Gen. Christopher Cavoli
H.R. is the one in the red tie. That’s all you need to remember. Wow. Thank you very much. First of all, Alina, thank you for this honor. CEPA, thank you very much for this honor. Excellencies, generals, everybody. Thank you for being here tonight, your presence does me, does me honor. There are two people I would like to call special attention to. One is General McMaster, and the other is, I can’t see where he is, but General George Casey is in here someplace also. Those two gentlemen, at various parts during my career, interceded in an extraordinary fashion. And if it hadn’t been for that, I would not be here right now, standing on this stage. So I thank you. In fact, I was trying to get them to make a video of you guys also, but, but H.R., they said ours would be redundant, so we didn’t go with that. So I mean a Lifetime Achievement Award, I hope that’s not trying to give me some news gently, because I do have life remaining. I’ve, I’ve retired from the Army, and I’ve moved with my lovely wife to New York City, where I’m, I’m involved in a wonderful firm that builds companies that make a difference for our country and for our world, and this, to me, was an exceptionally smooth transition. After so many years in the military, to be able to go into an organization that first and foremost pursued the same values that I had been trying to pursue for so many years. So those years, though, that sense of mission, that sense of purpose that drove us to this point has been completely intertwined, in my personal case, in the transatlantic alliance. So there are many, many important facets of American security and global security, but the one that has resonated with me, and that has been so important in my life, has been the transatlantic alliance.
I am, in many ways, a child of that alliance. My, my father was born and raised in Italy, came to America after the Second War, eventually married my mother, whose parents were born and raised and married in the exact same town as my dad. Yes, all of my relatives, all four of my grandparents, come from about 50 radial meters, literally. I’m very lucky that I stand with straight eyes and not crossed eyes in front of you this evening, but my father came to America because he wanted to be American. My mom’s parents came to America because they wanted to be American, and their expression of their Americanism as my dad pursued a career as a US Army officer, the expression of their Americanism took place in the context of the NATO alliance. I was fortunate to grow up in Italy and Germany, as my father served successive tours over there, and then my own career took me there as well. So at the culmination of so many years, moving back and forth between the cultures, the history, the governments, the militaries of both sides of the Atlantic. Can you imagine how fortunate I felt to be the person in the seat at the time the greatest challenge to European and global security transpired in my lifetime? The brutal, unprovoked, illegal invasion by Russia of Ukraine defined not just the apogee of my career and the end of my career, but the most important part of European and, therefore, global security that has been in our lifetimes. Ukraine can and must prevail.
It was one of the greatest honors of my life to be the US military lead, the uniformed leader of our effort to help Ukraine. It was not always easy, but it was never as hard as a single day a Ukrainian experienced and so God bless you for your representation here this evening, ladies, thank you.
It was also a tremendous privilege and a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to be the leader of the Alliance’s operational force at the exact time the Alliance collectively understood that it was time to get back to the basics, and time to get back to the business that brought the Alliance into existence in the first place, and that is collective defense. The focus of our alliance on collective defense is a story that deserves to be told, and it’s a story that deserves to be lauded. That story is not done. There are many, many hard days ahead of us as we do the difficult political work to carve out the fiscal space to do the increases in defense spending that we’ve all agreed that we’re going to do, but we know where we’re going. We know how to do it, we have the plans, we have the agreements, and now we just have to do it. So, just as Prime Minister Johnson gave five simple things, we have one simple thing as an Alliance: just do what we agreed to do.
If we do that, and we will do that, we will fulfill our greatest responsibility, which is to secure the future and a future of peace and prosperity for our children and their children and their children, and we will do exactly that. Thank you for this honor, ladies and gentlemen.
God bless you all. God bless the United States of America. May God bless our alliance.
