Cornavirus: NATO will only help at the margin

Text by: Pierre Benazet

Coronavirus was inevitably discussed this Thursday during the first NATO meeting at thirty. Thirty members since North Macedonia officially joined the Atlantic Alliance last week. NATO is involved in the fight against the virus, but the other threats must not be forgotten, said its secretary general.

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From our correspondent in Brussels,

NATO foreign ministers welcomed the arrival around the table of North Macedonia, their thirtieth ally. They spoke of the Russian army's maneuvers or the plans to withdraw from Afghanistan. Everything is done here to show that the pandemic has no effect on the ability of the Alliance to make decisions and deploy their troops for collective defense.

" NATO's primary responsibility is to ensure that this health crisis does not become a security crisis, " said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of the Atlantic Alliance . And the heart of our task is to continue to provide credible deterrence and defense in the midst of a health crisis. And that is exactly what we are doing : the missions, the operations, NATO's reactivity continues because NATO was created to deal with crises ”.

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The pandemic however ended up dominating the debates of the allies; they have endeavored to pool all of their tools that can be mobilized to deal with the virus. It is essentially a question of coordinating the means of the various air forces to create air bridges. Nato has almost no material means of its own apart from radar planes and the allies have already largely started using their military means on a national scale.

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• Nato
• Coronavirus
• Defense

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