Portuguese officials are required to make difficult decisions on really important issues, with the potential to affirm Portugal as a more ambitious country. There will be three main domains.
The first corresponds to the imperative of promoting recovery from the damage caused to people, social life and economic activity by the recent succession of storms. The second involves the need to adequately safeguard Portugal’s participation in the European response to the heavy Security and Defense challenges that affect Europe, and therefore also Portugal. The third is linked to the weighting between Defense costs and costs in other areas, namely Health and Education.
These three challenges must be well faced and, above all, well responded to, with strong national motivation and refusal of easy ways, for example, presuming to solve problems by the simple method of throwing money at them. They will define a path of choices for national political leaders, who will be put to the test both internally and externally, particularly in Europe.
There is no dispute about the need to return the country to normality, recovering damages and, whenever appropriate, correcting them in order to avoid or minimize future losses due to the same causes. The exact weighting of the costs of these interventions has yet to be concluded, which may be in the order of €6,000 million. European financial mechanisms to support these extreme situations can and should be activated.
It is important to carry out as complete and correct a survey of needs as possible, in order to draw up a general intervention plan, materialized in a significantly decentralized way, based on local authorities and organizations that manage the basic infrastructure linked to road and rail mobility and the supply of essential goods, such as energy, water and communications, reinforcing national control of these entities. And, once and for all, Portugal is required to have for all calamities, including fires, an effective organization in which the unity of the chain of command and control is absolutely unequivocal, entrusted without hesitation to those who know and have experience of commanding and controlling, particularly in circumstances of increased demand and difficulty.
In this chain of command, it is imperative that planning responsibilities, stakeholders and their operational relationships are correctly referenced. It is also required that the interests, parochialism and appetite for media protagonism that have plagued it be absent. And, if after more than 20 years it’s not too much to ask (…), that Portugal can benefit from a good, safe and effective emergency communications system.
More directly regarding Security and Defense, Portugal has to meet the political commitments it has already assumed. More than that, you must be clear that everything points to Security and Defense being, in the near future, an area of shared sovereignty in the European Union, in which it is important to be present, have a voice, contribute to the search for new solutions and be generally identified as a serious and responsible party.
Whoever exempts himself from this or whoever deludes himself into supposing that he can exempt himself will be inexorably transformed into a second-tier partner, marginalized, if not removed, from the process of European construction. For a country like Portugal, it is worth reflecting on the consequences of such a possible positioning for our relations, not only in the European framework, but also in the sub-regional framework, specifically in the space of the Iberian Peninsula.
The correct satisfaction of Portuguese Defense commitments implies that it is implemented in the light of a good and updated Strategic Planning Cycle, leading to the identification of the Force System that Portugal understands to have, complemented by essential bodies of the Base Structure such as General Staffs, educational establishments, hospitals, maintenance services and material depots.
On the other hand, this modernization path requires the necessary availability of well-prepared human resources. Military Forces of the correct standard are the only ones that should interest us, that is, forces that are well equipped, well armed, well prepared and adequately staffed in terms of personnel.
The idea, absolutely peregrine and wasteful of resources, of trying to compensate with pseudo-economies based on cuts in personnel, cannot cross anyone’s mind, the investments that Portugal, also using European mechanisms, assumed to make in modern, high-tech equipment and weapons, as is currently demanded by the reality of the security and military context in Europe.
Meeting Defense costs, as an essential public policy, will follow its own path, but will not fail to be compared with the needs and budgets of other equally essential public sectors, such as Education and Health.
Highlighting the difference in financing sources, it is worth pointing out three other aspects, which are interconnected.
The first has to do with the obvious recognition of the relevance of Health and Education for the collective life of the Portuguese.
The second concerns a mandatory concern for good management in these sectors, which has not been very clear. Neither concern nor excellence in management. Basically, and just like in Defense, spend better, before spending more.
The third is that this path of choices is the responsibility of sovereign bodies and, in particular, the Government, in its regulatory and harmonizing role of interests within the national community, highlighting the unity of our collective life, blurring any conflicts and maximizing potential synergies.
The fact that in the coming years we will experience what is predicted to be a calm time in terms of elections is a positive factor for these decisions. Hopefully this will save us from harmful and expensive electoralism and, quite the contrary, enhance vision of the future, ambition, wisdom, rigor and stability.
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