Threats and challenges, security and defence

Your Majesty, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have just seen the turn of another year, and for many of us it is a time to take stock – both of ourselves and of our relationship with the world around us. A question we might ask ourselves in looking back is whether we have taken sensible precautions to protect house and home. Is our insurance in order?

And for me as Defence Minister, the start of another year is a natural reminder to ponder on whether our country’s defence policy is good enough.

And when one sits down and thinks about the balance between cost and risk, there is sometimes a temptation to conclude that the premium is too high. After all, that major disaster failed to strike again last year and there are so many other things to spend our  money on. Such thoughts are further nourished when one sees a cheerful newspaper front page – it does happen, if not very often – that says “Sweden will defend Norway”.

It is a captivating thought, that we can simply put the bill through our neighbour’s letter-box. In fact, of course, it turned out that this would have been a rather hasty conclusion to reach and that the reality, on this occasion too, was somewhat more complex.

Once again, our final conclusion at the turn of this year has to be that not only must our insurance be maintained and the mutual agreement that we have with our allies extended, but that we must also look to see whether there is a need for improvements and whether the content of the insurance reflects the actual threat picture.

And it is on these two questions that I propose to spend most of my time this evening:

·         What security challenges do we face as we enter 2008?

·         And what have these to say with regard to the shaping of our defence and security policy? 

Let me begin furthest from home, on the other side of the globe. Because it is there that the forces driving the greatest shift in the global balance of power are at work. China, with its population of 1.3 billion, has experienced economic growth of almost 10 percent per year over the last 25 years. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Never before has the world seen anything like it. But all the signs suggest that this is only the beginning. Its economic weight gives China greater international importance with the potential to become a global actor in line with the United States. We are already seeing China’s growing influence in everything from world stock markets and environmental questions to developments in Africa and the work of preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction to North Korea and Iran.

When we set China’s volume and growth together with corresponding developments  in India and what is happening elsewhere in Asia and other parts of the world, we can see that the position of the West is, in relative terms, becoming weaker on the global scene. The Unites States remains the world’s most influential power by virtue of its economy, technology, popular culture and military strength. For many years to come the United States will have overwhelming superiority in terms of worldwide military power. This does not mean that we are not witnessing a gradual reduction in the relative power and influence of the United States.

Even though this is mainly due to the emergence of new global actors, I believe that we should also look towards the United States’ continuing military involvement in other countries. These conflicts tie up huge resources and, even if they have confirmed the military superiority of the world’s only superpower, they have also demonstrated the limitations of the use of military power, not least in Iraq.

My colleague in Washington, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, reflected on just this point: the limitations of military power. In an address to students at Kansas State University a few weeks ago, his main message was that we must strengthen our capacity to make use of “soft power” and to integrate it better with “hard power”.

Gates advocated a dramatic increase in the budgets for what he described as “the civil instruments of national security”: diplomacy, strategic communication, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development. The Defence Secretary said that one of the most important lessons of experience from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is that military success is not enough to ensure winning.

I share these views entirely, and I believe that what Robert Gates is saying here bodes well for the future security and defence policy cooperation between our two countries. In his address, Defence Secretary Gates made the same point that we have long argued strongly for in Afghanistan, namely that security must be followed by economic progress, good governance, the development of a state based on law and order, internal reconciliation, the training and equipping of the security forces under democratic control and – not least – ensuring that the population at large have access to adequate food, housing, jobs and healthcare.

While we are witnessing a development from a world with one superpower to a world with a number of strong actors, we can also see movement within the western world. The United States’ military presence in Europe has been markedly reduced and we must anticipate that the attention of the United States will to an increasing extent be focused elsewhere.

At the same time, Europe has taken ambitious strides in the development of a common security and defence policy. In the course of a few years the EU has progressed from having little more than a symbolic role in matters of security policy to a position in which it has a gradually growing real capability in this area. With 27 members, the EU now encompasses most of the countries of the European continent and increasingly represents Europe’s voice in the wider world.

What about Russia then? How should we view developments in that state which, throughout the Cold War period, was the source of most of the premises on which we – and all the other west European countries – based our defence thinking?

We now see Russia, after an absence of almost a decade, back in the international arena. And the Russia we see is essentially different from what we saw in the 1990s. It is characterised by a new economic freedom of action, growing self-confidence and will to assert itself. But it also exhibits the marks of the internal centralisation of power and state direction.

