A stronger alliance: the future of European security

General Fernando Alejandre is the highest-ranking military officer in the Spanish Armed Forces and is the principal military advisor to Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. Prior to this position, he served as Deputy Commander of the NATO Joint Forces Command, Brunssum. He has served as Deputy Chief of Staff (Support) at SHAPE, where he took care of a large portfolio ranging from the Redeployment of International Security Assistance Force to the Readiness Action Plan and the Deployability Concept. His operational background includes a deployment to Iraq in 1991, a tour as Chief Engineer for the Spanish Task Force in Bosnia during 1993 and, in 2003, he was the JOC Director at HQ KFOR in Film City, Pristina.

Jessikka Aro is a highly-acclaimed investigative reporter who works with the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Aro specialises in topics relating to Russia, extremism and information warfare. In 2014, she started to investigate the techniques of pro-Kremlin social media trolls and their influence on public debates outside Russia’s borders. Nowadays, her reports are widely quoted and used in international investigations on troll tactics. As a result of her involvement in these investigations, she became the target of serious propaganda and hate speech campaigns, many of which are still ongoing. Aro is currently writing an investigative book on the Kremlin’s information warfare. She also trains reporters and the general public to both recognise and counter online disinformation. Aro is lobbying for better legislation to counter hybrid threats and protect citizens from state-sponsored online security threats.

Sebastian Bay is a Senior Expert at the Technical and Scientific Development Branch of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia. Bay has a background at the Counter Influence Unit of the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency where he was the project manager for the preparations undertaken to protect the Swedish general elections in 2018. He is currently the project manager of a NATO StratCom COE project on countering the malicious use of social media.

Lucie Béraud-Sudreau is responsible for the collection and the assessment of data on defence budgets and defence industry for The Military Balance at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her research focuses on defence economics in Europe as well as on defence spending, defence industry and arms trade. She has previously worked at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the French Ministry of Defence.

Dr Juliette Bird has been the head of NATO’s Counter Terrorism section, within the Emerging Security Challenges Division, since 2011.  Over the course of a 20 year career in the UK foreign service, she has specialised in global threats pertaining to proliferation, financial crime and, most extensively, terrorism. She served in the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and was then seconded to NATO to set up an equivalent body for the Alliance. Her work abroad has included postings to India, Belgium and the European Union.

Vincenzo Coppola is the EEAS’s Civilian Operations Commander. In this post, he oversees the EU’s ten civilian CSDP operations deployed across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He previously served as Deputy Commanding General of the 111,000 strong Italian Carabinieri. He brings with him a professional career of 40 years that spans the time he spent in Italy, at the EU headquarters in Brussels and at several international assignments.

As an Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, Camille Grand leads and oversees NATO’s defence spending and investment strategies. He was previously Director and CEO of the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS), France’s leading think tank on defence and security. His research and publications focused on defence policy, NATO, nuclear policy and missile defence. In addition to these responsibilities, he has been a member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters and has represented the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in international negotiations on nuclear and chemical arms control.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is a Dutch politician who prominently served as the 11th Secretary General of NATO. He previously worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch delegation of the NATO headquarters in Brussels. He now works as President of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) of the Netherlands, an independent body which advises government and parliament on foreign policy. Furthermore, he was appointed to the Pieter Kooijmans Chair for Peace, Law and Security at Leiden University.

Christopher R. Hill is currently the Ambassador of the United States to Serbia. He is a five-time ambassador – having been nominated by five presidents – and notably served as Ambassador to Iraq. Prior to this, Hill served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, during which time he was also the head of the US delegation to the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. He was previously the US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, to Poland and to North Macedonia, in addition to serving as Special Envoy to Kosovo. He is also a monthly columnist for Project Syndicate.

Having accumulated a long and prominent diplomatic career, Andrey Kelin currently serves as Director of the Department for European Cooperation in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this position, he oversees various areas of Russia-EU cooperation and he is one of the main channels for political and diplomatic dialogue between Russia and Europe. Previously, he served as Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the OSCE and as Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to NATO.

Having been appointed in 2017, Minister of Defence Jüri Luik is responsible for the organisation of national defence of Estonia. Prior to becoming Minister of Defence, Luik was the Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has also served as Director of the International Centre for Defence and Security and as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Moscow.

Dorthe Bach Nyemann is a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Danish Defence College. During the last three years, she has been a Danish representative and contributor to the US-led Multinational Capability Development Campaign project (MCDC); Understanding and Countering Hybrid Warfare. Her research focuses mainly on the effects of the cyber domain on International Relations and International Law.

For the past six years, Piret Pernik has been one of Estonia’s leading researchers in cyber security. Her research, publications and teaching covers a broad range of cyber security subjects such as the cyber security and defence policies of the EU and NATO, strategies and policies, cyber commands and national information and cyber operations. She previously worked at the International Centre for Defence and Security and the Estonian Ministry of Defence, where she focused on cyber defence policy planning. She has also worked as an advisor to the National Defence Committee of the Estonian Parliament.

Natalia Pouzyreff was elected as a Member of the French National Assembly for La République En Marche! (LaREM) in June 2017. Natalia currently sits as Secretary of the Defence Committee. She is also heavily involved in industrial strategy and the civil nuclear sector. She has been instrumental in promoting a sovereign Europe and has been put in charge of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) questions for LaREM. Having undergone training as a professional engineer, she has spent many years working in the defence and aerospace sector.

Retiring from NATO in September 2018 after 38 years at the organisation, Jamie Shea has occupied a number of senior positions at NATO across a wide range of areas, including external relations, press and media and policy planning. As NATO’s spokesperson, he was the face of the Alliance during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts. He later worked as the Director of Policy Planning in the private office of former Secretary General Rasmussen during the preparation of NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept. Shea is also a regular lecturer and conference speaker on NATO and European security affairs.

Paul Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe and the author of the think tank’s European Defence Cooperation report series. He previously spent four decades working for Reuters as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Tehran, Bonn and Brussels, as bureau chief in Israel/Palestine, Berlin and Brussels, as chief correspondent in France, as diplomatic editor in London, and finally as European affairs editor. Taylor’s assignments have included covering the Iranian revolution, the Cold War Euromissile crisis, the 1991 Gulf War, German reunification, the Maastricht summit, France in the 1990s, EU enlargement, the Eurozone crisis and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

Nathalie Tocci is the Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Honorary Professor at the University of Tübingen and Special Advisor to EU High Representative/Vice President Federica Mogherini, on behalf of whom she wrote the European Global Strategy. She is currently working on the implementation of the EU’s Global Strategy, most notably in the field of security and defence. Her research interests include European foreign policy, conflict resolution, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. She previously held research positions at the Washington-based Transatlantic Academy and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies in Florence.

Yan Yan is the Director of the Research Center of Oceans Law and Policy in the National Institute for the South China Sea Studies (NISCSS). There, her research interests and publications focus on sea law, maritime security in the Asia-Pacific, China’s maritime law and policy in the South China Sea. Yan Yan has taken part in many regional diplomacy track 1.5 and 2 conferences and seminars on regional maritime security issues. Under her leadership, NISCSS has established academic cooperation with nearly one hundred think tanks across the world with the ambition of providing a more comprehensive understanding of China’s policy in the South China Sea.