In Search Of Excellence - Mircea Geoana: From Communist Romania to Deputy Secretary General of NATO | E61

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

My guest today is Mircea Geoana, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, who has had a successful political and diplomatic career for more than three decades.At the age of 36, he was appointed as an ambassador to the U.S. and became the youngest ambassador in Romania’s history.  He later served as a president of the Romanian Senate, Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Deputy Prime Minister.In 2009, he narrowly lost the elections for the president of Romania when he received 49.6% of the votes. He is a board member of several organizations, including the World Economic Forum, The Aspen Institute, and the European Council for Foreign Relations. He is also a published author and has written several books on foreign policy and international relations.00:00 Family Background and CommunismBorn in communist RomaniaHis dad (an engineer) and mom (transportation company)Growing up in communism and feeling oppressedWhen communism collapsed, immediately went to see the WestHis fascination with AmericaApart from the U.S., dreamed of visiting France and Italy09:25 U.S. Immigration America is the land of immigrantsPeople should be welcomed, but it’s not easy to receive too many peopleThe USA was an inspiration for him on how to rebuild RomaniaThe transition from communism to the capitalistic systemWanted to transfer back home the best ideas from the West 12:00 EducationGetting his Ph.D. in Economics and studying in Romania and FranceHow important is education?America is an abundant example of success without formal educationNever be satisfied with what you know (education should be ongoing learning of new things)Many things are available onlineLearning how to learn and understanding learning is a constant processChoose whatever you want, but know you never know enoughThe importance of building a social network in college18:34 What Does NATO Do?NATO creates the foundation of peace, stability, and securityInsurance policy for 1 billion citizensExamples NATO efforts 23:05 Russian Invasion of UkraineNATO tried very hard to prevent invasion (in January 2021, tried to dissuade Russia but failed)How did Russia get it so wrong?Russian leadership lives in a different reality than the rest of the worldHe hopes that Russians will realize that their leadership is in wrongDoubts that Russian citizens have real informationHow is this war going to end (both sides need to compromise)?What makes a successful invasion (pre-conditions for counteroffensive)?Ukraine requested to join NATO when Crimea was takenThoughts on Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Sweden38:32 Nuclear Weapons and WW3Russia has hypersonic missiles9 countries have nuclear weaponsThree NATO countries have nuclear weaponsNuclear weapons are very dangerousThe risks of nuclear war43:47 Punishment for War CrimesSooner or later, every crime is going to be punishedWe have conventions that regulate the warAttempt to organize a war trial tribunalIt’s not easy but, in the end, justice will be servedSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

We all have heard of NATO, but what does NATO actually do? The business of NATO is to create the foundation of peace, security and stability for our nation to thrive. Every facet of human activity has a security dimension to it. And NATO has a fantastic, we have I think in the DNA of this organization, the capacity to adjust to an evolving security environment. There's no dimension of human activity from business to technology and from space to cyberspace where NATO doesn't have a say and an added value to bring. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest

for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Mircea Giuana. Mircea is the Deputy Secretary General of NATO

and has had a distinguished career as a politician and diplomat for more than three decades. At the age of 36, he became the youngest ambassador in Romania's history when he was appointed as the ambassador of Romania to the United States. He later served as president of the Romanian Senate, Romania's minister of foreign affairs, and Romania's deputy prime minister. In 2009, he narrowly lost the election to be president of Romania when he received 49.67% of the vote. Mircea has served as a board member of several organizations, including the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, and the European Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition to his political career, he is also a published author and has written several books on foreign policy and international relations. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to be back in LA. Great to see you. It's been six years since we last got together and I appreciate you being here. Let's start with family. I always start with our family because our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for our future. I want to know about the influence your dad has. He served in the military. He was a discipline and your mom as well. Tell us about your background and the influence they had growing up and why you

hit a report card from your dad. Listen, I was born in communist Romania. And for the ones who are not living now, the communists be difficult to explain what kind of society we're living in. And my family, like in all our cases, played a huge role in my education, my formation. My dad was in the military, but he was educated as a civilian. He was an engineer by training. And then he joined the military after he graduated.

