The NATO Summit in Wales was a key milestone for the alliance. It has ensured our security and protected democratic values in the Euro-Atlantic Area for 65 years.
We reaffirmed the relevance of the Strategic Concept defined in Lisbon in 2010, which focuses on collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security.
As NATO shifts its missions in Afghanistan this month, it also faces a volatile environment on its eastern and southern flanks. The summit restated the necessity to invest in NATO readiness with the implementation of a Readiness Action Plan and further emphasized the need to strengthen their robustness, flexibility and mobility.
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These goals are supported by the alliance's full commitment to a dynamic transformation, based upon a robust level of operational preparedness, an optimized capability development and an enhanced responsiveness.
The Connected Forces Initiative (CFI) represents a remarkable opportunity to bring greater synergy to the efforts made by our 28 member nations in education, training and exercises. Through the implementation of CFI, NATO forces already benefited in 2014 from a program of 200 realistic exercises, and they have provided a dynamic presence in support of the reassurance measures for our Eastern allies.
See the other contributors to "2015 Outlook."
NATO's commitment to preparedness will be showcased next year, when Spain, Italy and Portugal co-host an exercise bringing together over 25,000 personnel. CFI will also bolster our NATO Response Force including a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force.
Our readiness supposes also that our forces benefit from adequate and flexible equipment in the field. As part of this preparation of our forces, Allied Command Transformation has launched an effort to look further to the future through the Framework for Future Alliance Operations, which will seek to understand the main trends of our future security environment and feed them into the NATO Defence Planning Process for the alliance's three core tasks.
The Wales Summit also gave real momentum to multinational cooperation in developing capabilities through Smart Defense, such as intelligence collection, ballistic missile defense, cyber defense and precision-guided munitions. Smart Defense establishes a foundation for a better trans-Atlantic balance.
The Wales Summit stressed the need for NATO to provide connected, prepared and interoperable forces able to cope with emerging threats. I'm confident in our success to achieve this goal thanks to the men and women who support our transformation efforts every day. They are the alliance's most important resource. They are the ones who, whenever necessary, will defend our core values, our peace and our freedom.
