Opening remarks

Opening remarks by the Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer

Your Excellency, 
Chiefs of Defence, 
Strategic Commanders, 
Distinguished guests, 
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mesdames et Messieurs, 

Nous sommes honorés de réunir notre conférence annuelle ici á Prague, á l’invitation des autorités tchèques.

We are honoured to convene our annual conference here in Prague, at the invitation of the Czech authorities. 

We are gathering here under stormy circumstances. 

Not only in terms of the weather, with heavy floods in the Czech Republic. 

But also stormy in terms of the global security environment.

Which makes the protection of the Alliance all the more important. 

25 years ago, the Czech Republic made the decision to be part of the largest democratic family in the world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. 

In a quarter of a decade, you have proven to be a remarkable Ally. 

The Czech Republic has brought forth exemplary political and military leaders. 

Mr. President, you are of a very rare breed, being exemplary as BOTH a political AND a military leader.

As former Chair of this Committee, I imagine this is a “full circle moment” for you.  

It certainly proves that you can check out of the NATO headquarters any time you like, but you can never leave.

This Military Committee Conference is the first gathering of Allied Chiefs of Defence since the Washington Summit. 

I would like to warmly welcome for the first time around our table in their new capacity as Chief of Defence:

• General Vansina from Belgium, 
• General Carignan from Canada,
• General Merilo from Estonia,
• General Vaikŝnoras from Lithuania,
• and Major General Lafchiski from North Macedonia.

We are also grateful to have with us the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Chris Cavoli, and the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General Philip Lavigne. 

Both strategic commands are faced with a monumental task. We commend the relentless dedication that you and your staffs show, day in day out. 

Speaking of dedication: on behalf of the whole Military Committee I would like to thank our hosts for the gracious and generous hospitality they are showing us.

Through you, Mr President, and through your Chief of Defence, Lieutenant General Karel Řehka, we would like to thank all people involved for making this gathering a success. 

President Pavel, 

In a speech you gave as Chairman of this Committee, 9 years ago, you stated that leaders in NATO must avoid becoming lost in tactical events. 

It is up to us to always place tactical events in a wider strategic picture. 

Only then can NATO properly anticipate and respond. 

These words still ring true today. 

In this time of rising conflicts, mounting political pressure, and increasingly complex and volatile security developments, it is crucial that we distinguish the tactical from the strategic. 

The incidental from the recurring. 

And the short-term actions from the long-term consequences. 

We are all deeply inspired by the way our Ukrainian brother in arms, Chief of Defence General Syrski, is doing this. 
In the chaos of war, he and his staff retain their strategic vision, creativity, and military ingenuity. 
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are proving the world that there is nothing they cannot do. 

All they need… is our support. 

And they will have it. 

Not only now. Not only for the duration of the war. 

But also in the decades to follow. 

Every day, we grow more and more interoperable. 

Until one day, we will stand side by side under the NATO banner. 

Ukraine deserves our unrelenting support.

Not only because of who they are as a people.

But also because of who we are, as NATO.

Mr President, I would like now to first give you the floor for your opening remarks. 

Opening remarks by the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel

Chair, 
Admirals, 
Generals, 
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me really a great pleasure to welcome you once again in Prague, unfortunately extremely wet this time. 

It is an honour for Czech Republic to host for the first time a Military Committee Conference as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of joining NATO, and actually in the same year when the Alliance celebrates 75 years of its existence. 

It proved to be truly the most successful and long-lasting military alliance in the world, which does not mean that it is perfect. 

Being a human creation, it is imperfect as we are, and we have to constantly work on improving it.

However, it proved to be very successful in taking on board countries like the Czech Republic and many others, allowing them to become members of the zone of stability, security, and prosperity. 

This is the experience that I made in my in total eight years in the NATO structures. 

Despite all the differences, despite all efforts that we attach to protection and promotion of our national interests, which is, by the way, natural, that in the end we always strive to come to an agreement, to come to a common position on solution of challenges that we face. 

It is this culture that clearly distinguishes us from our opponents. 

And as we see the world today, it is no longer the world of bipolar competition between the West and East, but it is increasingly the world where we see the democracy competing with different kinds of autocracies. 