So he's sort of a hybrid civilian military kind of person. So, and I still, I still, you know, think of him with great fondness and he helped me a lot. My mom used to work for the transportation company of Bucharest. Everything in communist Romania, in communist countries were public owned. So there was no private sector. So when you think of people like us coming from that part of the world, you should think that the transition from communist to capitalism and from dictatorship to freedom

was a pretty big, big transformation. So they educated me well. I think they taught me to be hardworking, to study. For us, going to school was the only way out. There's no other way. You couldn't start a business because there was no private sector. So the only thing we had to do is learn, learn, learn, learn. And this hunger for learning is still with me at a relatively more advanced age.

You were active as a kid. You were an athlete. You played basketball, you played football in the snow, you loved tennis, you played. What else were you doing as a kid and were you thinking about your future and your teenage years and what you wanted to do back then? No, it was, you know, childhood is beautiful everywhere because, you know, you were a kid. I remember fighting kids from other streets and neighborhoods, sometimes quite actively. Lots of sports.

I remember being in school. We had classes in the afternoon. So in the morning, I was going to play tennis semi-professionally. I went to school, and in the end, going to play tennis semi-professionally. I went to school and in the end, I was playing basketball semi-professionally. Lots of sports, lots of school. I was also very lucky to, I was playing in my high school's basketball team, in the high school soccer team. And then, and I went to college. Even if I was an engineer by training, I went to play for the School of Architecture and basketball because I was courting my future wife, Mihaela.

So, yeah, sports school, sports school. We did a lot of sports back in the day. So, Romania became a democracy in 1989 when you were 31 years old. You're 64 years old today. You lived half your life in communism. What was it like growing up in communism? And can you give us some specific examples of things that you did like and things that you didn't like? I mentioned when you were a kid and even a teenager, you know, life is life. You know, we have boyfriends and going to school and trying to date girls.

If they accepted our invitation, it was not always self-evident. But as I grew older, I started to feel the pressure of oppression. There was a pressure of oppression in the air. I remember after having met Mihaela and being engaged with my wife, I tried to get a visa to travel in the West every single summer. And every single summer, the same reply came back to me in a sort of a grayish, ugly postcard in my, you know, in my mailbox of my apartment flat in Bucharest and saying, your request for travel has been approved. It was typed and by hand negatively. So every single time it was this negative, negative, negative, negative. So all my,

all my, let's say, young young years I dreamt of the West I speak many languages we have good education in our systems I speak many languages I that's something we do we did so the moment when companies collapsed my first reaction is to try to go and see the West that I was you know dreaming about so much and I went to school in France for two years, one of the very good public administration schools, and then I became ambassador. So, you know, what I learned in life, beware what you wish for, because now I'm traveling too much and I have too little time to spend with family.

But the change of a system was immense. And it's difficult to explain to an American that with all the imperfections of the American system, you've been living in this system for centuries. Imagine, you know, a nation like Romania or others in my part of the world that we had in 10 years, let's say between 1938 and 1948, 10 different constitutions, different constitution, 10 different political regimes. So in a way, these geopolitical earthquakes have a direct implication on our countries. In a way, probably Romanians are the most adaptive

of the citizens in the universe, just because in a way, our history has always been earthquake, earthquake, geopolitical earthquake. And that's when we discovered freedom. Finally, we try to hold to this because we know how important it is to live in freedom and democracy. When you don't have it, you appreciate it more. When you're accustomed to it, you start to say, OK, we can live without that. No way. Freedom is everything.

What made you want to come to the West? Were you, as a kid, did you read about the West? And what was it about the United States that said, I want to go there? There was a fascination with America all over communist Europe. And I remember I was in high school and we had an English teacher, a wonderful lady and she was teaching us British English with proper British accent. And every summer after the summer break, we came back with American accent because we were listening to music

and even watching movies. In Communist Romania, the VCR tapes, you remember those things from ancient history? And to have a VCR machine, it costed in communist Romania as much as a car because they were smuggled. So even if we're not allowed to do this, we still were watching music.

