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Secondly , I have long believed that travel is important , and face-toface contact is important , but we do an awful lot it in NATO , and I think we have learned a great deal about how to work effectively in a distributed mannerm , and I would regret very much if we lost some of that . I absolutely subscribe to the importance of face to face contact and so on , but we ’ ve learned some great lessons about how we operate in a distributed fashion , and we shouldn ’ t lose that . Indeed , I ’ d like to see the ability to do more of that .
I think I ’ d like to see in the future ways in which we could effectively operate from home , if necessary . Candidly , we cannot , and I would welcome initiatives to allow key personnel , and I don ’ t mean by rank or anything , else but just the right people to be able to contribute more effectively from outside of the office . And I know that ’ s not easy , but I ’ m sure it can be done .
LP : In retrospect , what are some of the ways we ’ ve been operating within SHAPE / ACO – some of the things we ’ ve done habitually as acceptable standard practices – that have now proven to be extraneous , inefficient , and counterproductive / not useful ?
RC : Well again I come back to the point about travel . We have , and this is nobody ’ s fault , but over the years we have absolutely built
FALL 2020 up a habit of the importance of going to each other ’ s headquarters , and I think that is important , but particularly working in Izmir , it ’ s frankly much more time consuming to travel than it is from some of the other headquarters , and I think as I constantly remind the senior leadership here , an invitation is not an order . It ’ s an invitation . You can attend in other ways and I think we need to find a way to facilitate a greater engagement by VTC or other remote ways . It saves time , it saves money frankly , and I think used correctly it ’ s more efficient as well .
LP : Maintaining a credible deterrence and defence will always require our Alliance to keep our forces at a high readiness level . What do we do right now in our Alliance as standard practices to keep these forces ready that are absolutely non-negotiable and must remain standard practices with minimal to no adaptation for COVID19 ? In other words , in what areas do we dare not compromise ?
Well we dare note compromise in readiness and in our credibility , and I genuinely think the Alliance passed that test . It wasn ’ t easy , and there will be a lot of lessons learnt which the Joint Allied Lessons Learned Center ( JALLC ) will be capturing in the coming months . But I think that NATO fundamentally passed the test over being a ready organization , and I think that is hugely to its credit and hugely to the credit for its men and women who contributed to it . LC
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