Defence Policy and the Armed Forces During the Pandemic Herunterladen
1 2 3 2020, Toms Rostoks and Guna Gavrilko In cooperation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung With articles by: Thierry Tardy, Michael Jonsson, Dominic Vogel, Elisabeth Braw, Piotr Szyman- ski, Robin Allers, Paal Sigurd Hilde, Jeppe Trautner, Henri Vanhanen and Kalev Stoicesku Language editing: Uldis Brūns Cover design and layout: Ieva Stūre Printed by Jelgavas tipogrāfija Cover photo: Armīns Janiks All rights reserved © Toms Rostoks and Guna Gavrilko © Authors of the articles © Armīns Janiks © Ieva Stūre © Uldis Brūns ISBN 978-9984-9161-8-7 4 Contents Introduction 7 NATO 34 United Kingdom 49 Denmark 62 Germany 80 Poland 95 Latvia 112 Estonia 130 Finland 144 Sweden 160 Norway 173 5 Toms Rostoks is a senior researcher at the Centre for Security and Strategic Research at the National Defence Academy of Latvia. He is also associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Univer- sity of Latvia. 6 Introduction Toms Rostoks Defence spending was already on the increase in most NATO and EU member states by early 2020, when the coronavirus epi- demic arrived. Most European countries imposed harsh physical distancing measures to save lives, and an economic downturn then ensued. As the countries of Europe and North America were cau- tiously trying to open up their economies in May 2020, there were questions about the short-term and long-term impact of the coro- navirus pandemic, the most important being whether the spread of the virus would intensify after the summer. With the number of Covid-19 cases rapidly increasing in September and October and with no vaccine available yet, governments in Europe began to impose stricter regulations to slow the spread of the virus.
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