>> The most important thing we can do is to make sure that we have strong international institutions and that NATO remains a strong alliance, both militarily and politically, because I'm always afraid of those people who try to predict exactly what will happen in the future.

Those people are always wrong.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today we are taking a close look at NATO, asking the big question, "Is the decades-old military and political alliance still relevant, or has it become a Cold War relic?"

The world has changed dramatically since NATO was formed, and so have the biggest threats to peace and stability.

No doubt Joe Biden's presidency will have major implications for the international alliance.

But today I want to look at how NATO got to where it is and where it goes from here.

I'll talk about that and more with the man in charge, NATO's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg.

Don't worry.

I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Finally, I'm all inaugurated and ready to move into the White House.

>> Mr. President, Sir, you can't go in there just yet.

>> What do you mean?

I'm the president now.

>> Yes, Mr. President.

He won't leave.

It could be dangerous.

>> I'm going to go in there and give him a piece of my mind.

>> But, first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... ♪♪ >> It's called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- NATO.

Makes a lot of sense because its original members all surrounded that part of the pond, more or less -- the U.S., Canada, and 10 nations in Western Europe.

NATO was founded in 1949, after World War II, when it became clear that there was a new threat to the European continent.

>> Russia had swallowed up eight European countries without firing another shot.

>> To combat Soviet expansion in a badly weakened postwar Europe, the treaty sought to provide collective military and diplomatic support to its members.

>> To ensure this, they are sworn to stand together against aggression.

An attack against one would be an attack against all.

>> NATO has 30 nations on board.

Fun fact -- the most recent addition to the lineup is North Macedonia, which joined just this year.

But as the organization has grown, so have grumblings about what its purpose really is today.

After all, the Soviet Union is no longer a thing.

And NATO forces didn't take their first military action until 1994 in Bosnia.

That's well after the Berlin Wall fell.

There's also controversy over how NATO is financed.

A few members, with the U.S. at the top of the list, have been spending a hell of a lot more on defense than the others.

As you can imagine, that's created some tension.

Okay, time for a pop quiz.

In the past decade, who predicted a dim, if not dismal, future for NATO?

Was it "A," Donald Trump; "B," Donald Rumsfeld; or "C," Robert Gates?

♪♪ [ Bell dings ] That's right.

It was Robert Gates, back in 2011, when he was serving as then-President Obama's defense secretary.

He was irritated by a lack of support from NATO in Afghanistan and dwindling contributions on defense from European nations.

He offered this prediction.

>> Future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost.

>> President Trump wasn't the first to say it.

He just said it more colorfully.

NATO nations have pledged to contribute more to the defense budget.

But the real question is, "What is the money for?

What should NATO's priorities be today?"

>> A vital factor of Allied airpower is long-range jets.

An imposing array of these American planes back up the strength of NATO.

>> The threat landscape has changed dramatically since the Cold War.

Cyberattacks are arguably a far bigger and more likely threat than conventional weapons.

Climate change is an enemy, too.

Lack of water and forced migration caused by factors like extreme drought are creating geopolitical instability, and terrorist attacks are evidence that many of today's wars have no borders at all.

As NATO tries to avoid the dismal future that Bob Gates predicted, it needs to more successfully confront all those new realities and define its role in how the world approaches China, a much bigger global economic power than Russia ever was, that happens to be nowhere near the North Atlantic, so maybe a rebrand, too.

I'll get to all of that in my exclusive interview with NATO's top dog right now.

So, I'm here with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO.

Thank you for joining me, sir.

Appreciate it.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

It's a great honor.

>> Maybe start really big-picture, which is that the world has changed an awful lot since NATO was created.

NATO, of course, always engages in reform but moves more slowly than perhaps the world does.

What do you think NATO needs to do to reflect today's global order and the needs of the allies that are members of it?

>> So, fundamentally, NATO needs to continue to change.

And the reason why NATO has succeeded for more than 70 years is that we have changed every time the world is changing.

And I don't fully agree with you that NATO is changing slowly.

When needed, we have proven actually very able to change very quickly.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, the reason why NATO was established -- the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact didn't exist anymore.

And just so a few months, years after that, we were able to do something we had never done before -- to end the conflicts outside our own territory in the Balkans.

And then, days -- or actually the day after 9/11, we invoked our Article 5 clause, or collective defense clause, and went into the fight against terrorism together with United States.

Of course, I would always like to see how NATO can adapt a change more quickly, but I think if we look back, we have proven quite able to change.

But the challenge is that one thing is to be able to change in the past.

