Vice President Joe Biden participated in a Baltic Summit in Riga, Latvia on Tuesday, where the U.S., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania reiterated a commitment to cooperating on various defense issues and said they plan to regularly meet to discuss key common security priorities including on cyber issues.
In a Joint Declaration, the four countries primarily reaffirmed their NATO alliance responsibilities to protect and defend the territories and populations of all their respective states and committed to deepening cooperation on a swath of security and defense issues tied to collective defense.
The countries highlighted national resilience is a key element of collective defense, which includes strengthening each nation’s ability to defend against hybrid and cyber threats, improving civil preparedness, and enhancing critical infrastructure protection.
“Therefore, we affirm that we must focus on aligning U.S. security assistance and deterrence measures, including the U.S. European Reassurance Initiative, and continued significant investments by the Baltic States in order to ensure that our mutual investments will effectively support NATO’s deterrence and collective defense, as well as promote national and regional security and resilience,” the four countries said in the Joint Statement.
Each of the Baltic ally states received over $30 million worth of equipment in 2015 through the European Reassurance Initiative funds. The U.S. recently also increased the amount of Foreign Military Financing it provides to the Baltic states to over $9 million each in 2016 and provides $1.2 million annually in International Military Education and Training assistance to the Baltic states, the White House said in a fact sheet.
This kind of assistance helps increase NATO interoperability and helps build resilience to traditional and nontraditional hybrid threats, the administration said.
As part of this week’s announcement, the Baltic countries reconfirmed a commitment to allocate the necessary budget amounts for defense spending.
The U.S., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also noted they plan to regularly meet to discuss a few key defense/security priorities including land, air, and maritime defense; border security; law enforcement; national resilience; and transnational threats. The goal of these discussions is to improve intra- and intergovernmental coordination to create regional-level efficiencies.
The U.S. and the Baltic states also underscored that they plan to continue to explore more regional and joint cooperation in various relevant security fields like cyber defense, energy security, and critical infrastructure protection.
“This cooperation is intended to strengthen NATO and promote regional cooperation, stability, and security. By improving our ability to address conventional and unconventional threats, including hybrid threats, our cooperation will enhance individual and collective defense and national resilience, as well as uphold our collective efforts towards a Europe whole, free, prosperous, and at peace,” the statement said.