Lecture on ‘The Warsaw Summit: Implications’

The Senior Leaders’ Course continued this morning with interventions by Gen. Hans-Lothar Domrose, the Visiting Senior Mentor, and Dr. Matus Halas, Lecturer in Strategic Studies at the Baltic Defence College. The topic for consideration was ‘The Warsaw Summit: Implications’, looking at the changing security environments both on the southern and eastern flanks of the alliance.

Gen. Domrose argued that five fundamental changes are afflicting both neighbourhoods, which are increasingly volatile and coming together. These include the implications of the financial crisis; the migration crisis; the conflicts in the Middle East; the cohesiveness of the European Union; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Consequently, Dr. Halas argued that, differently to the 1990s and 2000s, NATO’s relevance is again increasing as every new summit – Warsaw being the most recent – reveals an ever more complicated and multifaceted security environment.

He went on to argue that – now the conventional components of deterrence are increasingly in place in the Baltic states and Poland – the indirect approach, operating at the sub-strategic approach, i.e., beneath NATO’s Article 5, is the most important challenge for NATO (and the European Union). The interventions by Gen. Domrose and Dr. Halas were followed by a general discussion, held under the Chatham House rule.