Defense sector must prepare for any scenario - president

RIGA - We should prepare for any scenario - from new hybrid attacks to traditional military attacks, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told LETA.

The president said that Latvia had homework to do in preparation for various possible developments, starting from increasing the number of the National Armed Forces, strengthening the eastern border, increasing spending on defense, to how to build broader regional cooperation in the field of defense, the president said.

Rinkevics noted that the ability of the Baltic states, Poland and also Finland to coordinate on the issue of withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention "is a message". It is also significant that Latvia is trying to coordinate common military tactics and strategy in the broader direction of the Baltic and Nordic expeditionary forces.

"The fact that we have many different opinions and statements, even experts saying that this is the last summer of peace... I am sure that this is not the last summer of peace. If we ourselves are ready, there will be many more, but we cannot relax," said the president.

He concluded that the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague will be critical and if it goes badly, it could be seen as a sign of weakness of the whole alliance. Rinkevics pointed out that the US, in every possible way, from President Donald Trump to his advisors, to ministers, has confirmed its interest in being a strong NATO member, confirmed the non-negotiability of Article 5, while making it clear that Europe needs to invest more.

The president noted that at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had talked about funding defense at 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). However, Rinkevics is not sure whether increasing defense spending to 5 percent of GDP will be an issue to be decided in The Hague. He believes that there is not really a readiness for this, but that it should be possible to show the way in which the alliance member states will increase defense spending if they agree to increase it by 3 to 3.5 percent of GDP.

"Then it will be a clear signal that the alliance is strong, and then Russia will not risk it", Rinkevics said, adding that if the summit in The Hague ends in a big argument and no decisions, it will be very bad news. "Therefore, one of our main tasks is to convince all allies, both by example and diplomatically, that in Latvia's case 5 percent of GDP, in the case of others a very clear and very broad increase in defense spending and real capabilities, is what will protect us," the president said.

He also pointed out that the US is now strongly opposed to Ukraine's accession to NATO. According to Rinkevics, this shows that the US is serious about NATO. According to the president, perhaps the most worrying news is that there is a big dispersion in the discussions on increasing defense spending - there are NATO members that still have not reached 2 percent of GDP that are quite skeptical about whether they will reach even 3 percent of GDP.

"So I would say that any warning should be taken seriously, but we should also not take any warning or any discussion with a sense of doom. We should remain calm and mobilize," the president said.