we call the Whole-of-Government-Approach. We are now moving towards a Whole-of-Society-Approach.

And the other baseline requirement that we already have been building over the years, when it comes to continuity of government in moments of crisis, when we speak of telecommunications, or essential public services that need to be maintained… We are already starting to work to expand our resilience inside the Allied nations. Human security is becoming a central piece of our approach. NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has already started a broader effort to look into broader lessons learned.

And, of course, our vigilance now is very, very, high, to ensure that the health crisis would not be transformed by some malevolent actors into a security crisis. And that’s why it is important for our readiness, for our missions, and operations, and our capabilities, to be intact even in difficult circumstances. This is something that we are also paying attention to very much.

The Alliance has also experienced the effects of COVID-19, as the largest NATO exercise in a quarter of a century on European soil, called Defender Europe 20, had to be cancelled. The virus has also spread among some soldiers in NATO missions, for example among Croatian soldiers in Lithuania. How big of a challenge this pandemic is to the Alliance?

Of course, the first thing we need to do is to make sure that our personnel, our men and women in uniform, are protected. But also we are maintaining a continuity level, because that’s the line of work we are in. There will be also, of course, lessons learned, when it comes to exercises, in the period ahead.

But I want to reassure everyone, including almost one billion citizens who are living and working, and now suffering, in the 30 nations composing our great Alliance, that we are operational at any time. And of course we have to make sure that in the future no such big interruptions can affect our line of work.

There are many concerns about the state of democracy during the emergency situation, from attempts to reduce civil liberties to the spread of disinformation and panic. Some conspiracy theories spread via social media concerned the Defender Europe 20 exercise, for example. The European Union even issued a statement that it had detected disinformation spread by foreign agents. How much attention does NATO pay to this?

This is something which is now one of our very important concerns. We see international players that are trying to use fake news, conspiracy theories, all sorts of instruments of disinformation, to basically erode the trust of our citizens in our democratic system, in our systems of multi-level European or Transatlantic unity, and this is why we have to fight back. Sometimes you can see Russia using these (tactics), or you can see China looking into promoting its soft power and doing these kinds of things, and so on.

But in the end, we have to make sure that we preserve the most precious thing that we have in common – our freedom, our democracies, our systems of checks and balances. And if governments, for good reason, according to contitutions of each nation, are obliged to take extraordinary measures, they should be limited in time, they should be limited in scope. And once the situation gets back to normal, we have to make sure that we regain the full spectrum of our freedoms and liberties.

The nations that are trying to use this difficult situation to say that totalitarian organisations of government are better than democratic ones? I fully disagree, and we should all reject this. So the best thing for our citizens is to make sure that they take information from valid, credible, professional, sources. Like in the case of N1 Television.

Make sure that when you read something – and especially on social media – make sure that you give preference to sources that have professional journalists behind them, that are doubling and tripling their efforts to scrutinise things. We have to make sure that we get informed, but also that we get informed from reliable sources. That’s why NATO produces a fact-sheet, on a weekly basis, to make sure that news is presented properly and truthfully.

We also cooperate with the EU on that, we have a regular exchange of information, both from open sources and also more specialised sources from our Allies, to make sure that disinformation and fake news and this new form of hybrid warfare does not harm – not only our resilience – but also our democratic systems, and the faith and the trust in our public opinions in a democracy, as a way of organising human society.

Before the pandemic, the world stood at the crossroads in many of the world’s crises. After the Doha peace deal was signed by the Afghan government and the Taliban, NATO announced that it would reduce its presence in the country to around 12,000 troops by this summer. But all the other steps will be condition-based, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, said. Afghanistan is still unsafe and fragile. Islamic State is operating on the ground. So where does the Alliance stand now, and how do you see the threat of COVID-19 in Afghanistan, which could also present a huge challenge in that country?

The foreign ministers of NATO just a few days ago looked very closely into the situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and we have also decided to invest more into our partnerships with countries in the Middle East and North Africa. These are based on demand, it is not a one-size fits all system. Some nations are asking for our support when it comes to education and training of their military personnel, others are asking for support in operations and exercises, others in cyber-defence or in counter-terrorism.

Afghanistan is the largest NATO mission. We have to make sure that first we give peace a chance. It’s difficult, and there is a lot of lack of trust, you see this kind of back-and-forth, the intra-Afghan dialogue is complicated, and so on. But I think the best way for us, to make sure that we give peace a chance, is for us to be there, and also to have this condition-based approach that Secretary General Stoltenberg had mentioned.

We have to make sure that we have a credible deterrence presence there, just as a precondition for the intra-Afghan concersation to move forward. We just cannot be in a situation to abandon what we have gained, together, with blood and sacrifice, in terms of human rights, and women’s rights, and girls’ rights. And a beginning of the middle class that we see growing there, especially in the big cities, all around Afghanistan.

This is something that not only NATO has an obligation to be doing, but I think the entire international community – we are coordinating with the EU, with the UN, with the World Bank, with international contributors to the NATO mission, but also to international donors, because we have to stay aligned on when and if we’ll be moving from focusing on security to reconstruction and development.

