China Accuses The G7 of Slander

JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY-GENERAL: I will try to continue to be professional, and, as I say, not go into all the details about all the — yes, the different meetings we had.

(LAUGHTER)

STOLTENBERG: But — because I think that’s my task as secretary-general. But what I can say is that, yes, we had some difficult meetings and some difficult discussions. That was obvious for everyone. But I think the main lesson learned over those four years was that NATO is stronger than individual persons. We go beyond individual political leaders. And, for me, that just reinforces the message of having strong multilateral institutions that can weather different political storms and winds. And that’s exactly what NATO did over those four years. And that’s the reason why I’m so eager to continue to invest and strengthen NATO alliance, because that is the security interests of all of us.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, you have talked about how things happened even since your tenure began in 2014 that nobody could have imagined, that Russia, a European nation, could annex part of another nation for the first time since World War II, that ISIS — and, of course, this was in 2014 — could have taken over this unknown extremist Islamic terrorist group, take over such huge swathes of Iraq and Syria. Now, all these years later, you have got a new communique, and you’re discussing China for the very first time. It’s interesting, because you talk about China is a challenge, as opposed to a threat, but you talk about destructive technologies and how it has to be countered. Tell me how NATO can position itself against China.

STOLTENBERG: Well, we can do many things. So, first of all, we need to engage with China only important issues like, for instance, arms control. In the future, China must be part of any meaningful arms control because China is investing so heavily in new modern military systems. But then, we also need to address the fact that China is coming closer to us, we see them in cyberspace, we see them in Africa, we see them in the Artic, we see China trying to control critical infrastructure, we saw the discussions about 5G in our own countries. So, we agreed today an ambitious forward-looking agenda, NATO 2030, which is exactly about how we can strengthen our resilience, the protection of our infrastructure.