Access to the force
Military strength becomes useful when it can reach the place where it is needed. At the Berlin Security Conference, NATO Military Committee chair Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone chose military mobility as a practical example of cooperation with the European Union. He described the task plainly: moving personnel and equipment into Europe and across it. That simple verb deserves a central place in defence debates. A guarantee to an ally depends on the ability to reach that ally.[1]
Mobility therefore helps determine the value of the force already held. Counting inventory is easy; counting a force as usable is a harder judgment. Personnel and equipment have to be moved in a way that serves the same defence requirement. That is the standard I would apply to Cavo Dragone’s call to combine NATO and EU strengths. Institutional alignment matters to service members when it improves access to the force needed. For taxpayers, its value lies in keeping purchased capability usable.[1]
The speech gives transportation its proper place inside defence. That priority deserves attention without waiting for a weapons announcement. Its scale still matters. Berlin brought no specified force-readiness time, transportation speed or new budget. An appeal to make better use of existing cooperation could explain the same language. My judgment is that access should move higher in assessments of capability. Establishing that Europe’s military movement capacity has increased would require additional information about implementation.[1]
Seeing the same danger
Lieutenant General Remigijus Baltrėnas, director general of NATO’s International Military Staff, identified another requirement at the same conference. He called for a shared understanding among the alliance’s 32 members, emphasising the need to avoid being misled by Russian actions. He also described societal resilience as part of deterrence against hybrid interference. In this account of defence, understanding why personnel and equipment are needed sits alongside the task of moving them.[1]
A shared assessment can reduce the initial friction of acting together. If allies read the danger differently, they may also disagree about the requirement their available forces should meet. Yet information gaps cannot explain every disagreement. Countries can examine the same facts and make different political choices. The value of Baltrėnas’s appeal is that it identifies shared assessment as defence work. That work preserves the political decision while seeking greater clarity about the facts on which it rests.[1]
Berlin matters because it connects defence to these questions of usability. Access to forces, complementary institutions and the way allies understand events belong in the same assessment. The request for frank public engagement deserves the same discipline. Explaining citizens’ place in defence gains meaning when it also makes officials’ responsibilities intelligible. Such clarity gives the public a basis for judging deterrence commitments. The priorities stated at the conference provide useful standards for assessing subsequent implementation; they do not supply completed capability in advance.[1]