SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, Minister Crosetto and your team, welcome to the Pentagon. Thank you for being here. Italy's growing defense leadership in Europe is largely thanks to you and your prime minister's efforts. And we're especially grateful for the steadfast support your government and the Italian people show in hosting US forces in Italy, a longstanding partnership.
And in today's vital global landscape, our partnership is more important than ever. Our allies need to fully resource their armed forces to meet the challenges head-on, and this means rebalancing our alliance, our shared alliance, to focus on NATO's core warfighting mission, which I know you very much appreciate, and I appreciate that.
And it means fully committing to NATO 3.0, building combat-credible forces, expanding capabilities, and accelerating our shared defense industrial bases. Our NATO allies have set a new global standard, five percent of GDP, 3.5 on core defense and 1.5 on enablers, that needs to be the benchmark for allies around the globe meeting these security challenges. And European allies, including Italy, must take, and I know are stepping up to take the primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense and demonstrate readiness to assume a greater share of the burden.
We seek partners and Italy is certainly one of them. And you're leaning forward in that aspect. We see this in your leadership of NATO's multinational battle group in Bulgaria, and your willingness to engage in theaters where Italy has high economic and security stakes.
Additionally, as I mentioned, our growing bilateral defense industrial cooperation is vital to building the kind of strength necessary to sustain peace. We are reinvesting in our defense industrial base and in our defense in ways that we believe shows the world how important we take our own security, but collective security as well.
So, Mr. Minister, there's more to be done to build NATO 3.0, and we look forward to working together with you. You've been a strong partner since I joined the table there at NATO, and we welcome you here at the Pentagon. Thank you for being here, sir.
DEFENSE MINISTER GUIDO CROSETTO (REMARKS DELIVERED IN ITALIAN): Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Hegseth. Thanks to your collaborators, it is my honor to be here today. Thank you. Thank you especially because this meeting takes place at a very important moment. Yesterday, the peace memorandum with Iran was signed. In a few days, we will have the NATO ministerial in Brussels and then the Ankara Summit, which will be a very important appointment.
Today, I would like to discuss the challenges we have to face, a common vision of NATO. As you said earlier on we are committed to NATO, we have a commitment with the United States, and we're taking it forward. We are doing that by increasing our defense expenditures and our contribution to NATO. We are one of the most important contributors in terms of manpower and assets, and we are responding to new requests for further commitment with assets within NATO in order to have an equal sharing between and among all members.
So thank you to the United States. Thanks to this administration for pushing Europe to assume the responsibility for a defense that could not be only entrusted to NATO. It is a fundamental passage for Europe and indeed an important passage. Thank you for the friendship of the United States. We're not just simply allied countries; we are strategic partners.
We are honored to host a thousand servicemen and women from the American Armed Forces that, for us, are Italian citizens. And they feel they are Italians in part, and we are honored to have contributed with 18 million of Italian Americans to the construction and the greatness of this country.
The Italians who live here feel they have built this country, and this is a further bond between us. A strong Europe is necessary for a stronger NATO. A stronger Europe is necessary for NATO to take care of the world. As you heard me saying in Singapore, when NATO was created, the world rotated around the Atlantic Ocean.
Now it's much bigger. And I must say, the Atlantic Ocean maybe is less relevant than the Indo-Pacific, because most of the economy has moved towards the Indo-Pacific, and our technological and military challenges come from China and Indo-Pacific, mostly. In this great alliance Italy wants to continue to play a great role in reinforcing the military, the technology sector, the industrial sector.
As you know, Italy has defended the need to maintain an industrial relationship with the United States, and that it should be stronger. We have maintained the presence of the United States in our industrial relationship, and we're doing it not because we are simply pro-United States, but because this alliance is the alliance that defended for the last 80 years, that part of the world.
So our relationship with the United States is not only political, it's based on values, on shared history and what we have to do for the future. There is no alternative to the Atlantic relationship for us. This is why our role within NATO and also the bilateral level, will be always side-by-side with the United States in countering global challenges.
I would like to tell you something about my personal history, because as you can see, there is an F-35 on the Italian flag because we are the only nation where F-35s are built outside the United States, and I was the one who created this structure, because the relationship between Italy and the United States must be a win-win relationship.
So thank you for today's meeting, and I'm sure that strengthening our relationship will strengthen NATO and our countries.
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Thank you very much. Thank you.