Another thing is to be able to change in the future, and that's exactly what we need to focus on now.

The most important thing we can do is to make sure that we have strong international institutions, and that NATO remains a strong alliance, both militarily and politically, because I'm always afraid of those people who try to predict exactly what will happen in the future.

Those people are always wrong.

But what we know is that if we stand together, if we have a strong united alliance, then we can manage whatever happens in the future.

So my main message is that we need a strong transatlantic bond.

We need Europe and North America standing together.

And then, come whatever may come, we will be able to deal with that as long as we are united.

>> One thing I would like to start with, in terms of my own president, is when he was running for president, he said quite famously NATO is obsolete.

What role did you play in convincing him that actually NATO is something that he, as president, should continue to support?

>> So, my message to President Trump, as it has been to previous U.S. presidents and in all my meetings with people from the United States, is that a strong NATO is good for Europe, but it's also very good for the United States.

You know, it's a unique thing that the United States has so many friends and allies as it has in NATO -- 29 friends and allies -- which actually always stands together with the United States.

And that is something no other big power has.

We saw that after 9/11, but we also see it today.

If you are concerned about the rise of China, the economic, the military power of China, then, of course, it is even more important for the United States to stand together with other allies because together we are 50% of the world's military might and 50% of the world's economic might -- almost one billion people.

>> Now, how much of a distraction has it been that the dominant theme that's come out of the United States with NATO in the last four years has been about the European allies are not spending enough on defense?

I mean, you've been a strong proponent of also getting those countries to move and hit their commitments faster.

But is that -- Does that deserve to be issue number one that's being pushed and certainly being covered when we have NATO summits and the rest?

>> The burden-sharing how much we spend on defense is an important topic, and I think it deserves to have a lot of attention because the sharing of the burden inside NATO has not been fair, and therefore this has been a message from the United States for many, many years.

And it was actually President Obama that, at the NATO summit in 2014, pushed through the decision that all allies should invest more in defense and that we should move towards spending 2% of GDP on defense.

So this is a consistent message from the United States over many years.

The good news is that things are now moving in the right direction.

All allies have invested more.

All allies modernized their military capabilities.

And the majority of NATO allies have plans in place to be at the 2% of GDP for defense spending within the decade, which is exactly what we agreed back in 2014.

>> Let me move you to 2030.

It's right behind you there, as well.

If you have the success with your legacy that you'd like, what's the way that NATO looks most different in 2030 from the way it appears and functions today?

>> You know, that's not the way I'm thinking.

I believe that the best thing I can do is that NATO remains agile, able to adapt, and then it will be the people that runs this alliance in 2030 that decides exactly what that means, because I think it's extremely hard to predict how the world will look like in 2030, but I am absolutely certain that as long as we have a strong alliance, we will be able to deal with whatever happens and whatever challenges we see in 2030.

What I can say is that my main objectives are the following.

First, that we need NATO as a strong military alliance.

And when we see other countries invest heavily in modern military capabilities -- we see new technologies -- that means that we need to invest and modernize and increase the readiness of our forces.

Second, we should become stronger as a political alliance because NATO is a platform that brings together North America and Europe every day, and we need to use that political strength also to address a lot of other challenges we face together.

And, thirdly, we should become a more global alliance.

NATO should continue to be a regional military alliance -- North America and Europe -- but we need a global approach because the threats and the challenges we face, they are global, especially with the rise of China.

That has security implications for NATO, and that has to be taken into account when we now modernize change in NATO to a new and more challenging security environment.

>> Is it time for NATO to establish a military headquarters in the Indo-Pacific?

>> I don't think so.

But what I think is that it is extremely important that we strengthen our cooperation, the way we work together with our partners in the Pacific -- in Asia-Pacific -- and we have four very strong and important partners in that region -- Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.

They are close partners of NATO.

I visited all of them in my capacity as secretary-general of NATO, and they want to work more closely with us.

So I think we can do more when it comes to, you know, sharing information, exercising together, also getting a better understanding of the consequences of the rise of China.

China is not an enemy.

And actually the rise of China also poses a lot of -- also have brought lot of economic opportunities for all NATO allies -- trade market and so on.

But at the same time, the rise of China poses some serious challenges to our security in terms of values, in terms of military strength, and also when it comes to resilience.

China is a big power that doesn't share our values.

We have seen that in Hong Kong.

We have seen it in the way they deal with Uyghurs, the minorities, and they actually state clearly that they don't share our democratic Western values.