And I think the soft power of America is just incredibly powerful everywhere. So we dreamt of the West. I also dreamt of Western Europe, of France, of Italy. The name of Romania comes from Rome. So we are one of the five Roman sticking languages in Europe, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. So we are the Eastern brothers and sisters of this family that the Roman Empire basically created in Europe and indirectly around the world. And we have a couple of Italian-Americans here.

What do you think today, you came to the United States for freedom, democracy, just to see the West and how we lived here. It was sort of a dream to come here. What do you think of the millions of people today trying to get into the United States from Mexico and all these other countries who are under tremendous pressure in their homeland? Should we let them in or are they just never going to get in? You know, I'm a political person and I know how difficult such a conversation really is because America is a melting pot by definition. It's a land of immigration and immigrants. And you're proud of that and you should be proud of that, of your diversity, of the fact that you could really unite so many different nations and cultures and languages into an American proposition for societal organization. But also when there is too much, there is always a reaction.

And that's why to manage to be true to the original proposition of America, that everyone that is seeking for freedom and looking for a better life, they should be welcome. But in real political terms, that's not always very, very easy. And you create a sort of a counter reaction from the ones already in America. So I wish luck to the American politicians to try to solve this problem. It's not going to be easy. But when I was coming to America and when I was studying in France after the fall of communism, it was not only the idea to discover the West because I dreamt about it. It was always a source of inspiration how to rebuild my country back home in Romania, because everything was to

be rebuilt. Democracy didn't exist. The institutions of parliament, the institutions of the Supreme Court, the institutions of democracy, the checks and balances, rebuilding the economy on private sector, on capitalism. So this was a huge transformation. We call it a transition from a company system to a capitalistic system. And this is a never-ending story.

As America is evolving, we are also now trying to get to the next stage. So yeah, visiting is nice. Learning is a lot. But the real question for me as a leader, how can I transfer back home the best ideas from the West, but not to transfer them in an uncritical way, but to do it in a way that will fit my culture, that will fit my reality, that will retain also the history of my land and my people. So it's a fascinating experience and journey.

You mentioned university. You're highly educated. I think probably in the 99th percentile, you went to Polytechnic University, University of Bucharest. You have a master's and law degree from there. You went to L'Ecole. I'm not going to be able to pronounce it right, but another university in France. It's the equivalent of the, let's say, Harvard Kennedy School, the best European public administration school.

And then you got a PhD as well. In economics. So that's a lot of school. My question to you is, is education necessary to our success in our future? And if so, how important is it? You know, that's how I was educated. And I don't see myself, you know, stopping from learning. Of course, degrees, that's great.

I'm a very curious person. I like to learn new things, and I always look to new challenges. Sometimes, especially for the young ones, it seems that there are other shortcuts to success than education. And I would say that even they are. And America is an abundant example of people making it up to the top without necessarily having formal education. So I don't insist on formal education.

I insist on an ongoing process of learning new stuff. And you can learn new stuff not necessarily going to school. If you go to school, that's perfect. And the more complex the world is, the less sufficient formal education becomes. So I understand the young ones that say, okay, I don't want to spend, you know, I don't know how many years. It's also very expensive in America.

Unfortunately, education is, in Europe, public education is dominant. So what I'm saying, never be satisfied with yourself. That's my lesson. And if you can go to acquire education in a traditional sense, perfect. That's great. But even if you don't go through that avenue, never, never be satisfied with what you know. Because you always be challenged because things are moving so fast. So my appeal to the young ones, formal education or not,

learn, learn, learn, learn. And you can learn by, you know, just by experimenting new things, or you can go to school or get a crash course, many things online today. So never be satisfied with what you know. There's never going to be enough. Your daughter went to Penn. As you know, a lot of entrepreneurs in the world and people wanting to start their businesses,

especially young people right out of school. A lot of people think, I don't need to go to school to have my own company. My son for a while said, Dad, I don't know why I need college. I'm going to start my own company. And I said, OK, Charlie, well, where are you going to live? So he started thinking about going to school and he came around. But what do you say to all the people who are dropping out of school or saying, I really don't need this. I'm going to start a career right after high school. I have an idea for a new company. Should these entrepreneurs go to school or should

they just start and pursue their dreams? I believe that there is no universal recipe for success. So if you have a drive in yourself and you find it at very early stages and you choose to start your own, you know, your new startup or whatever idea, go for it. I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying that at a certain moment in time, you'll feel the need of having a little bit more consolidated foundation for knowledge. And even your instincts for business are great. And even the temptation and the invitation for success quick in America is the norm, don't be satisfied with what you know.