This development internally is taking place while we are at the same time experiencing a more strained relationship between Russia and the West. Every day in the press we see expressions of this trend.

One example of where Russia and the West hold differing views is the question of the status of Kosovo, which has triggered new uncertainty in the Balkans. The situation is unclear and provides us with a reminder that there may still be aftershocks as a result of the political and military upheavals in this corner of Europe in the 1990s.

Another example is the CFE Treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe – the most successful treaty of its kind ever concluded.

At present there is no reason to dramatise the practical consequences of Russia’s suspension of the CFE Treaty, but it is a source of concern when it creates uncertainty as to the future of the Treaty.

In addition to the CFE Treaty and Kosovo, we see this thread of conflict running through the discussions on missile defence and the extension of NATO membership. Both these questions will be on the agenda for the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest at the beginning of April.

In our adjacent areas in the North, the renaissance of Russia’s capacity to flex its military muscles in the region has in recent months found expression in the resumption of old exercise practises. In the course of 2007 we observed 88 Russian aircraft off our long coastline. In 2006 the corresponding number was 14. These flights have included large formations of combat aircraft and strategic bombers which we have not seen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

We can confirm that the Russian aircraft have kept to international airspace and we have no reason to believe that the modernisation of the Russian forces and the increased level of exercising are directed against Norway.

But we would also make it clear that we are following this development very carefully and that we expect these activities to be conducted within the framework of existing agreements and the confidence-building cooperation between our countries. Our policy towards Russia will continue to be characterised by pragmatism, interests and good neighbourliness.

An example of how we can contribute to good neighbour relations was shown on the television news in the days before Christmas. On that occasion a Norwegian Sea King helicopter came to the rescue of a Russian freighter in distress on the rocks outside Murmansk. The winchman and other crew members of the helicopter managed to rescue all 12 of the freighter’s crew and flew them safely to Kirkenes.

An example of how not to help neighbourly relations occurred a week earlier when a Russian aircraft carrier group began exercising close to Norwegian platforms in the North Sea. The exercise, in which fighter aircraft took part, meant that helicopter traffic to and from some of the platforms had to be suspended.

But we see this as an exception to the rule. The rule being good cooperation and new meeting places, as witnessed for example last September. On that occasion a Russian submarine was berthed – for the first time, as far as we are aware – alongside the quay at the main base of the Royal Norwegian Navy…

The ambitions of Putin’s Russia are clear and, by virtue of its territory, its resources and its military capability, it is only to be expected that Russia will be playing a major part in international politics in the years to come. Our common border and the many points of contact in the North, suggest that Russia’s strengthened international role will also be reflected in our adjacent areas.

As you know, the northern areas constitute the Government’s most important strategic area of activity. This means involvement and activities in a wide range of areas including the defence sector. We must be prepared in the coming years to devote substantial resources in order to take care of our interests in the North.

At a time when the heavyweight actors around us – the EU, the United States, Russia and China – are jockeying for position vis-à-vis one another, they – and all the rest of us – have to come to grips with the unrest that exists in the belt stretching from Pakistan, through the Middle East to North Africa.

The reasons behind the many conflicts and wars are complex. When one delves into the history and the geography, the economy and demography of this huge region, one finds almost every conceivable reason for war and conflict.

The events of the last few weeks in Pakistan have illustrated how dramatic the outcome of such antagonisms can be and serve to remind us of how important it is to ensure the stability of society in this part of the world.

It would take too long to explore this in greater depth; let me just say that the conflicts in this region not only expose the people who live there to hardship and deprivation. The conflicts also destabilise considerable areas and entail consequences for the neighbouring countries, indeed they affect global security across the world from Canada to Canberra.

This is the reality of the situation in which, for the first time since the Second World War, we have had Norwegian soldiers engaging in serious combat, and in which two Norwegian lives have been lost in the past year. And it is the need for action in these difficult conditions that has led us, together with Sweden, to offer an engineer battalion for service with the UN mission in Darfur.

Action in Afghanistan and Sudan, Asia and Africa, are serious reminders of how involved we are in matters of international security, and of how little significance geographical distances now have where our own security is concerned. There is no longer any such thing as “far away”.

The challenge is not only to find a solution to those conflicts which are already ablaze and where rifle barrels are smoking. It is also a question of conducting continuous diplomacy, a process in which Norway is strongly engaged, with the aim of preventing latent or frozen conflicts from catching fire.

