On NATO and the development of European foreign and defence policy with Prof. Roberta Haar

Russia shocked Europe and the rest of the world when he commanded the Russian Armed Forces to invade Ukraine on Thursday, February 24. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has - for the first time ever - activated its Response Forces, which consist of 40.000 soldiers from the NATO countries, and mobilised them on the border of Ukraine to protect NATO countries. Sweden and Finland have said they want to join NATO to protect themselves from Russian aggression and all over Europe one can see a big shift in foreign and defence policy. For one, Germany has made a great shift in its military spending as they vowed to invest 100 billion euros more now and increase their structural defence investments to 2% of their GDP, which is the NATO norm. We will discuss this shift and the response of NATO with Professor Roberta Haar. She is Professor of Foreign Policy Analysis and Transatlantic Relations at University College Maastricht (UCM), where she is also the research director.