SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good afternoon. So it’s a particular pleasure to be here with the latest star recruit of the Washington Nationals baseball team, Jens Stoltenberg, also known as the Secretary General of NATO. It was wonderful being with Jens yesterday at Nationals Park, watching him throw out the first pitch, but it’s been even more wonderful to be side by side with the Secretary General for the last three and a half years in my case, watching his leadership of our Alliance.
We have NATO coming together for its 75th anniversary here in Washington – of course, celebrating those 75 years, but more important, focused on today and the following days and making sure that our Alliance continues to do what it’s done so successfully for 75 years, which is to ensure the defense of its members.
Thanks to the Secretary General and his leadership, we have an Alliance that is stronger, that is larger, and that is more fit for purpose than it’s been, and ready to take on the challenges of this moment. That, again, doesn’t just happen; it’s a product of leadership, and I’ve seen it every single day these past three and a half years with the Secretary General. I’ve also seen it with President Biden and everything he’s done to lead our Alliance to the place that it is today and that we’ll be putting a real spotlight on over the next three days.
Lots to be said in the coming days about the concrete achievements of this summit. I won’t get ahead of those. You’ll be hearing about those over the next two and a half days. But again, suffice to say we have an Alliance that is stronger than it’s been, larger than it’s been, and ready to deal with the challenges of our time.
Jens, again, we’ve said it on a number of occasions, but especially here in Washington on this anniversary: Thank you, thank you, thank you for your leadership.
Finally, I would just say that one of the reasons it’s so important that we celebrate this anniversary as well as prepare the Alliance for the way forward is because of what this Alliance actually means to people of all the countries who are members of NATO. And it really boils down to this: After the Second World War, and after two World Wars, countries came together determined that we would not see yet another global conflagration. And one of the ways that they did that was coming together in a defensive Alliance – NATO – 12 countries 75 years ago. And the secret of NATO’s success has been the commitment that those 12 countries made to each other and that now 32 countries are making to each other, and that is an attack on one is an attack on all. The strongest possible deterrent to aggression, the best way to prevent war from happening in the first place, is exactly through that commitment – because a would-be aggressor understands that if they take on one country, they’ve got to take on all of them.
That’s why 75 years later, NATO has been the most successful defensive Alliance in the history of the world, but also why it remains the critical Alliance going forward and why more countries have wanted to join. It’s as fundamental, as basic as that. It’s about preventing wars. It’s about deterring conflict. It’s about making our people more safe and secure so that they can go about doing everything that’s necessary to build strong, resilient countries with opportunity, with progress that’s shared among all their people.
Jens.
SECRETARY GENERAL STOLTENBERG: Thanks so much, Secretary Blinken, dear Tony. Thank you so much for hosting me and my delegation here again, and thank you for giving me some, as they say, basic advice about baseball yesterday. It was great to throw the first pitch, but I think I should focus on politics, not on baseball in the future.
It’s great to be here, not least because this week is an important week for NATO. We have our 75th anniversary summit here in Washington, so thank you for hosting the summit and thank you also for your leadership, your strong personal commitment to our Alliance.
This summit will be a summit where we celebrate the most successful Alliance in history, but we’re also going to make important decisions for the future on deterrence and defense – on Ukraine, on partnerships in the Asia Pacific. And of course, none of this would have been possible without the leadership of the United States, of President Biden, of you to ensure that we have now 32 Allies agreeing on all these important decisions we will take during the summit here in Washington.
We will make decisions on Ukraine, and I think what you have seen over the last days demonstrates the need to step up our support for Ukraine. We have seen new Russian missile attacks against cities, against a child hospital – many children and civilians have been killed, and it just demonstrates the brutality of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the importance of us supporting Ukraine and upholding the right for self-defense.
We will do more together on deterrence and defense. Allies are stepping up when it comes to defense investments: 23 Allies are investing more, or 2 percent at least of their GDP, on defense. This is twice as many as just four years ago. And then we will further strengthen our partnership with the Asia Pacific partners.
This is a busy week, and it’s great to be in Washington and great to see you again, Tony.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.
SECRETARY GENERAL STOLTENBERG: Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thanks, everyone.