As we all stand for the values of democracy, personal liberty, rule of law, human rights, these are exactly the values that are challenged by our opponents, not just traditional ones, such as Russia, but also China, North Korea, and Iran. 

And many others are watching how this competition will develop. So it is up to us to show that our model is viable and it is worth of following rather than to follow the model of autocracies. 

I would like to encourage you to be as bold and open in articulating your assessments and recommendations, because the rounder and the softer they are, the less they will be understood by the political level. 

The situation in which we find ourselves really does not allow us to be politically correct. 

We have to be really very well understood so that we take the right steps and the right decisions to protect our countries and our way of life. 

And I would like to wish you a successful conference and a lot of personal courage to be that bold and that open. 

Thank you.

Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer

Thank you Mr President. 

I now give the floor to General Řehka. 

Karel, you have the floor.

Opening remarks by Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Karel Řehka,

Mr. President, Admiral Bauer, Distinguished Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great honour, as Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, to welcome all of you for the first meeting of the NATO Military Committee in the Czech Republic. 

It is a notable moment for us that Chiefs of Defence of allied countries have come to Prague to discuss the challenges requiring our immediate attention, and of course, also the future of NATO´s collective defence.
The recent NATO Summit laid out a clear path for our Alliance as we confront a rapidly evolving security landscape. 

The threats we face are becoming more complex, and our responsibility as military leaders is to ensure that the strategic decisions are translated into action. 

One of the principal challenges we have been facing is the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine. 

For Ukraine it is a war for survival. But it is also a fight for the principles of democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity that NATO exists to defend. 

It is imperative that we, at the top of our militaries, provide all necessary assistance to Ukraine, be it in the form of training or supplying weapons and other military equipment. 

By supporting Ukraine, we are also strengthening our unity and containing the Russian threat. 

However, it is not only the conventional battlefield where Russia is active. We remember very well when their agents killed two Czech citizens at an ammunition storage site in 2014.

Russia is now increasing the use of hybrid tactics - cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and even kinetic acts of violence. 

All these actions are designed to sow fear and undermine the unity of our societies. 

We must, therefore, take a broad approach, one that integrates our conventional military capabilities with robust cyber defences and strong civil-military cooperation. 

We must ensure that our military forces, institutions and societies are ready to confront this blend of physical, digital and cognitive warfare.

The Czech Republic has drawn important lessons from the Russian aggression against Ukraine. 

We have revised our national strategies and defence plans to better address the threats. 

We have elaborated our national Vision of Future Warfare beyond 2040, accelerated the modernization of our armed forces, recognizing the need for state-of-the-art capabilities. 

These actions reflect our deep commitment to national and collective defence, and our understanding of the lessons Ukraine has taught us all: we must be resilient, prepared, resolute, and forward-thinking.

Last, but not least, we have made the crucial decision to spend at least 2% of our GDP on defence. 

However, as new challenges and requirements come to the spotlight, it is evident, that 2% of GDP on defence spending will not be enough.

This week we have reminded ourselves of the horrible events of 9/11 23 years ago. 

Unfortunately, international terrorism continues to pose a significant threat to NATO and the broader security environment. 

It is increasingly linked to wider issues such as migration, particularly to our Southern Neighbourhood and the Middle East, where instability and conflict drive mass movements of people, sometimes exploited by terrorist organizations to infiltrate or destabilize nations. 

This requires our collective, far-reaching and actionable approach. 

As military professionals, we must stay ahead of the evolving challenges by continually improving our coordination, enhancing our technological capabilities, and fostering greater interoperability between our forces. 

Let me restate what I have said in the past. All our defensive preparations are in principle made to avoid a military conflict. 

Lasting peace cannot be achieved through concessions. That doesn't work. On the contrary, it encourages the possibility of escalation. That is why robust deterrence is so important. 

Our collective deterrence posture demonstrates our readiness and resolve to execute our plans, ensuring that any adversary knows that NATO is ready to defend every inch of its territory decisively and without hesitation. 

And the Czech Armed Forces are a firm part of this endeavor. 

In closing, I once again welcome you to the Czech Republic and I look forward to our discussions today. 

Thank you.

Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer

President Pavel, General Řehka, thank you for your inspiring words. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

The NATO Military Authorities have two herculean tasks that they need to undertake simultaneously. 

