Remarks by Ambassador Catherine Todd Bailey at the Limbazi Secondary School, September 22, 2006

It is a pleasure for me to be here today with my friend, the secretary of state for defense, Edgars Rinkevics, with whom I have a long, close, and cooperative relationship. Mr. Rinkevics recently accompanied minister of defense Slakteris to Washington for a meeting with our secretary of defense, secretary Rumsfeld and I know they had a warm meeting.

That is one of the many signs of the strong relations between Latvia and the United States. Your president had a chance to speak to our congress in June, something that only a few leaders get to do each year. And in November, president bush will make his second visit here in 18 months, this time to attend the summit of NATO leaders to be held in Riga.

And so, I want to talk to you today about NATO and what it means and why you as young people and Latvia’s future leaders, should be interested in NATO and what happens at this summit.

The United States took the lead in founding NATO. The thirty-third president of the United States, Harry S Truman, brought together twelve democracies from Europe and North America to sign the Washington treaty in 1949.

For over forty years, NATO was the alliance that joined the free peoples of western Europe and north America in a military and political arrangement to stand up to the tyranny that existed in the soviet union and its satellite states of eastern Europe. During that time, Latvia found itself on the wrong side of an artificial dividing line that ran through Europe.

The United States and many of our allies stood in support of the people of Latvia, as well as Estonia and Lithuania, in refusing to recognize the soviet occupation and annexation. When the Soviet Union collapsed fifteen years ago, NATO began to work with the newly free countries to aid them in developing democratic governments and build their security.

In 2002, Latvia, along with six other countries, was invited to join NATO and became full members in 2004. In doing that, we took another step closer to achieving president bush’s vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.

History matters and we should not forget it – I know your history teachers would agree – but I do not want to dwell on the past in talking about NATO. I want to talk about what it means today and why it is still relevant to your lives. At the heart of NATO is the guarantee of article five of the Washington treaty that an attack on any one member of NATO is an attack on all members of NATO. Countries do not enter into this commitment lightly.

They do so because they see in their ally a shared set of values and they know they can count on them in their hour of need. In the case of NATO, those values have been the same for over 55 years – democracy, freedom, market economies and respect for the rights of the individual. Following the end of cold war, NATO did not change its values, but many more countries, like Latvia, were free to embrace those values that for so long had been repressed.

When it was clear that these values were well established in countries like Latvia and that they had the capability to meet their political and military obligations as NATO members, they were invited to join.

I mentioned before the article five commitments that are at the heart of NATO. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the only time in NATO’s history that article five has been used – following the terrorist attacks on the united states on September 11, 2001.

The people who carried out these attacks showed their opposition to the values at the core of NATO. They had even formed a government in Afghanistan that was every bit as repressive as that of the former Soviet Union. It became clear that the threats to our security would come increasingly from outside of Europe and that we needed to stop them before they reached our borders.
After a coalition of like-minded nations, including Latvia, helped to bring down the Taliban and allow the people of Afghanistan to make real choices about their future, NATO, again with Latvian participation, has been active there in securing the peace and allowing democracy and freedom to take root. The future of NATO’s role in Afghanistan will be a key topic at the Riga summit.

But NATO is also looking closer to Latvia’s neighborhood to find partners who share our values and support them as they strengthen those values. Leaders will assess whether Georgia and Ukraine have shown the commitment to our shared values to allow them to move closer to the alliance as well.

One of the exciting elements of the summit will be the young leader’s forum, which will bring together young people from around the alliance and many of our partners to talk about how they can contribute to the values and goals of NATO even though they are working as journalists, researchers, businesspeople and so on. I think you will see a lot of good ideas and positive energy coming out of that event.

You are probably asking yourself how this all relates to you and what you can do to contribute to NATO. Some of you may wish to join Latvia’s fine military – and I am sure that secretary Rinkevics would be happy to get you some information on that. But if you don’t want to go that route, you can become active in guarding the values that all of us in NATO share.
Become active on issues in your community, learn about the world around you, speak up when you disagree with something that the government does, refuse to be part of any deal or transaction that is not carried out in a fair and transparent way. And when you are old enough, vote.

NATO is known by many as a military organization and there is no question that the brave men and women in uniform from 26 countries have helped make it the most successful military alliance in history, but the real strength of NATO comes from its people who every day, in ways big and small, ensure the continuation of the set of shared values at the heart of the alliance. My charge to you is to keep those values and our shared alliance going for the next fifty years. If you do, the world will become a better, more secure place. Thank you.