This is also true for the interest of regional players, also true for Russia and for China. Because a stable Afghanistan, which is not going back to becoming a safe haven for terrorists, is not only in the interest of NATO, it is in the interest of other international players. And we are also seeing a more constructive approach when it comes to regional and global implications. And an Afghanistan which is stable, open for trade, re-connected to the world community, is good for people in Afghanistan, it is also good for peace and security, not only in Asia but also on a more global level. So this is what NATO does, we will stay there for as long as there is need for us to do our job, and preserve the gains that have been achieved, with great sacrifice and difficulty over the last decades.

As for the potential threat of an epidemic, it is obvious that nations that unfortunately have less developed medical services and capacities to cope with this kind of massive, exponential, growth of a disease, is a major concern. And in that sense, we are not only looking at Afghanistan, we are looking at many countries, in Africa, in the Middle East, at countries which have not yet been exposed so much to this.

We have to make sure that once we see such situations developing, that we give these nations all the support that we can give. Because in a way, there is a risk of actors who might try to use human suffering and this huge stress on public services for less benevolent things, and try to transform a medical crisis into a security crisis. And this is something we have to be vigilant about, and support these nations.

The EU is also preparing a package to support these countries, and I think that together with the international donor community we have to make sure that we support these countries that have a difficult domestic situation, and could be unravelled by a massive escalation. This is also a humanitarian issue.

NATO missions and exercises at its eastern borders, especially in the Baltics, were always challenged by Russia, with Moscow perceiving them as a threat. In Ukraine’s occupied regions of Donbass and Luhansk we see ceasefire violations, and due to COVID-19, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has had difficulty accessing these areas for ceasefire monitoring. Do you see any space for changing Vladimir Putin’s paradigm after a crisis situation like this pandemic, in terms of future challenges for global cooperation?

NATO has always been and will always be a defensive alliance. Nothing we do is offensive in nature, it’s purely defensive. And it was not NATO that occupied Crimea in 2014. It was not NATO who started this conflict in Donbass, which is still a very complex situation. It is not us who are using separatist parts of Georgia’s territory for other issues. So everything we do is just a natural adaptation of our posture and deterrence to Russia’s aggressive moves. We are not using the Black Sea and the Crimea as a springboard to project power into the Middle East and Syria and beyond.

NATO has what we call a dual-track approach to Russia. One track refers to political consultation, which is part of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, from years ago. The NATO-Russia Council (NRC) is the instrument that is on call to establish lines of communication. Our top military people, from NATO and Russia, are also talking to each other. So we are always open for dialogue.

But we are also not in a situation to overlook, or to pretend that we don’t see, the military build-up which is now on the borders of NATO, and sometimes the malign implications of Russia’s fake news and misinformation.

Having said that, we can only hope that from this pandemic there will be lessons to learn for all of us. I hope, and we hope, that for us in the West this pandemic will show us even more how much we need each other, how we need to be close and part of the same democratic system. And if global players, like Russia, will also understand that we can all be in a much better situation if they also change their behaviour and stop doing the things they do, then there will be an interest from our side to re-engage and start having a far more positive dialogue.

But again, NATO has done nothing else than adjust to a situation that was not of our making. And this is something that we also have to remember, that we are there to be vigilant. We are a defensive alliance, and nothing we do presents any form of security risk to Russia. We are here to defend the one billion citizens that belong to 30 nations that compose our Alliance. And that’s something we will continue to do, and we hope this will be done in better conditions, in more cooperative conditions, after this pandemic slows down and goes away, and we return to normalcy.

In these silent times of the coronavirus, North Macedonia became NATO newest member state last month. How important is the Alliance’s presence in the Balkans at this moment?

We are very happy to see North Macedonia becoming our newest ally, taking over from Montenegro, which was our 29th member. I have a special personal affection for the people of North Macedonia, because in my other incarnation years ago, in 2001, I was chairing the OSCE when a civil war was raging there. And together with Lord Robertson, at that time Secretary General of NATO, and Javier Solana, the High Representative of the EU, we worked to make sure we keep today’s North Macedonia (from falling apart) and to bring it back from the brink of a civil war.

So it’s a great thing, and I think it also helps the broader stability situation in the Western Balkans. We also have unfinished business there. Also, we are happy to see that for Albania and North Macedonia – and this is also thanks to the work of the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council – that after a moment of difficulty that their EU accession is now back on track.

Let me just finish by saying something which is self-evident. After 1999, when NATO gradually started to enlarge its membership, first with three new countries, then with another seven, and then when additional countries followed… NATO was always the first to open its doors to these countries, and then the EU followed. So there is some form of correlation of security and the political and economic integration into Europe.

We only hope that NATO membership for our friends – and now allies – in North Macedonia will just be a precursor, an incentive, for full integration into democratic Europe, as was the case for other countries in the Balkans. Both NATO and EU are indispensable partners of our family of Western democracies, and I wish them well on their European integration front.

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