Good afternoon. Thank you for that kind introduction.
It is an honor to be back here at NATO Headquarters. Thank you to Secretary General Rutte for his generous hospitality.
My visit here today is designed to both speak to and hear from you about our important Europe Posture Review, which Secretary Hegseth announced at the last defense ministerial in June. We are now in the midst of that review. On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to visit U.S. European Command, where much of the analysis is being done. Yesterday, I also had the opportunity to visit Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and hear from General Grynkewich and his staff there. Both visits were exceedingly productive.
My purpose today is to give you, our allies, a clear sense of our strategic and overall approach in this important initiative and then invite your feedback, building on conversations already underway among many of our teams.
To begin with, I hope and believe that we have been clear and consistent in our approach towards deterrence and defense with our NATO allies. Fundamentally, we believe that in order to survive and indeed thrive, NATO must change. The simple fact is that the legacy model of NATO 2.0 is no longer suited for our time.
Instead, NATO must adapt.
We term this NATO 3.0: restoring an alliance grounded in flexible realism; focused on warfighting readiness; and designed to deter, defend, and sustain peace in the North Atlantic area—even under conditions of simultaneity, with our allies taking primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense.
To be sure, not everyone agreed with this need for change and that approach. But I believe we can all be proud to say that we have made tremendous progress over the last 18 months in coming to a broad consensus on the need for NATO 3.0. Thanks to President Trump and key leaders like Secretary General Rutte, both the United States and Europe essentially now agree on this critical point: we must make NATO more focused on warfighting readiness, more balanced, and more pragmatic. This is not a transient view, but rather a structural and strategic necessity, particularly in light of the simultaneity problem. Moreover, it not only benefits the American people by making NATO more balanced, it is also to Europe's benefit because it will make the alliance more sustainable and durable.
Among almost all NATO allies, the conversation has now turned from whether this needs to happen to how best to make NATO 3.0 a reality and how to do so most rapidly and effectively. This is exactly where the conversation should be, concentrating in matters of timing, force development, budget allocation, and managing risk. This is the kind of pragmatic, strategic, realistic conversation that needs to happen, and represents a fundamental and welcome shift from the almost-theological focus that characterized the transatlantic relationship until very recently. Indeed, I think it can be said plainly that it represents enormous progress from where the discussion was just two years ago, progress that seemed impossible to some but has since come to pass. For this we should take satisfaction.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. Coming to a shared perception that NATO needs to adapt to the NATO 3.0 model is vital, but this is only a beginning. It represents a recognition of our need to adapt — but is not the adaptation itself.
It is in that spirit that we have embarked on a review of U.S. force posture and basing in Europe at Secretary Hegseth's direction.
As he laid out in June, this will be a real review, "designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe, stepping up to ensure our forces are postured for America's global needs, and making sure that our access, basing, and overflight are clearly delineated and assured."
At the Secretary's direction, I am leading this review in close coordination and deep collaboration with General Grynkewich.
Allow me to stress a few things about how we are approaching this review.
First and foremost, we are proceeding in a spirit of flexible realism and strategic rigor, as you will have seen in the Terms of Reference distributed to your capitals at the beginning of this effort.
Second, we are doing so to advance and accelerate NATO 3.0, to make the alliance more fit for the times and for the strategic requirements that the United States as well as our allies face.
In this vein, over the last few weeks, our teams have been working hard to think strategically, broadly, and rigorously about how to adapt America's strategic posture in Europe for the age in which we find ourselves and going forward. This is not a narrow review about places and bases alone, although those are of course important. Rather, it is a look at our strategic posture here in the broader sense, designed to enable our Joint Force to meet the priorities laid out in the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. It will encourage, enable, and impel a transition to a more durable and powerful European-led conventional defense of the continent, consistent with NATO's original and noble purpose. That is, the goal is for Europeans to be partners, not dependencies—not just, I stress, for our sake but for yours as well, so that NATO can always reliably defend Europe effectively, even in the most stressing scenarios.
In this effort, we have no preconceived fixed goal or outcome. There are several starting points from which we proceeded, however: the priorities of our nation as laid out in our canonical Strategies are on the Western Hemisphere and the First Island Chain, even as Europe remains a critical area for the United States and the NATO alliance a key part of European and Atlantic security. We also know that our European allies can step up to assume primary responsibility for their own conventional defense and have made historic commitments to make that a reality, which will enable the Alliance to defend Europe effectively even in the case of simultaneous contingencies. We also know that our allies can and will lead in supporting Ukraine's self-defense, and that this is highly consonant with Ukraine's own battlefield successes. At the same time, we know that a significant portion of U.S. force posture in Europe derives from the Cold War era. Further, we know that Europe is not only important but also provides a critical node for the projection of U.S. military power on all our behalf, both in this theater and beyond, and helps contribute to the defense of the U.S. homeland. These are the kinds of factors which we are incorporating into our analysis.
Allow me to stress another critical point: consultations and engagement are a vital part of this review. As evidenced by my visit here this week, we are not trying to hide what we are doing. Obviously, we cannot get into every detail, but I submit that we are being clear, candid, and consistent in our strategic approach. Moreover, we want to hear from you. In this setting as well as throughout this week, my colleagues and I have been meeting with both civilian and uniformed leaders from our European allies. I also have been having meetings in Washington, and for those who have not yet had the chance, I invite you to come visit the Pentagon where we can discuss things more deeply.
But we are not relying solely on snippets and conversations. This is why we have sent out a detailed questionnaire to all of you earlier this month. The logic behind this is to ensure that we hear directly from our allies in formal, written responses. As you know, the thrust of that questionnaire is all about NATO 3.0. It is about understanding how all of you are thinking about moving towards that noble goal that almost all of us share. It was sent in a spirit of candor, directness, and clarity, with a clear eye toward the most important things that we can do to advance this goal of a stronger, more sustainable Alliance. We look forward to receiving responses from all of you and we appreciate those who have already sent ones. All responses will be incorporated into our work.
Allow me to close by stressing that together, we find ourselves with an historic opportunity, which we should not miss. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, Secretary General Rutte, and many of your national leaders, we have broken with the tired and ill-suited shibboleths of NATO 2.0 and come to a common agreement that European allies must take primary responsibility for their own conventional defense and meet the historic Hague defense spending commitments made last year.
I simply cannot stress enough how significant this shift is, and candidly, I do not believe we pay enough attention to how dramatic our progress so far has been. While we should not slip into a false sense of complacency on this point – indeed, a great deal of the real work still lies ahead of us – I also believe we should recognize the significance of what has happened and the historic opportunity it provides. After a generation of disarmament and functional demilitarization, many countries in Europe, including several of Europe's largest and most advanced economies, are rebuilding their military strength for collective defense. They are making real sacrifices, some even going so far as to change their constitutions and raising their retirement age. That is extraordinary.
Accordingly, we must not waste this opportunity. Now is the time, when the concrete is still wet, to set the trajectory for the coming decade and beyond, to make the best use of that extraordinary shift brought about by President Trump and key European leaders.
Our approach, and this review, are designed to accelerate and build on this. To be clear, this does not mean a return to an idle reassurance of the past. Rather, it means looking with clear eyes and strategic realism at the geopolitical and military situation that we face here in the North Atlantic and European areas, but also for us Americans around the globe, especially in our own hemisphere and along the First Island Chain.
If we work together in this vein, I have every hope that we will advance the vision of NATO 3.0 together and put this historic alliance on a stronger and more durable footing for the next generation and beyond.
Thank you very much.