While continuing and ramping up our support to Ukraine, we must also bolster our own deterrence and defence.  

When we held this committee conference in Oslo last year, NATO’s new defence plans, the so called DDA Family of Plans, had just been approved. 

Over the past year we have made huge strides in making these plans fully executable.

NATO now has 500,000 troops on high readiness.

We established the Allied Reaction Force.

We are adapting our Command and Control structure.

And Allies are rapidly developing and expanding their capabilities. 

But our work is far from done.

And we cannot do it alone. 

The responsibility for freedom does not lie on the shoulders of those in uniform alone. 

In order to succeed, we need a much larger defence industry production capacity.

Because while it might be the military that wins battles, it’s the economy that wins wars. 
 
The more we coordinate our defence production, the more we ramp up our deterrence. 

The more we ramp up our deterrence, the better chance we have of protecting the freedoms that we hold dear and preventing war from ever entering our soil. 

This is not a new idea. 

In fact, economic collaboration was a key factor of the Washington Treaty that was signed 75 years ago. 
While Article 5 often captures the spotlight, Article 2 is equally significant. 

In our liberal economies, the bulk of the power lies with “the market”. 

Which means that any real change in production capacity will have to come from persuasion, not force.  

Persuasion of the argument that our economic prosperity is built on the foundation of security that NATO provides. 

This security is easily taken for granted. 

But security is just like oxygen. You forget that it’s there… until it isn’t. 

Ukraine lost 40 percent of its GDP on the first day of the war. 
Every night they go to bed, Ukrainian CEO’s have to wonder whether their factory will still be there in the morning. 

CEOs in Allied territory don’t worry about that.

They worry about value, not values. 
But if the short-term commercial interest always wins out over the long-term collective interest, then we end up knocking away the foundation upon which our “way of life” is built. 

We need to move away from an era that was focused solely on efficiency. 

And realise that we are now living in an era that calls for effectiveness. 
That also applies to our national governments, who need to remove bureaucratic barriers for procurement. 

Governments and the private sector need to loosen the mutually destructive chokehold, where each side is waiting for the other to move first in order to ramp up production capacity.  

This requires trust, long term vision and creativity. 

And I am confident that we can achieve this. 

During the COVID pandemic, we saw what governments and the private sector can achieve together in finding and massively producing a vaccine.

The same sense of urgency is required for the defence industry.

NATO Allies represent 50 percent of the world’s economic power and 50 percent of the world’s military power. 

We have it within ourselves to strengthen the strongest Alliance in the world and at the same time bolster Ukraine’s defences. 

We can and we must achieve this. 

Because autocratic leaders around the world are watching closely to see how the war in Ukraine unfolds. 

They are aiding where they can. 

Seeking to create division and to destroy democracy abroad… in order to retain autocracy at home. 

A number of formerly deeply isolated countries are using this opportunity to be part of what is sometimes referred to in the media as “an alliance of autocracies”. 
But I think “alliance” is too big of a word for what is essentially a deeply flawed exchange of self-interest. 

There is no true friendship or trust. There is only a temporary alignment. 

Nevertheless, it is important that we see how the dots are connecting. 

And that we realise that there is no stronger weapon in the world… than our unity. 

Together we will prove that democracy will triumph over tyranny.

That freedom will triumph over oppression.

And that light will triumph over darkness.

Ladies and Gentlemen, 
Our sacred task is to support and enable the work of our band of 3.5 million brothers and sisters in uniform who defend our great Alliance. 

Let us recognise their service and sacrifice… for they are defending the democratic values and the rule of law that form the fabric of our societies.  

On behalf of the Military Committee, I want to express our gratitude and respect for their courage, their professionalism, and their dedication.

Our thoughts are with the loved ones of the men and women who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. 

Today we especially pay tribute to the two Bulgarian pilots who lost their lives in a military jet crash yesterday. 

We also show our respect for all those who are dealing with the physical and mental effects of their time in service. And who are looking for ways to continue serving, beyond their service. 

We honour them. As they have honoured our great Alliance.  

Please stand.

[Moment of silence for the Act of Remembrance]

Thank you. 

This concludes the public portion of our deliberations.  

At the end of today’s discussions, General Řehka and I will brief the media on the outcome of our discussions. 

I kindly ask the camera people to leave the room.