by NATO Secretary General

Extracts from speech delivered in Chisinau, Moldova – 30 October 2008

The NATO Alliance that I have the privilege to represent will turn 60 next year. Most people will try to slow down a bit when they approach that age. But NATO is busier than ever. As many as 50,000 of our soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan alone, to provide security so that development and democracy can flourish. But we are also keeping the peace in Kosovo. NATO ships are patrolling the Mediterranean in an naval anti-terrorist mission. And, off the coast of Somalia, we have just recently started to escort World Food Program vessels and to help protect international shipping against acts of piracy.

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By Kate Hudson, Chair, CND

Towards the end of the 1990s, the US administration began to take further steps in the development of the US National Missile Defence programme (NMD). This was a new version of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative from the early 1980s, and part of the arms race that he initiated at that time, together with the cruise and Pershing missiles that gave rise to such massive opposition across Europe in the early 1980s. SDI was popularly known as 'Star Wars', because of its sci-fi characteristics, using infra-red sensors to track and destroy missiles. The system was not pushed through to completion at that time, because the arms race finally broke the economy of the Soviet Union, and the Cold War ended, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

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