NATO NEW INITIATIVE

In the beginning of November a conference on “Defense Policy and Strategy” was held where Armenia was represented by Deputy Head of RA MOD Defense Policy Department Ara Mesropyan. According to him, the Conference was organized by NATO International Secretariat Defense Policy and Planning Department and pursued two aims: 1) to discuss the role of NATO in developing partner-countries’ defense abilities, 2) to present NATO’s new initiative for general, alliance and multinational operations.

The NATO new initiative is named “Smart Defense”. Its essence is: to optimize participant-countries abilities, to use effectively their resources and to avoid duplication of realized defense programs. “For example, if two NATO member-states produce tanks, then in the framework of the new initiative one of them would produce tanks, the other – guns since the production of the one is available for the other”, – explained A.Mesropyan.

He also spoke at the Conference and presented Armenia-NATO cooperation experience in the framework of individual partnership program. According to A.Mesropyan, in future Armenia’s participation in “Smart Defense” initiative is probable which in practice would mean participation of our military industry in production of Western defense technology.

Shoushan Stepanyan