China has now the second largest defense budget in the world, investing heavily in new, modern capabilities and also using new advanced technologies as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and so on.

And, thirdly, China is investing heavily in infrastructure in Europe, in our NATO-allied countries -- telecommunications, 5G, ports, railroads, and so on.

This poses a challenge to the resilience of our societies, and NATO has to do more when it comes to developing resilient infrastructure societies to be able to deal with also the challenge posed by the increased presence of China in our neighborhood, including in cyberspace.

>> So, when you have, I mean, the Italians joining Belt and Road as the first G7 country to do so, when you have major NATO allies that are saying, "We'd like to use Huawei, thank you very much," I mean, the United States has been pressing hard against that.

But should NATO, as an organization, as an alliance, be pressing against that because it represents a national security threat to the alliance?

>> So, NATO should press for that all allies have safe and secure telecommunications, 5G, and also, in more general, safe and secure and reliable infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, because that's important for our societies, but it's also important for military operations.

And that's exactly what we are doing.

We have developed something we call baseline requirements for resilience in different areas, including telecommunications, infrastructure, health, continuation of government, and in other areas.

And this is a tool we use to make sure that allies take into consideration, for instance, issues related to foreign ownership, foreign control, foreign investment in 5G telecommunications.

We don't name specific companies, but we put some standards, and then we expect allies to meet those standards.

At least we have a platform to sit down and assess and analyze when there are concerns among allies about whether all allies meet those standards we have set in NATO when it comes to resilience.

>> So, you mentioned that one of the concerns about China, not that you would define it as an enemy but rather because they don't share -- they clearly don't share democratic values of transparency, rule of law, and you gave, you know, sort of a list of the challenges.

One could apply that list -- and many do -- to a NATO ally, to Turkey.

And we've got big problems with Turkey right now, the United States, but, you know, frankly a lot of NATO allies do, as well.

How do you deal with an issue inside NATO when one of the allies is appearing to go a bit rogue?

>> First, I would like to say that Turkey is an important ally.

If you just look at the map, you see the importance of Turkey for the security of Europe.

Turkey is the only country bordering Iraq and Syria.

They have been extremely important in the fight against ISIS.

The fact that we have liberated all the territory that ISIS controlled not so long ago is very much also because we used bases infrastructure in Turkey.

And no other ally hosts more refugees than Turkey, and no other ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey.

Having said that, I also admit that we see some serious differences on issues like the Turkish decision to acquire S-400, a Russian defense system.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Related to the situation in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Eastern Mediterranean.

There are differences between NATO allies.

And when it comes to, you know, issues related to freedom of speech, the rights for journalists to work, and so on, these are issues which are close to my heart.

I have raised them, expressed my concerns, and actually these are core values for NATO.

We are an alliance based on democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty.

And I also, of course, raised and underlined that in my meetings in Ankara.

>> Given all of that, would you still describe Turkey as a full member in perfectly good standing in NATO today?

>> So, Turkey is a full member of NATO.

>> I know.

>> And as I said, Turkey, they have played a key role, but there are differences.

There are some disagreements on issues in Eastern Mediterranean and other, but then NATO, at least is a platform where we sit down and are able to address them in an open and frank way between allies.

And that's much better than the opposite, is that we are not part of an alliance, but really then see a weak alliance, because we need Turkey as part of the NATO family.

>> We haven't talked much about Russia yet.

Obviously, Russia has been a principal antagonist of the NATO allies, even if in different ways with different countries.

Their cyber capabilities are serious.

The willingness of the Russians to use it is serious.

Does NATO have the correct posture today to respond effectively to a Russia that doesn't seem very deterred in a lot of their activities, especially in their own near abroad but also their willingness to intervene in the sovereignty of NATO allies?

>> We have, over the last years, since 2014, implemented the biggest reinforcement to our collective defense in a generation.

We've combated battle groups in the eastern part of the alliance, the Baltic countries and Poland, for the first time in our history.

We have significantly increased readiness to our forces with a new Atlantic Command with more defense spending.

For the first time in many years, actually, allies are investing more in defense, and all of this is very much triggered by Russia's behavior since 2014 -- the illegal annexation of Crimea, the continued destabilization of Eastern Ukraine, the cyberattacks we have seen, the Russian presence in Syria, and also the way they have tried to interfere in domestic political processes in the United States, in Germany, in many other countries.

So all of this has led to the strongest reinforcement of our collective defense of NATO for many, many years.