Because you'll need to bring your business to the next level. And for that next level, probably you'll need more things that you can acquire empirically through life experience or structured way through education. So I'm just saying the same mantra for me. This is true for Anna, for our daughter. Our son, Alex, went to Stern, to NYU, the business school. And sometimes they use what they learn in school. Sometimes they don't. So sometimes there is a question.

What's in there for me to spend long years of hard work and exams and everything else and that huge competition? But I would say learning how to learn and understanding that learning is not just a formalized process. It's a process you can have every day by reading a different book or meeting new people. So my strong plea for the young ones, choose whatever avenue you want to choose, but never believe you know enough because no one knows enough. And you need to absorb more knowledge in a formal or informal way. Anyway, don't think that if you're successful in the first years of your career, it's the end of life. No, life is long, hopefully, and you'll be challenged,

and you need to know more things and more people to thrive. I think there's another huge benefit to going to college, which is the social aspect. I know I started at 18, I came out at 21, and the person I started with and the person that I left with were just enormously different people. You make friends. Some friends I'm still, I mean, I probably have five great friends from college. I've learned from so many of my classmates as well.

It made me a better person, better professional as well. Yeah, that's also a great social network. And I know that Anna and Garrett, a fiance and future husband, I think they are so, you know, part of this fraternities and sororities and friends and they travel to, now they started to have weddings. And yeah, you're right. Going to school is also giving you access to lots of friends that probably they stay with you all your life. And that's great, emotionally but also socially, because you never know when you need someone who knows someone. Right. Because in the end, life is also about social connections and if somebody is answering your phone or your email or not.

So, yeah, that's a great point. All right, let's talk about NATO. NATO is a military and political alliance established on April 4, 1949. It was created to provide collective defense against external threats, particularly the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. It started with 12 members, now up to 31 members. Finland is the latest. There's a billion people living in NATO countries, and more than 50% of global GDP is from NATO countries. NATO has a $1.1 trillion budget. We all have heard of NATO, but what does NATO actually do? We take peace, security, and stability for granted. The business of NATO is to create the foundation of peace, security, and stability for our nation

to thrive. Look at the atrocious war that Russia started against Ukraine and our nation and kids like our kids dating and I don't know social app and and having normal lives all of a sudden that thing was was interrupted brutally so NATO is the business of ensuring the the foundation for peace for security for business for family so that's we are the if you So we are the insurance policy for all our 1 billion citizens. From Finland, the newest member, and hopefully Sweden pretty soon. We are looking forward to receiving our Swedish friends.

And these two countries are very interesting as an example why nations want to join NATO. You mentioned that in 1949. Next April, we have 75 years since we were created. Why nations want to join NATO. You mentioned that in 1949, next April we have 75 years since we were created. Why countries want to join NATO? Why Romania was trying to join NATO? Why, as an ambassador and foreign minister, I raised the flag of my country to become a new member of NATO?

Never forget this. It's because the belonging to this club of democracies, united by the values and also by the sacred, you know, vow to defend each other like musketeers, one for all and all for one, is nothing short of formidable. And I'm very, very heartened to see that in the American public, I've seen some polls, 80 plus percent of Americans that believe NATO is a great thing. Because Americans also, because the largest country, NATO, they also see it's good to have friends and allies. Especially in such a complex world with so many challenges, it's good to have friends and allies. And NATO is just that, peace, stability, and the foundation for everything else we do. Can you give us some specific examples of things that NATO has done, even this past year and maybe in the past five years, some highlights of tangible things that NATO has done?

