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Floor Speech
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Mr. COONS. I rise to join the leaders of the codel that I just had the honor and blessing of joining, Senators Shaheen and Tillis, and a number of the other members of that codel, Senators Ernst and Blunt. And I was grateful for the chance to travel with Senators Durbin and Fischer. I want to just join in my colleagues' statements today.
I think this was a tremendous opportunity for us in Sweden and in Finland to meet with nations that are advanced economies, that are closely aligned with our values, that have sophisticated militaries, and that now, for the very first time, are seeking admission to NATO. NATO is the most successful security alliance in world history, and it is rooted in shared values and shared concerns and interests.
One of the most vulnerable pieces of NATO, if you looked at the map just a few months ago, were three little Baltic States--Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia--that, for decades, were under the heel of the Soviet Union. They were relatively newly independent in recent decades, admitted to NATO, but very difficult to defend.
One of the reasons I joined with my colleagues to say here, as we did in Madrid, that we should swiftly ratify the joining to NATO of both Sweden and Finland is that they will provide security. They will be security contributors to this alliance. The odds that a young man or a woman from Iowa or North Carolina, from Missouri, New Hampshire, or Delaware will have to go defend Estonia, will have to go risk or give their life to defending Latvia or Lithuania will go down dramatically if we have on that border, at the very northern end of the NATO alliance, a new 830-mile border between Finland and Russia. The Russians know they will have to defend and pay attention to it given the unique history of 1939-1940 war. And where countries aligned with our values and priorities are going to continue to contribute to the importance of this alliance.
It was valuable that in our meetings with heads of state from Europe, like Chancellor Scholz from the Indo-Pacific, like Prime Minister Kishida from Japan, in conversations with foreign Secretaries like Liz Truss of the United Kingdom, or meetings with foreign Ministers of Italy and of Germany and of France and of Spain, that this delegation was able to speak with one voice and to articulate why we join the Biden administration in supporting NATO accession for these two critical new partners.
The last point I want to make is that I am hopeful--I am optimistic-- that we will continue to provide unified bipartisan robust support for Ukraine's brave and fierce defense of its Nation and its sovereignty in the face of Russia's war crimes, Russia's continued aggression. We are calling on all of our NATO allies to step up and to contribute and to participate. And they are. This has brought greater unity, greater purpose, greater focus to the NATO alliance than anything in decades.
I will remind you, the one time that the article 5 sacred obligation to come to each other's defense has been triggered before was in Afghanistan. Thousands and thousands of NATO soldiers served alongside ours in Afghanistan when it was the United States that was attacked on 9/11. This NATO alliance is stronger than it has ever been and needs to be the strongest it has ever been, because, as my colleagues both laid out clearly and concisely, this is a pivotal moment in the future of the United States and our role in the world, the future of NATO and Western freedom.
We must make sure we succeed. I am so grateful for the bipartisan commitment that was at the core of this delegation.
I yield to my colleague.
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