 on welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Heather Conley. I'm Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic here at the Center, and we could not be more delighted than to welcome the Defense Minister of Latvia, Raymond de Yones, who is with us today, actually here in the United States for the week, meeting with members of the administration, Congress, and visiting our beautiful country, Michigan and Georgia, speaking with US defense officials that have been great participants in engaging with Latvian defense forces. Prior to be appointed Minister of Defense in January of 2014, what an auspicious or inauspicious moment to engage in defense issues in the Baltic region. The minister previously served as a member of the Strategic Development Commission under the auspices of the Latvian president, has also served a longstanding member of the Latvian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and served as chair of the Baltic Affairs Subcommittee, and finally was a member of the National Security Committee. Perhaps though, Minister de Yones has also both hard security and soft security, because from 2002 to 2011, Minister de Yones was the minister of environment for the Republic of Latvia. So as I said, these are critical moments to talk about transatlantic security, defense cooperation, and certainly a great deal of focus on security and defense in the Baltic Sea region. So with your applause, please join me in welcoming Minister de Yones. Good morning, everybody. It's, for me, it's a great pleasure to be here in Washington and during my visit. I have a possibility to meet also with you and just share my opinion on security issues in the Baltic region. 2014 has seen a dramatic change in the European security environment. Europe has experienced Russia's unacceptable and continuous military aggression in Ukraine, and the spread of ISIL in the Middle East. The attacks in Paris and in Copenhagen have commanded a reinforced European response to counter terrorism at its source. Latvia's history has taught us many lessons. The most important of them is that democratic values are important not only for ensuring individual freedoms, but also for protecting independence of countries. The willingness to adhere to and preserve these values was the main driving force behind our aspirations to become a partners of NATO and EU. Unfortunately, our assumptions that peace in Europe has been assured for a long time was false. With the Russian aggression in Ukraine, democratic values in Europe are threatened again, and the security situation in Europe is on the path of deterioration. Russia's aggressive policy is evolving into more unpredictable direction. In the period after September 11, we have been talking about unpredictability of the threats because of their asymmetric nature and dominance of the non-state actors. No, after the last year, February, I think the situation is even more complicated as before because we are facing a mixture of conventional and unconventional threats used by both state and non-state actors. Therefore, I want to address today several issues important for the Baltic and European security. First of them is Russia. Development in Russia is determinated by its own internal dynamics. It has been our greatest mistake that we, in this case, I mean the West, in general, measure it to Russia in accordance with our own standards. We saw Russia as we wanted to see it, not as it was in reality. Even we in the Baltics started believe in the possibility of positive developments in Russia, despite the fact that Russia's words have not corresponded to its deeds. For last five years, we have witnessed an increasing, increased military development along our borders. It was more than strange to see growing numbers of military equipment, new bases and offensive exercises and training along the border of strategic partners as it referred in the NATO Russia Founding Act. Four years ago, Russia rebuilt the former helicopter base just 15 miles from the Latvian Eastern border, placing their newest combat helicopters that are more offensive as defensive in nature. But what we failed to recognize is that Russia has been developing into state based on ideology of exclusiveness and the economy that totally depends on its raw materials, especially energy. As a result, there is a requirement to deliver military victories to the Russian public to cover economic gap. Russian aggression in Ukraine has underlined Russia's willingness to revise post-Cold War borders in Europe. It was already the second time in six years when Russia has used military force against the Soviet nation that used to be a part of the Soviet Union. This indicates that the political minds that in Russia has not changed and even if situation in Ukraine will be solved peacefully, it will likely not change this very mindset. In this light, the latest signal of nuclear threats or blackmailing are particularly worrisome. Russia's aggression in Ukraine most likely was sporadic reaction to the unexpected developments in Ukraine and fall of the pro-Russian regime. This aggression revealed some worrying things. Firstly, apparently the threshold of the use of military force for Russia is very low. Secondly, Russia miscalculated and misjudged situation on numerous occasions, starting from real support of the Russian-speaking population in Eastern Ukraine, ability of Ukrainian government and society to resist. And finally, with the unity of the EU and US positions. This leads us to the conclusion that we have to be careful making assumptions about ability of Russian leadership to assess real situation and not make misjudgments. Thirdly and probably the most worrying is the fact that the annexation of Crimea has released the fanatic nationalism in Russian society. As a result, what we see now is Russia with growing nationalism and militarism, Russia