Listen, of course, we are in the business of deterrence and defense. That's the bread and butter of what we do. But the definition of security, for economic security, to resilience, to cyber, to space, to AI and big data, to quantum, to biotech, to human enhancement. Should I go on? Every facet of human activity has a security dimension to it. And NATO has a fantastic, we have, I think, in the DNA of this organization, the capacity to adjust to an evolving security environment. Of course, defense, as you know it from the movies, would fight the jets and everything else. But we are, in fact, in the business of looking to every facet of security, supply chain, energy security, undersea cables.

We are now starting in NATO a new unit to look into critical undersea infrastructure. So let's give an example of Google, the largest owner of undersea fiber optic cable in the world. And we work with industry as well to say, okay, where is the most vulnerable point? You've seen the pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, being sabotaged a few weeks back. So when you think of NATO, think of, of course, of hardware, but think also of a lot of climate change security.

We are big on climate change and security, especially in the Middle East and every other place. So think of NATO as a sort of a, you know, I said policy insurance for security. There's no dimension of human activity from business to technology and from space to cyberspace where NATO doesn't have a say and an added value to bring. Let's talk about the Russian invasion, which is the largest conflict since World War II. In December 2021, 100,000 Russian troops essentially surrounded Ukraine on three sides. Two months later, on February 24, 2021, Russia invaded Ukraine.

We all knew that the war was coming. We tried at the last minute to prevent Mr. Putin from going over the brink. Did NATO just stand there and watch it happen? And what could you have done to prevent this? Listen, we tried hard up to the very last minute to dissuade Russia from going in that direction. We knew that they would do it. I would say for the first time ever, American intelligence, British intelligence and allied intelligence were also shared publicly, of course curated,. But nonetheless, we use it as a strategic communication tool for the first time ever.

And secondly, I remember in January 2021, just a few weeks before the invasion, we had the last, we called the Russians to NATO headquarters in a sort of a NATO-Russia council, which was the format of discussing issues. And we tried to dissuade them from doing that. I think they had their minds made up much, much earlier. I think they had their minds made up when they started in 2008 to invade Georgia. In 2014, when they occupied Crimea and a portion of Donbass, eastern Ukraine. So I think they were basically already convinced, for the wrong reasons, that the only way to defend their interests is to basically disrupt.

They also had a very interesting miscalculation, and I'm still wondering how it happens. It's a country that has a tradition of geopolitics, it still is an empire. So at least you develop a sense of strategic common sense, if you want. And they got it wrong. They thought that Kiev will be falling in a few days. They thought that Ukrainians would not fight for their freedom. They really thought their own propaganda that the West is decadent and America is decoupled from its European allies. They believe that we'll not be able to really help Ukraine and also impose sanctions. So I just, this is the only thing I still don't comprehend. How can you get it so dead wrong?

And I have one explanation as a Romanian who has lived in communism. And the last years of Ceausescu, the dictator that led the country for many years, especially the last years of Ceausescu, there is a bubble of only a yes-man around the leader. You don't bring bad news to the leader. You're afraid of bringing bad news to the leader. So I think he was, Putin was, and probably still is, living in a sort of a bubble where his own reality is in his head, the reality outside of the Kremlin.

And I think in a way, having too much power and having so much fear from the others, from being told the truth, I think it was the number one explanation for this decision that basically went wrong on all fronts. He said that he's doing this to stop NATO from enlarging. You know that Sweden, for our American friends thinking, Sweden has been a neutral country in Europe from 1812, after the Napoleon Wars. They've been a neutral country, a proud neutral country in Europe, Sweden, for two centuries. And they said, no more NATO on our borders. And I have a Finnish border, which is 1,300 kilometers long. And Sweden, a formidable country with great technology, with great democracy, with great

education system, like the Finns coming and joining our ranks. So they got it all wrong. And I think it comes from the way in which the leadership is basically living in a different parallel reality than the world that they're living in. Talk about miscalculation. You've had over 200,000 soldiers dead or wounded. You have Western sanctions, which has helped cripple the Russian economy. You've got all Western companies leaving. What are people in Russia starting to say to themselves? They must know people who are going

