Ceremony takes place in Lisbon in presence of outgoing ambassador
With the messaging coming out of NATO veered more and more towards allies shifting to a wartime mindset, Portugal’s minister for defence, Nuno Melo, has stressed Portugal’s efforts towards investing in the Armed Forces are done “thinking about peace”.
“I think about peace and that is what we work towards every day”, he told journalists yesterday. “When we invest in the Armed Forces (AF), it is with peace in mind. And it is with peace in mind, in what has to do with deterrence and defence mechanisms, but also with the need for the Armed Forces, every day, to be able to carry out missions where they are irreplaceable, inside and outside borders”.
To this end, Portugal has joined a United States programme in the area of defence that has been billed as a way of strengthening military cooperation.
A ceremony to mark the country’s accession to the National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program took place today at the Ministry of Defence, a week before president-elect Donald Trump takes office.
It went ahead in the presence of US ambassador Randi Charno Levine who, next week, will not be Portugal’s ambassador.
On paper, one gets the impression of a ceremony taking place when everyone is looking elsewhere.
Even Nuno Melo’s declaration:“This is a milestone of a significant step in our cooperation in the area of defence, in which the United States remains an absolutely strategic partner, but whose significance we must, above all, emphasise because it is a partnership that reinforces the military cooperation of the Armed Forces with what is the main power on a global scale”, looks somehow ‘out of place’. If these words were being said in the presence of Donald Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Portugal, it might look more like a ‘milestone of a significant step’…
But, on with the speech: Mr Melo said he has “no doubt that this partnership will strengthen military cooperation between our two countries, intensify what are already excellent bilateral relations and the strong diplomatic, commercial and cultural ties that unite Portugal and the United States”.
The US National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program involves more than a hundred partners internationally. Created in 1993, it foresees the holding of joint exercises, which will involve the national Armed Forces, the sharing of specialised knowledge in response to disasters and “collaborative efforts in addressing mutual security and defence challenges”.
Randi Charno Levine stressed that the process of joining the programme “is highly competitive” and the fact that Portugal was selected “demonstrates the consideration that the American Government and the American Armed Forces have for the Portuguese Armed Forces and that they are excited to work together”.
The ambassador maintained that Portugal’s strategic location and its contributions to NATO missions “highlight its vital role in safeguarding the transatlantic alliance”, confessing that some of her best memories in the role were during military engagements.
“Our cooperation in security matters is solid and varied”, she went on, defining Lajes Air Base, in the Azores, as “the most tangible and important symbol” of this military cooperation – an infrastructure in which the American government “invested more money than ever in 2023”.
This is absolutely true. But pre-2023 there have been some worrying wobbles. The US administration under Barack Obama actually planned a mass pull-out from Lajes, which would have been disastrous for the economy of Terceira island, where it is based. It was only when President Trump arrived on the scene that the plan was ‘mothballed’, and operations continued as they have for decades.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
Source material: LUSA