which is stuck in Ukraine. Unfortunately, I have to recognize that Russia is our long-term problem as we should not expect any changes neither in Russian internal developments nor its international behavior, even if the situation in the Eastern Ukraine freezes. Therefore, I see two biggest challenges when it comes to Russia first. How to develop our deterrents in a way that does not leave the room for misjudgment about our resolve. And secondly, how to develop and consistently implement our long-term policy towards Russia that makes into account our previous mistakes made in the relationship with it. My second point is on the Baltic region. Latvia and the Baltic states have quite difficult experience when it comes to Russia's internal developments and how it affects Russia's external behavior. We have learned that Russia can be deterred by several means. Firstly, by our own ability, resilience, and determination to fight. Secondly, by a light, especially the U.S., present on the territory of the Baltics. And thirdly, by increasing the general awareness of possible Russian actions. Only all these three components combined can constitute credible deterrent measures in our region. We are glad that the decisions taken in the wealth summit have given the needed boost to NATO and formulated the right response to the security challenge posted by Russian aggression in Ukraine. Currently, all decisions taken in wealth are well on the track and there is a lot of confidence that by the next NATO summit in Warsaw most of them will be implemented. Development of YGTF is an important initiative and at this point it serves as the main deterrence tool based on the rapid reaction capabilities. The work is underway to form the first YGTF under German leadership. Latvia and other Baltic states will contribute to this force as well. We have committed our forces as well to the UK lead YGTF in 2017. Deployment of the YGTF will be ensured by NATO force integration units or NFI use that will be developed in six eastern countries and here developments are also very promising. We have seen working very intensively since the decision on NFIU were taken this February and I hope to achieve initial operational capability already this summer and currently are planning to test NFIU in the exercise this November. Deterrence as a NATO focus should be credible and adjustable to the changing security situation. Unfortunately, the security environment since the wealth summit has not improved but to contrary it has the tendency to deteriorate. Therefore, in the mid and long term, I see the need to return to the issue of permanent presence in order to avoid miscalculations and misjudgments what I already mentioned shortly before. On our side Latvia has adjusted its defence posture to current security realities and is focusing on rising redness, responsiveness and early warning. After surviving the major financial crisis and cuts of the defence spending in 2008, we have reversed the declining defence budget trend already for the last two years. We have intensified the increase of defence budgets in June 2014 by adding mid-year supplements for fiscal year 2014 and sustaining this trend for fiscal year 2015. The increase of the defence spending is already budgeted up to 2018 in accordance with the decision of the parliament to achieve 2% benchmark by 2020. Recently, the government has also reviewed this commitment and pledged to allocate additional financial resources to reach 2% defence spending already by 2018. In line with the National Armed Forces capability development plan the professional military personnel will increase reaching 6000 in 2018. That is increased by 25% to increase the combat readiness and capabilities of our National Guard. Its force numbers will be increased and the modernisation of equipment is already under the way. Our goal is to prepare 8000 well trained guardsmen by 2018 and the development of high readiness units in the National Guard is already underway. Also, I would like to mention that from this year the training system of reserve soldiers is also being renewed in preparation underway to introduce boot camps from 2016 thus retired military personnel and National Guardsmen will go through more intensive refreshment training but number of trained personnel will be increased through reservists training in boot camps. All together, this process is going to build up a well trained and equipped military personnel of 17,000 by 2018 from approximately 10,000 current forces. Recent changes in the security environment has been taken into consideration in our operational and strategic planning aiming at the development of increased readiness and responsiveness of armed forces units. Our aim is to develop capabilities that would be suitable for both mitigating conventional and unconventional threats. Strengthening early warning system and improvements in our air defence system is one of the main priorities at the moment. My third point is about so-called hybrid warfare. After Russian invasion in Ukraine, everybody seems to be surprised by the Russian asymmetric tactics employed both in Crimea and later in the eastern Ukraine. Most regrettably such type of scenario where the state actor and in this case the nuclear power resorted to the unconventional or asymmetric means taught unprepared not only Ukrainians themselves but also NATO and the EU. The international system was not prepared to deal with such a case. Now we are again trying to jump into another extreme and making up so-called hybrid scenario as the only possible future development. I think we should avoid establishing another buzzword but rather accepting the fact that the future warfare might be composed of the combination of both conventional and asymmetric tactics employed by state and non-state actors. I have to admit that what happened in Ukraine was not totally surprised for