Speech

Thank you very much for the invitation to be here today. Thank you Alex for your introduction. It is truly an honour to share the same platform with Prime Minister Sobotka, with President Junker and High Representative Mogherini and it is wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues in the audience.

It is also a pleasure to be here in the city of the Prague Initiative an initiative that has been central to nuclear disarmament policy in recent years. And in my current capacity I would like to underscore NATO’s enduring commitment to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which is at the heart of a global rules based order to control and reduce nuclear weapons. Prague is also a city I associate with the struggle for freedom. Last month I was at the Globsec Security Conference in Bratislava. There I saw the great freedom fighter Lubos Dobrovsky receive the Czech and Slovak Trans-Atlantic award for his contribution to making the Trans-Atlantic bond stronger throughout his career. Dobrovsky started as a journalist broadcasting illegally during the Soviet invasion of 1968 and then much later with the Velvet Revolution he became a leading figure in the movement for change in Czechoslovakia. As part of the new government he negotiated the removal of Soviet troops and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. It was people like Dobrovsky who moved the countries of central and eastern Europe from tyranny to freedom opening them up to the Trans-Atlantic community and to membership of two great institutions, NATO and the European Union. They are two institutions that differ in many ways but which at their core share the same mission to ensure our security, our prosperity and our liberty. This is harder today than it has been for a generation. We face a range of complex and long term challenges. A more assertive Russia that has seized Crimea the sovereign territory of Ukraine by force and its attempts to undermine our democracies through propaganda and cyber-attacks. Another challenge is the rise of a particularly barbarous breed of terrorist whose objective is to claim as many innocent lives as possible, as we saw once more sadly last Saturday in London. And there are many other challenges such as the increasing threat from ballistic missiles and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These challenges demand a broad multi-faceted approach by the international community. NATO’s political military alliance plays an important role in every facet. In the past few years we have implemented the biggest increase in our collective defense since the Cold War and we are just days away from completing the deployment of troops from across the Alliance to the Baltic States, also to Poland and to Romania. But while NATO must be part of any solution it cannot do it all. No institution, no individual country, not even the most powerful in the world can do it all. That is why NATO places so much emphasis on close cooperation with the European Union. The European Union has been playing an enormously important role through its diplomacy, through its sanctions policy and through its development cooperation bringing us sustainable security. I very much agree with Federica Mogherini who said military might can be necessary but it’s never sufficient because of the complexities of the crisis, crises in front of us. I very much welcome recent E.U. initiatives to strengthen European defense such as the Global Strategy and its related decisions and the European Defense Action Plan; President Junker just spoke about that a moment ago. The reflection paper that just appeared as a good and important contribution to the debate about the future of European defense and of course NATO welcomes the proposal for a European Defense Fund to increase the effectiveness of European spending on defense. As President Junker and Prime Minister Sobotka said in their joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal during this past week there’s a great deal that the E.U. can do to coordinate the efforts of member States.

At the moment too many resources are wasted through duplication and lack of coordination and again I very much welcome President Junker’s message on that a moment ago. This is an area where the E.U. can make a big difference and we strongly support their efforts to do so. A stronger European defense means a stronger NATO and a stronger NATO means a stronger European defense. In this context let me say a few words about the unique nature of NATO’s contribution to European security. NATO leaders have for almost 70 years constantly reaffirmed NATO’s commitment to defending each other. NATO remains the Trans-Atlantic framework for strong collective defense and the essential forum for security consultations and decisions among allies. Deterrence and defense is at the heart of the Alliance’s missions and its purpose. Allies are committed to ensure that NATO has the full range of capabilities necessary to fulfil all Alliance missions. As a means to prevent conflict and war credible deterrence and defense are essential. The United States is making a unique contribution to deterrence and defense by providing for extended deterrence in Europe. I’d like to emphasize that extended deterrence is not only about nuclear weapons, it is about all of the considerable military capabilities that the United States deploys in defense of its allies. It is about the very considerable conventional forces that the United States has forward deployed for Europe’s defense. We see this in the U.S. led battle group in Poland. In the U.S. heavy brigade that forms part of the European reassurance initiative for Eastern Europe and in the $1.4 billion dollars in new money that President Trump has just put forward in his fiscal year 2018 budget. Moreover, the fact that Canada has come back to Europe with forces to support NATO enhanced forward presence in the Baltics is another strategic signal of the importance of the Trans-Atlantic bond for Europe’s security. The battle group that Canada is leading the way to establish in Latvia with Latvia providing the framework but many NATO allies participating in it is a clear and tangible expression of this fact. NATO and the E.U. share 22 member countries; we must stand together and work together if we are going to continue and protect the interests and security of our people this will be very necessary.

Last summer in Warsaw NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg signed a joint declaration with Presidents Junker and Tusk to set out our determination to move forward together to increase our cooperation in a range of areas and to do so in a spirit of collaboration and not competition. It is vital that we make the most of the means at our disposal and not waste them through duplication. Last December we agreed to turn that joint declaration into a concrete plan agreeing on 42 practical measures across a range of areas including Maritime issues, exercises, defense industry and research, defense capabilities and cyber issues. We have succeeded in implementing these measures and look forward to taking our cooperation even far forward into new areas. But even more important is the change to the culture of our relationship. Cooperation is now the norm and not the exception for theses two great institutions. This is vitally important and it’s a vitally important step forward and I’m glad to be able to reienforce that cooperation by appearing on this same platform today with President Junker and High Representative Mogherini.

This sort of close cooperation is an essential part of our adaptation to a new more dangerous security environment. That adaptation is ongoing. On 25 May, we held a meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels. We discussed burden sharing and the bond that links our two continents Europe and North America and what more we can do to fight terrorism. When it comes to further enhancing NATO E.U. cooperation working together to combat terrorism must be an important part of the future work. Neither NATO nor the European Union can tackle the challenges we face with our shared neighbourhood alone. Neither of us has all the tools to deal with the security situation around our borders, but I’d like to say together we have a complete tool kit.
So, thank you again for this opportunity to speak to you this morning. I very much welcome this invitation and look forward to our discussion. Thank you.