United States out-going Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel addressed the press at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium on Thursday where he said: “NATO remains the only global anchor of collective security in the world today. And it must continually adapt to the challenges of our time and be strengthened with leadership commitment and resources.”
Below is full text of his address.
I appreciate the opportunity to be back here at NATO, and I want to thank Secretary General Stoltenberg and General Breedlove and their staffs for their leadership at this defining time for the alliance.
At this first NATO defense ministerial of the year, as well as my final ministerial as secretary of defense, I’d like to begin by taking a moment to reflect on NATO’s challenges and achievements over the last year and what they mean for the future of the alliance.
A year ago this month, only a few hundred miles from NATO’s eastern frontier, Russia began its illegal occupation of Crimea and ongoing military aggression in Ukraine.
In a matter of weeks, all 28 NATO allies stepped up to respond. The alliance quadrupled its patrols over the Baltics and reinforced its presence in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.
It strengthened its standing naval forces and expanded its maritime presence in the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
The alliance and its members conducted 200 European exercises last year and agreed to establish new headquarters in the east, and we have established a new high-readiness task force that will be poised for deployment within days, not just to its eastern frontier but wherever it is needed.
In Afghanistan, just over a month ago, NATO partners and allies ended our combat mission, the longest and most complex in the alliance’s history.
We transitioned security responsibility to a unity government emerging from the first peaceful democratic transition in Afghan history.
Our coalition has trained more than 370,000 members of the Afghan national security forces, helping the Afghan economy to expand more than sixfold since the fall of the Taliban, helping create unprecedented opportunity and hope for the people of Afghanistan.
To address the threats along NATO’s southern frontier, allies are on the front lines combating violent extremism, extremism that has brought tragic violence to Paris and Ottawa.
NATO allies and partners also make up the backbone of the coalition against ISIL. They have provided critical support for operations in North Africa, and NATO continues to help build peace and security in the Balkans.
The alliance’s ability to meet all these challenges at once, to the east, to the south and out of the area, is NATO’s charge for the future.
This means being prepared for the full spectrum of missions and building NATO’s military capability and readiness, which has been the focus of our discussions today.
Earlier this morning I participated in a meeting of the alliance’s nuclear planning group, which oversees NATO’s nuclear deterrence policy, because allied nuclear forces continue to have a critical role underpinning the alliance’s collective security.
We have these meetings on a regular basis. But our discussions today were particularly important in light of Moscow’s violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, its violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and its increasingly aggressive military actions, such as its recent flight of nuclear-capable bombers near British airspace over the English Channel.
In a meeting of the NATO-Georgia council later this morning we reaffirmed the alliance’s commitment to strengthening Georgia’s ties with NATO.
Georgia has been one of the alliances most committed partners and we are making progress at implementing the package of steps we agreed to at Wales.
We remain committed to maintaining NATO’s open-door policy for all NATO aspirants, as we look forward to a vote on Montenegro’s membership later this year.
Later this afternoon, we will discuss one of the centerpieces of the Wales summit, the readiness action plan, a program that Secretary General Stoltenberg has rightly called the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.
Since the Wales summit, the United States Congress has approved the $1 billion that President Obama requested for our European Reassurance initiative, a major contribution to the readiness action plan.
This initiative will enable us to continue providing a persistent presence of U.S. air, land and maritime forces along the alliance’s eastern flank. And we also upgrade infrastructure and pre-position equipment and supplies.
We intend to contribute staff officers to each of NATO’s new command-and-control centers in Eastern Europe.
I also look forward to discussing the alliance’s progress towards standing up the new interim very high readiness joint task force, which is a core element of the readiness action plan.
I want to thank France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations for their significant contributions to this task force, as we seek further commitments from other allies.
In the course of all these discussions, I’m strongly urging all allies to reaffirm the defense investment pledge our leaders made at Wales, because this pledge will underwrite the long-term investments in capability, readiness and combat power that NATO must make to live up to its commitments.
Throughout my career as secretary of defense and as a United States senator, I have been deeply committed to strengthening this alliance.
I’ve seen this institution evolve and adapt– adapt to rapidly shifting strategic demands. To the end of the Cold War, NATO focused on the imperative of territorial defense and deterring Soviet aggression.
In its second phase, in the 1990s and during the first part of the 21st century, the alliance adapted, responding to conflict in the Balkans, and conducting major out-of-area military operations in Afghanistan and Libya.
Now, in its third phase, the alliance and its members must be prepared to address all of these challenges at once, territorial defense and hybrid warfare on its eastern frontier, stability operations on its southern periphery, and out-of-area operations, such as our training mission in Afghanistan, and coalition counter-ISIL operations in Iraq.
However, I am very concerned by the suggestion that this alliance can choose to focus on only one of these areas as our top priority. And I worry about the potential for division between our northern and southern allies.
This is a time for unity, shared purpose and wise, long-term investments across the spectrum of military capability. We must address all the challenges to this alliance, altogether, and all at once.
This means a demanding future. But I believe this alliance is up to the task, because at moments of truth, NATO has mustered the will to revitalize itself and even transform itself to meet the challenges of the day and defend our deeply held and shared values.
Since this alliance was founded 66 years ago, NATO has never been aimed at any country, but instead only at armed aggression.
It is the most successful collective security alliance in history. NATO was built and still stands on a fundamental premise that President Truman noted when the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty.
And he said then, “We do not believe that these are blind tides of history which sweep men one way or another. Instead, people with courage and vision can still determine their own destiny.”
“We could choose war,” President Truman said, “or, through this alliance, we could choose peace.”
This vision, courage and commitment is the enduring legacy of those who fought — who fought the most destructive war the world has ever known.
And they went on to build an alliance to assure that mankind would never again endure the kind of suffering and destruction that they had lived through.
NATO remains the only global anchor of collective security in the world today. And it must continually adapt to the challenges of our time and be strengthened with leadership commitment and resources.
This is a legacy that all our nations must honor and uphold for many generations to come.
Thank you