us. In our contingency planning, we have expected that Russia most likely would resort the asymmetric means in order to make it difficult to activate Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. What was a surprise for us was the cynicism and cruelty of Russian leadership covering Russian military engagement in Ukraine. Additionally, we in Latvia have been experiencing a very precious hybrid warfare for decades and it is not new for us. Russia has been trying to prevent integration process in Latvia since the beginning to affect the minds of our people and spread disbelief in the country by increasing propaganda, financing different NGO and in many other ways. Therefore, when I have been asked about possibility of hybrid warfare in Latvia, I always respond that we have been in this warfare already long before. Since the term hybrid warfare has been dominated the news but however the concept itself is not new. These literate examples where actors have utilized a combined range of hybrid methods to achieve their goals, like in Greek mythology, the Greeks famously used a Trojan horse to outwit their opponents in the siege of Troy. In the Poly-Ponaisian war, the Athenians choose not to engage Sparta in a decisive and land battle but choose more protracted methods of resistance. If you look open Latvia's own recent history, we too will find a significant hybrid theme prior to the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940. The Soviets had been conducting shaping operations throughout the late 20s and 30s. The Latvian Soviet friendship society, for example, through the Soviet embassy in Riga, sought to build a positive image of communism and actively appealed to the left-leaning intelligentsia in Latvia. And as a matter of fact throughout the history of the 20th century, the Soviet Union used template puppet people, republics as a way towards loyal local government. The Soviets have tried to install puppet government and establish Latvian People Republic in 1919 but were defeated by Latvian forces as well as on many other occasions. The difference between then and now is that the Soviet Union used communism ideology. Now Russia use ethnic ideology as a base for puppet people republics. We have some historical experience dealing with such threats and we are ready to hand them again if such necessity will arise. Once I was asked what you are going to do if little green man appears on the streets of our towns, my response was we will shoot them. It is clear that hybrid threats can work when there is ambiguity on preparedness and lack of awareness. We try to eliminate all these factors. Even though hybrid threats are not new, we have seen actors take advantage of technological innovation and the 21st century information space to create an increasingly complex type of hybrid threats. In Ukraine we have seen Russia's doctrine of Moskirovka played out in the 21st century hybrid times. In the military space we witnessed a unique blend of conventional and irregular power. Special force units operating without insignia acted as forward instruments to disrupt Ukraine's state control, influence local actors and coordinate or even create insurgent units. In eastern Ukraine this was backed up by conventional cross-border artillery support and regular force deployment. In the informational space we saw a substantial propaganda campaign to create ambiguity in Russia's actions and generate a narrative to undermine the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. This propaganda portrays U.S. as the main reason for all the bad that happens to Ukraine and Russia. Also, the rest of Western countries are to blame for the situation according to Russian media. However, we also need to keep in mind that Russia is trying to develop good relations with countries that heavily rely on it economically. The strategic aim is, of course, to divide Europe and NATO in order to make them incapable of taking any decisions against Russia. Finally, in the cyberspace open source reports indicated a mix of cyber espionage techniques against Ukraine. Ukraine decision makers combined with attacks on Ukrainian government websites in order to disrupt Ukraine's ability to communicate with the domestic audience and further impact on Ukrainian political credibility. This evolution of hybrid threats is not, of course, limited to Europe's eastern flank but can also be seen in the source through the actions of ISIL. Whilst ISIL has seized geographic territory and fields a semi-conventional force, their roots lie in asymmetry. They are glued together by a toxic ideology which they seek to export through careful manipulation of the information environment, use terrorism and fear to control the population center that they hold. Draw from a complex criminal financing network and have shown signs of activity in the cyber realm. As regards the Western response to hybrid threats we have experienced a rather good and coordinated action by the EU and NATO, this response has underlined the natural division of labor between these two organizations. NATO has shown its capability as hard power deterrent while the EU has used its wide range of soft power instruments. Regarding the process in the EU we are trying to use our status as the presidency of the EU council as much as possible to enhance the union's response to hybrid threats. This issue has been discussed among EU defense ministers and we came to conclusion that there is a need to explore options for comprehensive EU action. We expect that the heads of states and governments in June will give a task to come up with concrete proposals by the end of this year. The most important element of the response however is to increase cooperation among member states, EU institutions with international actors, especially NATO and the US. Summing up I see that there are three main points that are important in dealing