NATO leaders have approved a 10-year strategy aimed at allowing the alliance to operate far beyond Europe and counter new weapons such as internet attacks, diplomats in Lisbon said Friday, DPA reported.
NATO's last "strategic concept" dates back to 1999. Since then, the alliance has spent almost eight years fighting in Afghanistan and has had to deal with new threats such as terrorism, cyberwar and piracy, none of which features strongly in the 1999 document.
The new concept is meant to make NATO more "effective, engaged and efficient," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said as he opened the summit amidst heavy rain in Lisbon.
No details of the final text were immediately available, but Rasmussen, who drafted the concept, has in earlier speeches sketched out its main elements.
In his vision, NATO states should improve their ability to defend against threats such as ballistic missile attacks and assaults on their computer and internet systems. They should also reform their armies to be able to fight anywhere in the world.
"Weak states halfway across the globe can have a direct impact on our security," he said in a speech an hour before the summit.
They should also put more effort into diplomatic and security contacts with powers such as China and India, as well as Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
And they should make deep cuts in the alliance's own bureaucratic and military chains of command, closing four out of its current 11 headquarters and trimming radically the 14 technical agencies which manage a range of procurement and equipment maintenance projects. dpa bn ncs Author: Ben Nimmo