In pursuing these efforts, we are reminded of the words of Anton Chekhov who warned “If in the first Act there is a gun hanging on a wall, in the second or third Act it absolutely must go off."

The problem in many places is that we arrive on the stage too late, so that we cannot get the gun taken off the wall before the play starts.

Let me, after this attempt to sketch out some of the clearer features of the big geopolitical picture, now turn to some of the other transboundary components that play a part in the creation of uncertainty around us.

We have used a great deal of energy in recent years in combating international terrorism. Even though much good work has been done – not least by the intelligence services who have averted a number of planned terrorist actions – we have no illusions that this is a fight which can be “won” once and for all. International terrorism is complex and I cannot see any real prospect of the underlying causes of terrorism disappearing in the near future.

One threat that we have not talked enough about in recent years is the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Here the situation is unfortunately such that the international regime for arms control and non-proliferation is under strain. And now that steadily more countries are acquiring such weapons, together with the means of using them over large distances, this can only mean more uncertainty for us all.

A NATO summit agenda is a barometer indicating what our part of the world considers to be a potential threat, and one topic making its way up this agenda is energy security. A debate is now in progress within the Alliance as to the role NATO should play in this area. A central point in the discussions is how to ensure the security of the infrastructure associated with energy distribution in member countries: power stations, processing plants, platforms, pipelines and distribution networks – certainly an important debate for us.

This list of security challenges could go on and on, but I should like to mention just one more and that is climate change. No-one can fail to be concerned by the alarming reports issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other research bodies. In our own field the interrelationship between climate change and security is becoming increasingly clear.

The Chairman of the UN Climate Panel, Rajendra Pachauri, emphasised this relationship in his Nobel address. He referred to “the threat of dramatic population migration, conflict, and war over water and other resources as well as a realignment of power among nations”.

It is interesting to reflect for a moment on how this interrelationship between climate change and security has in such a short time moved from being a doom-laden theory for the scientists to taking centre stage as a real threat for ordinary people. For that is what has happened.

In the wide-ranging global analysis of threats and challenges published a few weeks ago by the Swedish Defence Commission, climate change and environmental impact were referred to as representing the most serious global threat to people’s security.

A couple of months earlier there was the annual report of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, which carries out opinion polls each year on what they call “transatlantic trends”. For the first time, the Europeans ranked the threat posed by climate change as the threat most likely to affect them in the coming decade.

Of course it is not the biggest swings of the opinion polls, or the latest analysis to be published, that governs the formation of our defence and security policy. We have to make our own assessments and take our own decisions. And here climate change is one of a number of transboundary challenges.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are, therefore, a part of a world in which great powers and geopolitical centres of gravity are in a state of flux. At the same time we are also part of a world facing a wide range of transboundary threats. Much could be said about this but let me highlight just one underlying tendency. The return once more of the place of the state and realpolitik in international politics.    

I believe that there are grounds for saying that in recent years some people have underestimated the self-assertions of the great powers as driving forces in international politics. As the Cold War years have receded, terrorism and asymmetric threats have gradually come to dominate the majority of analyses, particularly since the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001.

I am not saying that the asymmetric threats should be underestimated. They should not be. But at the same time we must realise that the symmetrical threats did not disappear, and that the relationships between states can, in the future as in the past, provide us with challenges in the area of defence and security.

In his best known book, the American professor Francis Fukuyama made the assertion that history had ended. His point was that the end of the Cold War meant an end of an ideological development in which western democracy has emerged victorious as the final form of human government.

I believe that we can now say with certainty, however, that history had not ended. History has turned back. We have to come to terms with both the symmetrical threats and the newer asymmetric threats.

In such an interwoven world, and after a year in which:

·         for the first time since the Second World War we have had Norwegian soldiers in serious active combat,

·         for the first time since the end of the Cold War we have had Russian warplanes operating off our coastline in large numbers,

·         European public opinion points to climate change as our greatest threat,

 

it is natural, in such a situation, to ask what this means for us. What will be the consequences of this complex interweaving of trends in international development in terms of Norwegian defence and security policy?

I would point to five overall priorities which show that the core values embodied in Norwegian defence and security policy are still valid and can measure up to a threat picture which is in a state of flux.

Firstly we must do what we can to uphold and strengthen the international rule of law through the UN. We do not do this solely out of regard for the poor and the oppressed in other parts of the world. A world order based on international law, in which harmonised rules form the framework for international relations, is in the best interests of smaller states.

