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Weekend Reads
NATO Summit Wrap-Up + Speaker Johnson on the Future of American Security
“Every NATO member needs to be spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. That’s the agreement, that’s the deal,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at Hudson on the eve of NATO’s seventy-fifth summit.
Watch the event, read the transcript, or listen here.
Then, at the NATO Public Forum, Hudson experts sat down with policymakers—including South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS)—to discuss why restoring the alliance’s military strength is vital to global security, freedom, and prosperity.
Key excerpts from Speaker Johnson’s event with Rebeccah Heinrichs and a recap of Hudson’s participation at the NATO Public Forum are below.
Key Insights
1. America’s actions will determine the path of the free world.
“While democracy is not perfect, the burden of self-government is certainly far lighter than the yoke of tyranny. But right now, absent American leadership, we’re looking at a future that could be well-defined by communism and tyranny, rather than liberty and opportunity and security. In Europe, Putin has made it clear that his plans don’t stop with Ukraine. He’s likened himself to Tsar Peter the Great, and you can read his essay about restoring the Russian Empire—an empire that would include our military partners in Vilnius, Helsinki, and Warsaw. Xi Jinping made abundantly clear he’s interested in expanding his communist footholds, including in the South China Sea. In the Middle East, the ayatollah wants to resurrect the caliphate and eliminate Israel.”
2. An axis of adversaries is working to undermine the United States militarily and economically.
“Today, we don’t face one primary enemy as we did in the Soviet Union, and so far, thankfully, we don’t see a new kind of Tripartite Pact. But we do see a group of nations openly aligned against the United States. It’s an interconnected web of threats. I refer to it as a China-led axis, composed of partner regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and even Cuba. Now they each have their own cultures and their own specific sinister aims, but they all wake up every morning thinking how they can take down America. And they’re increasingly using their collective military, technological, and financial resources to empower one another in their various efforts to cut off our trade routes, and steal our technology, and harm our troops, and upend our economy.”
3. America’s open border is a security risk.
“The enemy is here. The border’s been wide open for three and a half years. By some estimates, 16 million illegals have come across, and they’re not all good people. On January 3, I took the largest congressional delegation to the border that had ever been. . . . The border and customs agents told us there that at the Del Rio sector alone, an estimated 70, seven-zero, 70 percent of the people who crossed illegally are single adult males between the ages of 18 and 49. These are not huddled masses of families running from persecution. They’re not seeking asylum. These are people coming here with bad designs. By the end of this year, it’s estimated we’ll have a . . . 2,300 percent increase in the number of Chinese nationals who try to come across that border illegally in two years.”
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Hudson at the NATO Public Forum
Hudson Japan Chair Ken Weinstein sat down with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to talk about why the war in Ukraine matters to Indo-Pacific and global security.
Nadia Schadlow and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reflected on NATO’s history and discussed how it can remain the world’s most successful military alliance.
Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher G. Cavoli joined Peter Rough to discuss methods for strengthening Europe’s defense capabilities as the threat of a Russian attack on NATO increases.
President and CEO John Walters and Senator Roger Wicker discussed the senator’s landmark report on how America can restore peace through strength.
After remarks from Czech President Peter Pellegrini, Hudson’s Luke Coffey, General Ben Hodges, and the defense ministers of the United Kingdom and Latvia discussed how the outcome of the war in Ukraine will affect the transatlantic community.
Bryan Clark moderated a panel of government and industry leaders to discuss how NATO militaries and defense industries will need to both adapt and scale in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine.
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