to the front lines and getting gunned down. You're reading in the newspaper about people just charging against machine guns and just getting mowed down by machine gun fire. Are people in Russia going to eventually say, hey, this is crazy. Is it going to be maybe an uprising there? Or is Putin just saying, I really don't care. I'm going to clamp down on people. He's sent people to jail for six years, 10 years to speak out against the war. What's going to happen to the people in Russia? I hope that the Russian people realize that this is basically one of the worst decisions that leadership in Moscow has taken probably in centuries. I think this is a fundamental strategic error

that will impact the future of this big country. But having said that, I also doubt that the Russian average citizen has access to real information. First of all, they live in a sort of a bigger bubble than the one in the Kremlin. So internet is not free. Information is curated. The average person is fed with propaganda.

I remember this from Communist Romania. And the ones who have been, let's say, the middle class, the educated young professionals, they left the country already when the first draft for joining the military was triggered by the Kremlin. So in a way, I'm afraid that this, no, great people is in a way sticking to the manuscript propaganda coming from the Kremlin. I hope there will be a change, but for the time reason, I don't see, and we don't see, you know, enough critical mass of change in Russia happening. And the losses, even the losses are not known to the public.

Of course, empirically, when you see the coffin of your young son coming to your family, you see it, but there is still not enough critical mass for change in Russia, unfortunately. And the grip of dictatorship is very, very strongly embedded in Russia, unfortunately, and the grip of dictatorship is very, very strongly embedded in Russia, unfortunately. So let's hope that one day they will wake up and we'll see that, in a way, Russia has only been part of European and Western culture. You see the musicians and everything else. But now, in a way, they decoupled from civilized Europe and the civilized world.

And they are becoming more of a Eurasian power than a European power. And this is, you know, in the end, their decision, what kind of future they want to embrace. And if they want to be living in civilized Europe and democratic and prosperous Europe, and that would be great. But if they don't, they won't. You said Russia is going to wake up. I think they're fully awake right now. And I think Putin knows what he is doing. How's this going to end? He can't save face if he doesn't say, I'm going to get something in return.

And Ukraine is saying, I'm not giving up a single foot of land. So how's this going to end? We're already hearing about NATO countries saying, hey, we got to try to fix this, but I don't know how they're going to fix it. I mean, President Macron is working his way in. I think there's some reticence right now of keeping funding. Is this going to go on for 20 years indefinitely, like Afghanistan, for example, where you're just going at it? No, wars eventually end. And history teaches us lots of examples of how war ends. Most of the times they end in a negotiation. But in order to have the political conditions for a negotiated peace, you need to have both sides, the Russians and Ukrainians,

you know, having enough of a compromise that would be acceptable to each of the two sides. So today we don't see the political conditions met for a settlement. But coming to the ones who started the war. So if Mr. Putin would like to end the war, he can pick up the phone and end it now. Now, say, okay, we stop. Right. Not going to happen, not going to happen. So the only way, the only way to change the calculus in Mr. Putin's mind and his entourage is to have the cost-benefit analysis look even more dire to them. So helping Ukraine, it's counterintuitive what I'm saying. Giving Ukraine more help now is the fastest way towards peace, because it's the only way to change the calculation in Moscow, to say, OK, cost-benefit analysis. What do you get and what do you lose?

And I think that the realization that Ukraine will continue to fight for their land, and we are united behind Ukraine Ukraine could be the best way to alter the calculation in Mr. Putin's mind and eventually lead him towards some form of negotiated settlement. We want peace. NATO is an organization that is in favor of peace. But today, unfortunately, I think this war will drag on.

I don't think it will be Afghanistan style. It's a different kind of situation. But unfortunately, probably, we are also looking to the counteroffensive that Ukrainians are preparing. We hope that this will be successful. And this will also be a way for Russia to change the calculus and the cost-benefit analysis of this war that is basically going wrong for them. It should go even worse for them before they change their mindset. So we've been hearing about this counteroffensive for six months. We're going to wait for winter to end.