It gives us, to take just one example, a common law of the sea. For a country which has a large part of its economy linked to the resources in and under an area of sea which is six times the size of the country’s land area, this is of crucial importance.

The alternative to this international fellowship is the law of the jungle where the strongest prevail and the great powers go their own way. That is not in our interest. It is therefore politically incumbent upon Norway to work for a strong and respected United Nations. We do this in many ways, not least by stepping forward when the UN asks us to participate in international peace operations, whether it be under the blue flag or when the UN has given a mandate to operate under the NATO or EU flags.

The second thing we must do is related to the first: we must seek to work together with like-minded countries to maximise our security. The mutual security guarantee in NATO is therefore fundamental to Norwegian defence and security policy. Here again the rules of the game are clear: If we wish to see a strong and relevant NATO which can come to our aid should we need it, we ourselves must contribute towards making the Alliance strong and relevant.

How do we do that?

We are now on the threshold of a new round of thinking through the whole organisation and focus of the Alliance. We would like this process to lead to a new strategic concept for NATO. This will provide a good opportunity to discuss just how we can ensure that the Alliance remains strong and relevant. I should like to mention two areas to which we, from Norway’s side, would attach importance in the future.

One concerns the focus of NATO. I believe that it is important that the Alliance should strengthen its presence and its activities in the member countries and in our adjacent areas. There is a danger of NATO being seen mainly as an organisation which only engages in operations outside its own territory.

Let me mention one example of what could be done. We are now in the process of developing a broad range of cooperation with a number of other NATO countries concerning surveillance and security on and round Iceland. We are actually talking here about large areas of the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic. We should like NATO to identify more closely with these activities. It would not only contribute to predictability and continued stability in these large areas. It would also render the Alliance more visible in our part of the world.

We should like to see improvements in NATO’s ability to lead and coordinate the military capabilities of member countries. This is not just about making NATO’s own command structure more efficient, but is perhaps just as much about improving cooperation between this command structure and the operational commands in the member countries. Close cooperation here will enable the Alliance to make better use of national expertise. It will also give NATO greater insight into the security challenges existing in the various member countries’ adjacent areas.

This continuing work in aid of strengthening NATO as the foundation stone of our defence and security policy does not prevent us from investing additionally in closer cooperation with good neighbours and other friends. It is here that new opportunities have opened up in the political landscape in the wake of the Cold War. Countries and regions previously walled off from one another now have the possibility of working together based on acknowledgement of the fact that there are common security challenges to face.

One result of this development is that the weighty institutions in our part of the world have not only increased in size. They have also grown more flexible. Countries that are not members of NATO or the EU are offered various cooperation arrangements and partnership. The circles are widening and overlapping one another, and new cooperation constellations are coming into existence.

It is this new scope for collaborative action that we are taking advantage of in order to increase the value of our mutual collective insurance. We are doing this by seeking closer cooperation with our Nordic neighbours and with like-minded friends in a wider European cultural community.

We have for example been successful in establishing close cooperation with the 27 members of the EU in areas including defence and security. One tangible outcome of this is that since last Tuesday we have had around 150 Norwegian soldiers on standby for the EU’s Nordic Battlegroup.

This is a visible sign of an active policy on Europe working in practice. Even though Norwegian membership of the EU is not on the political agenda at present, we cannot shut our eyes to the reshaping of our own part of the world that is taking place on our doorstep. In my own work with European colleagues I see to an increasing extent that the EU’s collective weight is also making itself felt in the field of security and defence.

The thinking behind this policy of constructive engagement in NATO, and towards our friends in the Nordic area and the EU, is that the more we stick together the stronger will be the feeling of family membership and collective security. To quote the title of one of last year’s best selling books, “Together we are less alone”…

The third thing we must do, which is a consequence of the security challenges we are facing, is to improve cooperation between sectors. This may sound as if it should go without saying, something we do all the time and that hardly needs mentioning. But that is not the case. The fact is that it is precisely this – how can we manage to create better cooperation – that is one of the core questions in many of the forums that I attend.

In the UN there is discussion of so-called Integrated Missions. In NATO the talk is of a Comprehensive Approach. In the EU the term used is Development and Security. At the fundamental level these discussions are all about the same thing. And not only in New York and Brussels. It is this that is becoming the main topic of discussion when I meet our people out in the field, whether it is in Maymaneh or in Målselv.

