You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

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Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. In a world currently preoccupied with responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, what consideration,

if any, should we be giving to the global security implications of the crisis?

With me to discuss that is Yen Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, the Transatlantic

Mutual Defence Alliance that has underpinned the West

Security Strategy for seven decades. There are already worrying signs that far from bringing the

world's great powers together, the pandemic has become another opportunity for projecting national self-interest. In this time of new vulnerability,

will mistrust, heightened global insecurity. Well, Jens Stoltenberg joins me now on the line from Brussels.

Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you so much for having me. Let me ask you this. How is the coronavirus crisis, the pandemic across the world, affecting NATO's ability to carry out its mission?

The reality is that NATO is carrying out its mission as we did before the crisis. Of course, we have made some adjustments.

We have to also take into our organization the consequences of the coronavirus crisis.

But fundamentally, we continue to provide the turns and defense. We maintain our operational readiness.

We maintain the forces deployable,

the higher-endous forces, the combat groups in the eastern part of the alliance, and missions and operations fighting international terrorism. So NATO's main responsibility in this crisis is to make

sure that this health crisis doesn't become a security crisis,

and therefore NATO continues to maintain credible returns and defence.

Right, that message of business as usual, though,

surely it doesn't tally with the facts.

I'm looking at the fact, for example,

that a major training exercise that you had planned,

I believe you were calling it Defender 2020,

...