Are we just going to tell Russia, hey, this is coming? Or are there things about that that are secret that we don't know what they're going to tell russia hey this is coming or are there things about that that are secret that we don't know what they're going to do they should be they should be uh treated with very you know with very careful consideration this is about lives of people so i don't think that ukrainians will go in front of the international media and say, we'll attack tomorrow in that place and that place. But what is really happening, there are a couple of preconditions before they could eventually start this, and they will decide where to do it. And that's their own sovereign decision where and how to do it.

So we see the preconditions being met. A little bit of a drier land, because that's for heavy equipment. We see equipment coming in. I have to say something that is really to the credit of Ukrainians as a people and also as a military. Since 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea, they came to us and they say, OK, we want to join NATO, we want to join the European Union, and we'd like to be trained by NATO countries. Canada alone, since 2014, trained more than 30,000 Ukrainian troops. Canada alone.

And now, of course, we are doing much more. To the credit of the Ukrainians, even for us, they are a very pleasant surprise. They learn very quickly. They absorb NATO doctrine, command and control, with great speed and ingenuity. They're quite creative on the battlefield. They're using, you know, even commercial tech gadgets, you know, like commercial drones and things to just do, or apps on phones. Artillery is basically done with apps that are basically from the shelf. So I have to say that even for us, we have the top professionals in the world when it comes to military and defense, that's NATO. Ukrainians are pleasantly surprising

us every day. So we also hope they will give us a very pleasant surprise when they decide. And it's only them deciding when the counter and where the counteroffensive would be launched. We wish them the best of luck, and we try to support them as much as we can. Countries are afraid. You have Finland, Sweden coming up. Are you going to let countries like Bosnia and Georgia in as well? And how is Russia going to react to that if NATO goes forward and allows them to join?

This is the same. I mean, I mentioned the fact that the miscalculation from Russia on Finland and Sweden. But I would say that the most remarkable sea change of public opinion about Russia is Ukraine itself. Before 2014, Ukrainian people, 80%, 80% of Ukrainians believed that Russia is the closest friend to their country. Now, 91% of Ukrainians believe that Russia is an existential threat to their nation. So, Mr. Putin, in a long essay a few years back, he wrote, in fact, a thesis that Ukraine doesn't exist as a nation. Now we have a nation that is forging war, that is so patriotic and so united. So in a way, the most formidable, you know, counter-performance of Mr. Putin, that he really

created a Ukrainian nation. And I think the grandkids of the heroes fighting in Bakhbut, everywhere else in Ukraine, will be remembering the stories from their grandparents of the great patriotic war. So in a way, the fact that Ukraine wants to join the West, this is something that I think they earned it. Is that true for Georgia, for the Republic of Moldova, which is a smaller nation under huge hybrid pressure from Russia in the Western Balkans. So in a way, as I mentioned, Mr. Putin has managed to create a Europe whole and free and nations in Europe to realize that Russia is dangerous

and to try to find a safer place under the sun in the European Union, which is also doing a great job in keeping these countries close, but also of course with NATO. Let's talk about nuclear weapons. The largest nuclear bomb ever tested was called Tsar Bomba. It was tested by the old USSR on October 30th, 1961. It was a hydrogen bomb that was 1,500 times more powerful than the combined yield of the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Fast forward 62 years later, today Russia has

ultra-fast missiles called hypersonic missiles, which they call Kinzels, which means daggers in the U.S., which they have already used against Ukraine. These hypersonic missiles are lethal. They travel at more than five times the speed of sound, 3,852 miles per hour. That's 1.1 miles every second, which is so fast they can't be shot down. They also follow what is known as low atmospheric ballistic trajectory, which allows them to evade radar systems. The bad news doesn't end there. These missiles are capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads each. There are currently nine countries that have nuclear weapons. Russia has the most at 5,977. Three NATO countries have them. The United States has 5,428. France, 290.

United Kingdom, 226. In addition, the U.S. is believed to keep some of our nukes in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Russia has stated several times that the use of nuclear weapons is on the table in the war against Ukraine. So here's the question. Is there a risk of World War III where everybody will nuke each other and we're all going to die? You know, when you're a nuclear superpower, and Russia is a nuclear superpower, with that kind of formidable force for destruction comes also formidable responsibility. And of course, it's very dangerous, and we condemn, you know, very strongly the use of nuclear saber rattling by Moscow.