Norway is one of the driving forces in this work to arrive at a more unified approach and better cooperation between different sectors. We have been working towards this end on a general level through the UN, NATO and the EU and we have focused especially on what is currently our largest overseas operation, Afghanistan.

I must say that I have been struck by how clearly our soldiers have seen the need for a comprehensive approach to the military, political, developmental and humanitarian aspects if a peace operation is to succeed. This applies at all levels from the contingent commander to the 20-year old fresh from his initial military service.

This discussion – and frustration – is based on experience that shows that the cooperation and coordination is not good enough. Everyone involved must be drawn in; both military and civil, government agencies and NGOs, the authorities locally and foreign participants. In that way we can succeed in what we do. This is brought home to us every day in Afghanistan.

From this cooperation with other actors out in the field, it is only a short step to our fourth task. And that is to focus strongly on non-military means to prevent, damp down and resolve conflicts. This task does not lie primarily with a Defence Minister, it is really the business of other departments.

When I say this, it is to serve as a reminder that although the Armed Forces constitute an important instrument of security policy, it is not the only one. It is important to be conscious of the fact that it is the sum of how we act in all areas,  including diplomacy, economy, aid, fisheries, energy and defence – that ultimately determines the quality of our defence and security policy.

It is my clear impression that the Armed Forces have a well-developed understanding of the need for such a comprehensive approach to security, and that this understanding includes acknowledgement that the will and the capability to exercise military force is a necessary, but not alone sufficient, part of our insurance policy.

Within this, shall we say “extended”, concept of security, we may for example ask ourselves:

·         How much future security lies in commercial Norwegian-Russian cooperation in the northern areas?

·         How much future security can be invested in the Norwegian financed building of 82 schools in the province of Faryab in Afghanistan?

·         How much future security will we gain through the quiet work being put in by Ministry of Defence personnel staff in helping to reform the defence sector in the western Balkans and to spread an understanding that defence arrangements must be under democratic control?

·         How much future security can be derived from the 24 countries involved in the Norwegian aid initiative Oil for Development, the purpose of which is to assist our partners in this cooperation to administer their petroleum resources in a way that reduces poverty?

 

We shall never have precise answers to these and all the other questions that we can pose concerning what contributes to security. But the questions nevertheless illustrate how broadly we must think, and where large sectors of society need to be involved in one way or another in the formation of a comprehensive security policy.

Finally, the fifth thing we must do to insure ourselves in the face of a complex threat picture is to structure our defence organisation in such a way that it can meet these security challenges.

This means that

·         We must coordinate our actions with those of our friends, and ensure both that we can make an effective contribution in support of our allies when they need it and that we are in a position to receive help from them if the need should arise.

·         We must ensure that the Armed Forces are in a position to uphold our sovereignty and exercise the necessary authority in dealing with episodes and crises.

·         We must be consistent and predictable in how we conduct ourselves and we must ensure the visibility of our capability and our will to defend ourselves. Maintaining a presence can itself serve to emphasise policy and behaviour.

·         And we must, to quote the Defence Commission, be able to raise the military threshold to such a high level that “no rational adversary would be able to impose its will on Norwegian authorities without resorting to a use of force that would be totally unacceptable to the global community and to the Alliance”.

 

My friends and colleagues,

This is therefore our answer to the security challenges that surround us as we take the first steps into 2008:

·         We must contribute to a strong and respected United Nations.

·         We must contribute to a credible and relevant NATO and strengthen cooperation with our friends in the Nordic area and in the wider Europe.

·         We must be cleverer in cooperating with other actors.

·         We must focus strongly on non-military means, and

·         We must ensure that we have a defence organisation that is adapted to the best of our ability to meeting the changing spectrum of security challenges.

It is the work in this last area – the restructuring of the Armed Forces – that is now occupying most of our waking hours in the Ministry. The report from the Defence Policy Committee and the Chief of Defence’s Defence Study 07 are important contributions. But I have also received many inputs from politicians, local communities, personnel organisations and a great many interested individuals who have the future of the Armed Forces at heart. Some have posted interesting contributions on the Forsvarsdialog.no website where we have invited everyone to join in the defence policy debate.

All contributions are taken into account in this ongoing process which will culminate in a new Long-Term Plan for the Armed Forces. Our ambition is to lay the Government’s proposals before Parliament before Easter.

