Portuguese Minister of Defence highlights the need for EU-NATO cooperation Cooperation is fundamental 'to develop suitable collective response mechanisms to counter our[...]

The Portuguese Minister of Defence João Gomes Cravinho noted the need for EU-NATO cooperation to develop "collective response mechanisms" against phenomena such as "disinformation, the exploitation of migrants or cyber-attacks", which threaten democracy.

João Gomes Cravinho gave a speech at the opening of the third Defence Seminar at the National Defence Institute in Lisbon, where he claimed that this strict cooperation is fundamental "to develop suitable collective response mechanisms to counter our opponents' new methods".

Multipolarity and unconventional threats

As for the "end of the US post-Cold War unipolar hegemony and a prelude to multipolarity", João Gomes Cravinho said that "the EU-NATO partnership is a necessary and vital part of the transatlantic response to this context" without the EU losing its strategic autonomy.

The Minister also alerted to the existence of "unconventional armed conflicts", adding that "although major conventional warfare is almost gone in the last few decades, this fact is far from meaning we are at peace"; quite the opposite, "we've witnessed a rise in the trend of proliferation of unconventional threats by non-state armed groups, which are frequently transnational and well equipped".

João Gomes Cravinho said that "the use by some States of unconventional instruments to fuel indirect conflicts in the framework of the so-called hybrid threats" is likewise worrying, so the Armed Forces "must be prepared for a more complex and unpredictable battle ground".

The Minister recalled the recent reform in the Armed Forces' higher structure, approved in 2020, the goal of which was "to strengthen the joint command structures and their integrated operational response capability", namely with regard to hybrid threats, but also to "complex civilian emergencies resulting from to climate change or pandemics".

Technological transformations

João Gomes Cravinho also highlighted the "huge technological transformations under way with an impact on defence", adding that it is essential that "Europe and NATO are at the front line of technological innovation and, at the same time, at the front line of defining suitable normative safeguards for an ethical use of such technologies:

"The so-called Emerging Disruptive Technologies are a new vital strategic board for this century. They require a constant monitoring of risks and opportunities, particularly taking into account that some of our main opponents have identified them as strategic priorities. If we are not effective in addressing this issue in the Euro-Atlantic space, we risk having a significant degrading of our credibility and collective security capability", he said.