Of course, they're speaking about eventually using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And this is something which is dangerous in itself. So a responsible nuclear superpower doesn't play with words. And look how NATO has responded to this. We were exceptionally subdued. We were just basically not escalating this thing because that's so, so, so dangerous. So NATO is a nuclear superpower as well. America, of course, our British and French allies.

And of course, this is something that we share with all the allies. But to tell also the other side of the story, we see a lot of rhetoric from Russia, and we believe this is mainly used to soften the public opinion in Ukraine and the public opinion in NATO countries, just to say, okay, the danger is there. We don't see any sign that Russia is changing its nuclear posture or actions, or we don't see any suspicious activity when it comes to that. So I think we should be ready for hearing from Russia

this kind of threatening rhetoric. But we also believe that they know that going across the Rubicon is something that is so dangerous for them and for all of the human mankind that they will that going across the Rubicon is something that is so dangerous for them and for all of the human mankind that they will not go there. Meanwhile, we have to also show strength and restraint. So what does NATO do? We do three things.

We are giving real defense assurance to all our nations. The one billion people that we have mentioned from 31, 32 nations, every square inch of NATO soil is protected by NATO. our nations, the 1 billion people that we have mentioned from 31, 32 nations, every square inch of NATO soil is protected by NATO. And that's really something that we are taking very seriously. We are strengthening the eastern flank nations. We are having a new generation of defense planning. We are spending more on defense.

We'll have a summit in Vilnius that we hope that all allies will accept that 2% of GDP for defense is the threshold, is the floor and not the ceiling. So we are doing our part to defend NATO countries. The second obligation we have to continue to support Ukraine, and the third thing that we do at once with the first two, is to avoid the risk of escalation in Russia. So we have been exceptionally careful while helping Ukraine not getting NATO involved in this conflict. So you can stay assured that we know what we do. There is always a risk of incident or accident. There is something we cannot take out from the table because that's something that could happen. But we don't see any indication of a strategic

real calculation for Russia to start nuclear war against us because this would be something which is so formidably disruptive and destructive that we don't believe that this is on the table. But saber-rattling, unfortunately, they will continue to use that. So should we be worried or shouldn't be worried as an average citizen reading? I think you should trust NATO and the way we conduct everything we do. So I think our nations are safe, and I think we should focus on the rest more pleasant part of our lives

and family and business. Let's talk about the horrific war crimes that Russia has committed against citizens. They're shooting people down in the street, mowing them down. They're raping women, pillaging villages. You've said that war crimes will not go unpunished, but how on earth are we going to punish people who are committing these war crimes? They're going to go back to Russia.

What do we have to punish them? I think there is a lesson of history that sooner or later, no crime remains unpunished or almost no crime remains unpunished. So what we are now seeing is a sort of a reconsolidation of the international legal system trying to cope with such horrendous crimes. And these are crimes that are really going beyond any imagination. Deportation of Ukrainian kids, rape of girls and boys and everything else, and so much destruction. We have conventions that are regulated even in war.

War is to be fought amongst warriors and militaries, not against civilian population. It's totally against any decent law or norm of warfare to target the Russians, the civilian population and, you, and electrical grid and things like that. So we are now seeing an attempt to create a dedicated international tribunal for the crimes that Russia has committed during this war. And of course, that's not always easy, because jurisdiction and all these things, you've seen some other countries that are still reluctant in applying the decisions that the International Criminal Court has taken.

But something tells me that in the end, justice will be served. And I think, probably not everyone, but I know that all these horrific crimes will not go unpunished. And this is just a matter of patience, collecting evidence. That's a lot of effort because in the end, you have to be in the court of justice. And we are basically the ones abiding international norms. So I see building up the institutional and the legal case because the moral case is very clear. This is totally war crimes and they should be punished.

Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with Mircea Giovanna, the Deputy General Secretary of NATO. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my awesome conversation with Mircea.