At a time when we are still immersed in this work, it would not be right for me to speak on the positions we have reached on specific points. But there can be no doubt that the defence sector is facing major challenges and that we have to make some important choices.

2008 is going to be an important year in the context of the combat aircraft procurement. Towards the end of the year the Government will make its proposals to Parliament as to the preferred candidate for final negotiations.

2008 is also going to be a year when we have to discuss the structure that we favour for the Norwegian Army. The conclusion is not yet clear but one fixed point is that the build-up in manning will continue.

We shall also have to make a choice regarding the future of the Home Guard.

For the Navy, the phasing in of our new frigates will continue while at the same time we have to make up our minds on the new MTBs.

One of the questions in which there has been the greatest interest is what our future base structure will look like. And here I would say that we shall be getting a good deal of practice in weighing many different considerations against one another. We are talking, for example, about operational conditions, financial considerations, relations with our allies and the Armed Forces’ presence around the country.

We are thus immersed in a comprehensive body of work in which all the service branches are being put under the microscope. In such a process we inevitably come across many dilemmas. One of the greatest is the need to take long-term measures with only a short horizon. How likely is it that decisions that today appear to be wise and far-sighted will still seem wise and far-sighted in just five years time?

And five years, as we know, is next to nothing in a defence context. The aircraft, ships and weapons that we buy should have a useful life of several decades. We can all remember the saga of mothballing the coastal forts. You also remember, I am sure, last year’s decision to purchase new transport aircraft, a decision that we probably waited too long before taking. I note, too, that there are differing views on the usefulness of the MTBs.

While we have to deal with such dilemmas on a daily basis, we have also had a good opportunity to reflect on the way we conduct long-term planning in the defence sector. Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether the time for today’s four-year planning cycle is past. This arrangement entails continuous doubt and uncertainty for all concerned – we have hardly given birth to one long-term plan before we have embarked on the next.

I am really and truly not sure whether it is still appropriate that we should, at four-yearly intervals, throw the whole of our Defence up in the air and then put the pieces together again. It is quite possible to engage in a process of continuous development while at the same time making changes.

Earlier I mentioned the way in which the security picture has changed over just the last few years. Old problems are suddenly new again. And these rapid changes affect our assessment of the how our Armed Forces should look.

Our experience of how things have changed in our own time are humbling. No-one can be quite sure how the world will look in 10, or 20, or 30 years’ time.

This problematic situation exists in many areas. It also applies to personnel. To get rid of highly motivated and well-educated men and women is the work of a moment, but it takes many years to attract the same body of competence back.

But even though completion of the defence proposals is the main task currently occupying myself and all my colleagues in the Ministry, there are also many other challenges that we have to come to terms with.

I would like to mention just one, a matter close to own heart, and that is the aftercare of veterans, those who have retired from the Armed Forces.

I have on many occasions said that the Armed Forces’ most important resource is its people. This means that we must adhere to a personnel policy that puts us in a position to attract and retain capable men and women.

But our responsibility does not end there. We have a continuing responsibility, when our veterans need help and support in the aftermath of service that at times may have put them under severe stress.

We are very aware that the veterans must be assured of this aftercare and support, and that we as a society must make sure that the rights of those men and women who we send out on international service are properly respected, whether it be financially, medically or in other ways. In the Ministry of Defence, therefore, we are working comprehensively to strengthen the rights of veterans. A number of measures are already in place and we will continue to give priority to the welfare and support of veterans.

Among other things we wish to give the veterans good opportunities for welfare and recreation. As a part of this process we have looked at a range of different solutions. We have now concluded that the best alternative is to purchase Bæreia at Kongsvinger and establish it as a veterans’ centre. And I am happy that the veterans’ organisations also support this decision.

As we all know, insurance comes at a price. One of the costs of maintaining a sound and robust policy for the country’s security is not always easy to see. I am thinking here of the stresses to which one may be exposed when sent out on a demanding mission, not only on behalf of one’s own country but also on behalf of the global community. I am thinking of the many men and women who are sent onto the international stage with the task of persuading the players to take the gun down off the wall and remove it from the play. And that is a task fraught with danger by any standards.

Seen in this light, the decision to establish a welfare and recreation centre for our service veterans is also a significant contribution towards improving our insurance. One small clause in a complex policy, but a sizeable and well-deserved acknowledgement of the part that so many individuals have played in assuring peace and security for us all.

 

Thank you for kind attention.