BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO will hold a long-planned major nuclear exercise next week, the alliance’s chief said Thursday, a few weeks after President Vladimir Putin announced changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine to discourage Ukraine’s Western allies from supporting attacks on his country.
The “Steadfast Noon” exercise starts on Monday and will run for about two weeks. It will be led by Belgium and the Netherlands, use eight military bases and involve 2,000 personnel and 60 aircraft from 13 nations. The exercise has been held at roughly the same time each year for over a decade.
Bomber aircraft and fighter jets that can carry nuclear warheads are taking part. No live munitions are used. The bulk of the exercise is being held around 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Russia in the North Sea. Moscow has been informed about the drills, NATO officials say.
"In an uncertain world, it is vital that we test our defence and that we strengthen our defence so that our adversaries know that NATO is ready and is able to respond to any threat,” new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters in London.
The United States and the U.K., with their strategic nuclear forces, are key to NATO’s security deterrence. France also has nuclear weapons but is not a part of the organization’s nuclear planning group.
Angus Lapsley, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defense Policy and Planning, said the exercise is aimed at proving that the alliance’s ability to counter any threat to its 32 member countries is credible and something that “any adversary would need to take extremely seriously indeed.”
Lapsley said that NATO has been monitoring the emergence of North Korea as a nuclear power, the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear capabilities and developments in Iran — “but obviously what worries us most is Russia.”
He said Moscow has been investing in its nuclear forces “with accelerating intensity” over the last two years, and that it is “introducing lots of novel systems and putting more emphasis on investment in short and intermediate range weapons systems.”
Lapsley noted that Moscow has recently been “talking an awful lot about their nuclear doctrine and how that may or not be evolving.” He said that it appears to be “a pretty clear attempt to influence us” when it comes to support for Ukraine.
Putin and other Kremlin voices have frequently threatened the West with Russia’s nuclear arsenal. In a strong, new warning late last month, Putin said that a conventional attack on Russia by any country with the support of a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack.
The threat was meant to dissuade the U.S. and its allies from allowing Ukraine to strike into Russian territory with longer-range weapons and appears to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. But NATO has not seen any real change in Moscow’s nuclear posture.
Taking office on Oct. 1, Rutte stressed that while Putin’s nuclear rhetoric was “reckless and irresponsible,” there was no evidence of any imminent threat of nuclear weapons being used.
Rutte said it's important to just leave Putin to “talk about his nuclear arsenal. He wants us also to discuss his nuclear arsenal, and I think we shouldn’t.”
At the same time, Rutte said, giving in to any threat “would set a precedent that using military force allows a country to get what it wants, and we cannot do that.”
Daniel Bunch, the Chief of Nuclear Operations at NATO’s military headquarters, said that while dozens of aircraft are involved, a lot of the drill is happening behind the scenes.
“Under Steadfast Noon we seek to stress the overall system; put people in tough positions, high operations tempos,” Bunch said. He said that the challenge of coordinating things “literally down to the minute of when we would put a weapon onto a target is a very complex activity.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte hold bilateral talks in Downing Street, in London, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (Dan Kitwood/Pool photo via AP)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte after a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024.(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks to the media after a meeting with Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at 10 Downing Street in London, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024.(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
STOCKHOLM (AP) — South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for what the Nobel committee called “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
“She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose,” Olsson said.
Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes “intense lyrical prose that is both tender and brutal, and sometimes slightly surrealistic as well.”
Han becomes the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. She also becomes the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize, after late former President Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000. He was honored for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country’s previous military rule and improve relations with war-divided rival North Korea.
Han’s Nobel win reflects the growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years included the success of films like director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “ Parasite,” the Netflix survival drama “Squid Game” and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK.
Han, 53, won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” an unsettling novel in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.
At the time of winning that award, Han said writing novels “is a way of questioning for me.”
“I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes - well - sometimes demanding,” she said.
With “The Vegetarian,” she said, ”I wanted to question about being human and I wanted to describe a woman who desperately didn’t want to belong to the human race any longer."
Her novel “Human Acts” was an International Booker Prize finalist in 2018.
Han made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993; her first short story collection was published the following year and her first novel, “Black Deer,” in 1998. Works translated into English include “The Vegetarian,” “Greek Lessons,” “Human Acts” and “The White Book,” a poetic novel that draws on the death of Han’s older sister shortly after birth. Her most recent novel, “We Do Not Part,” is due to be published in English next year.
Olsson, the committee chair, called “Human Acts” a work of “witness literature.” It is based on the real-life killing of pro-democracy protesters in Han’s home city of Gwangju in 1980.
The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its 119 laureates until this year's award. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize on Tuesday. On Wednesday, three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
Lawless reported from London. Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.
Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature 2024, speaks to the media after the announcement of the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature 2024, speaks to the media after the announcement of the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
FILE - Han Kang speaks to the media after winning the Man Booker International prize for fiction for her book 'The Vegetarian' in London, Tuesday, May, 16, 2016. Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)
Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Mats Malm announces the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Mats Malm announces the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Mats Malm announces the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang, at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Mats Malm announces the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, South Korean writer Han Kang at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Thursday Oct. 10, 2024. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)
FILE - South Korean author Han Kang listens to a reporter's question in front of a banner of her new fiction during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 24, 2016. Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
FILE - South Korean author Han Kang answers a reporter's question during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 24, 2016. Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
FILE - South Korean author Han Kang poses for the media during a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 24, 2016. Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
FILE - A Nobel Prize medal is displayed before a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador's Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)
FILE - A close-up view of a Nobel Prize medal at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
The Nobel Prize in literature is being awarded in Stockholm
FILE - A bust of Alfred Nobel on display following a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP, File)
The Nobel Prize in literature is being awarded in Stockholm