It has also led to that we are now doing more, for instance, when it comes to cyberdefense, and also addressing this fact that there's a more blurred line between peace and conflict, and cyber is one example of that.

So we have stated clearly that a cyberattack can trigger Article 5.

It can trigger our collective defense clause.

We have established cyber as a military domain alongside air, sea, and land.

Cyber is now an independent domain.

And we conduct, you know, the most advanced, the biggest cyber exercises in the world to help to improve the way we protect our own networks, the NATO networks, but also how allies can protect their networks and increase the awareness of risks related to cyberattacks.

>> Last question for you.

We've gone through an entire conversation.

We haven't mentioned coronavirus once, so I can't stop without asking the role that NATO has had, and will have, given the extraordinary logistical challenges of responding to coronavirus, and people aren't even traveling right now.

You know, military exercise is a little challenging in that environment.

How hard has it been for you guys to just operate, given this extraordinary pandemic?

>> NATO's main task, main responsibility has -- or is -- to prevent this health crisis, the pandemic, to become a security crisis.

So, for us, the most important thing has been that we have been able to ensure that we continue to operate, that our planes are flying in the air, that we do air policing, that our maritime operations are sailing where they should go, and our missions in the eastern part of the alliance and all the other things we do -- Iraq, Afghanistan -- that all of this is up and running.

And the good news is that that's the case.

Yes, we have adjusted a bit the way we conduct some of these missions and operations.

Yes, we have reduced, scaled down, actually canceled some exercises, but the missions, the deterrence, the activities of NATO has been in place, and we have delivered deterrence and defense every day during this pandemic, and we need to continue to do that.

Then, on top of being a military alliance operating in the midst of a pandemic, we have also seen the value of the military, across the alliance, helping the civilian efforts to fight the pandemic, and NATO has been part of that.

Our militaries have been part of that, transporting critical medical equipment, transporting patients, setting up hundreds of field hospitals, helping to disinfect public spaces.

So military personnel from North America, Europe, all over, have been key in supporting the civilian health services in fighting the pandemic.

And we are, of course, ready to continue to do so.

And we have strengthened the way we coordinate the NATO efforts to support allies in the fight against the pandemic.

>> Jens Stoltenberg, you're going to have a busy year in 2021.

There's no question about that.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

>> Shortly after our interview, Secretary-General Stoltenberg issued a statement congratulating President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris on their victory.

And in a sign that we live in remarkable times, our producer caught this photo of a Biden supporter draped in a NATO flag during a celebration in front of the White House over the weekend.

Unclear yet if NATO groupies will become a thing.

And now to the land of our three-fingered fuzzy little friends.

I've got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Finally, I'm all inaugurated and ready to move in to the White House.

>> Mr. President, Sir, you can't go in there just yet.

>> What do you mean?

I'm the president now.

>> Yes, Mr. President.

He won't leave.

It could be dangerous.

>> I'm going to go in there and give him a piece of my mind.

Jack, there's a new sheriff in town.

>> Sir!

No!

[ Door creaks ] [ Footsteps approaching ] >> Why are the lights off in here?

>> Well, well, well, look who it is.

>> Who's that?

What are you still doing in here?

>> You didn't think I'd just leave, did you, Joe?

You owe me.

>> This is just weird.

Let's turn the lights on.

[ Hands clapping ] [ Dramatic music plays ] >> What?

I thought you were done infecting the White House.

>> Oh, no, Joe, I'm not leaving till I get my due from you for all the things I did for you.

>> What kind of malarkey are you talking?

>> Really, Joe?

I wrecked the economy.

I destroyed Trump's reelection chances.

I forced you to stay six feet away from women's hair for a whole year.

>> Oh, man.

Women's hair.

>> I made you, Joe.

>> That's some malarkey.

I won 'cause of my bold ideas for their future.

>> Oh, really?

What ideas are those?

>> Obama's ideas.

Or at least his staff.

Look, what do you want.

>> State.

I want to be secretary of state.

>> No, you got to be qualified, Jack.

>> Fine.

Health and Human Services?

>> What?

No.

>> Why not?

Trump had coal guys running the EPA.

How about the Pentagon?

I certainly know how to invade countries.

Ambassador to China?

I'm from there.

Education secretary -- couldn't be worse than DeVos.

How about Agriculture?

>> Oh, geez, it's gonna be harder to get rid of this guy than y'all thought, isn't it?

>> ♪ "Puppet Regime" ♪ >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see -- and I know you do, because otherwise, why would we keep doing this every week?

-- it creates such a feeling of personal intimacy -- Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... ♪♪