On 11-12 January, ICDS Head of Studies and Research Fellow Tomas Jermalavičius participated in a traditional Snowmeeting—a high level foreign and security policy conference organised by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The 2018 event, attended by almost two hundred senior policymakers, diplomats, experts and media representatives, covered some of the most pressing European and trans-atlantic security issues. Tomas Jermalavičius moderated a panel on NATO‘s adaptation which focused on the implementation of the Warsaw Summit decisions and on further steps necessary to strengthen Alliance‘s deterrence and defence. The session featured Lt. Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges, former Commander of the US Army in Europe and current Pershing Chair of Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington DC, as a keynote speaker. Session‘s panellists—Lithuania‘s Minister of National Defence Raimondas Karoblis, Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft (UK) Professor Julian Lindley-French, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning Heinrich Brauss, and Head of NATO Nuclear Policy Division Fred Fredericksen—addressed a broad range of NATO adaptation measures such as: preserving Alliance‘s technological edge; modernising and enhancing its capabilities in various domains; adjusting its military posture on its flanks; ensuring speed of decision-making, movement of forces across borders and availability of follow-on forces; as well as increasing cooperation with the EU and various partners such as Sweden and Ukraine. Rapidly evolving geopolitical, security and technological environments, however, mean that the Alliance‘s transformation is a perpetual process rather than a singular event, thus ensuring its continued effectiveness and relevance to the security of its members, but which, at the same time, has to be pursued in ways that preserve NATO‘s overall cohesion and solidarity.