with hybrid threats. Firstly, ambiguity is a key to the success of hybrid warfare because it sets doubts and questions attribution. Secondly, awareness of the problem, awareness of vulnerabilities and problems is the only way to remove ambiguity. Thirdly, strategic communication is important as it can save the hearts and minds of our people from being conquered by our enemies long before we enter military phases of the conflict. Today we live in times that are full of challenges and unprecedented situation but nevertheless we in Latvia and Baltics are glad to be a part of the democratic and value based group of countries and together with the world's most important state actors. However, a lot needs to be done to preserve this status quo and this is, I think, exact time to put the most effort to doing so. Thank you. Mr. Minister, thank you so much. We really appreciated your comments. Why don't I have you sit over there? We'll do a little set change here. Thank you so much. They were great comprehensive remarks. What we thought we'd do is we'll do a little bit of a conversation between us and then I'll leave plenty of time for questions from our audience. As a long serving member of the Latvian parliament, can you help us understand what is the mood of the Latvian people? Is there watching this? How they're absorbing the strategic communications? Help set the scene here for us. What's the mood of the Latvian people as they're watching events unfold over the last 14, 16 months? The reality is quite scared because normally when you have parties at home, together with family members, together with friends, one of the key topics during discussions near the table is war. Will Russia attack Latvia? Will be the same situation like in Ukraine and of course it's one of the key topics of that. It is a reason why from my point as a minister of defense and minister of defense, we are trying to do the best how to prevent and deter any military, possible military aggression. And we are doing a lot. We are strengthening our armed forces. We are strengthening cooperation with our partners, especially with the U.S. And it is a reason why I'm here in Washington. But the key point of us and it's also given quite good understanding of situation is that the NATO forces are visible on our soil. I think it's one of the key points that the NATO forces must be in the Baltics. In the Baltics it gives us really strong support, not only for society, that we are not alone, but we are together with our partners, but also I think it's a strong signal to Russia that NATO members together will act according to paragraph number five if such necessity will rise. And that moves perfectly into question about sort of maintaining NATO alliance solidarity. I think all of us were struck at the Wales Summit last September. Very strong messages, very unified and very clear plans on the readiness action plan. You mentioned the very time. It wasn't so easy during the summer time before Wales Summit. That's right. You're absolutely right. There were some questions about that. But as time lengthens, as this crisis continues, what's your sense on alliance solidarity? It's difficult to see when President Putin visits in Prime Minister Orban, when Greek Prime Minister Zipras visits Moscow. We know sanctions are not fully supported. That's an important part. Speak to me about alliance solidarity. And then to move into the question of, I think our political leaders need to practice decision making in an asymmetrical hybrid warfare. Your point about a lot of the actions that we're seeing just come below the threshold. The other day we saw that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin visited Svalbard quite unannounced to the surprise of the Norwegian government. These efforts are meant to shake confidence, erode credibility. Help us understand, in some ways, both alliance solidarity and then practicing how do we make decisions in this unclear environment? Russia used already known technologies how to influence other countries. From one point, they always use economical instruments like gas, and for example, Latvia is dependent 100 on Russian gas. But in the same time, Russia used instruments, these economical instruments to divide the country's opinions in smaller groups. And it is the reason why Hungary is a little bit out of the mainstream of the countries. Greece with economical problems, Cyprus with Russian investments in banking sector, it means that try to divide opinion. And it means that if we will be divided, we will be weak, and Russia will be more stronger. But speaking about solidarity, yes, before World Summit we had a lot of discussions and we really worried about the outcome of World Summit but during the World Summit all NATO countries, all leaders of NATO countries were in one voice and we made these very important decisions. I agree, the situation is not changed, it's just a little bit freeze in Ukraine, but we see that this freeze and situation in Ukraine helps to strengthen solidarity of NATO. Because if the U.S. was the first country, and we really think to the U.S. for very quick response after annexation of Crimea and U.S. soldiers was on our soil just one year ago since last April, and no other country may be ready to send last year more soldiers to the region. No, the situation is changed and many countries on rotational base are sending troops. Norway, Germany and other countries, it means that this frozen situation strengthens the solidarity of NATO countries. Fantastic, looking ahead down the calendar we have some important dates ahead of us, certainly May 8th and May 9th. Are you concerned about any provocative actions that could be taken around both those dates, obviously the 70th anniversary? Of course we are preparing for possible provocations during the 9th of May, because the special meeting on the 70th anniversary of Victory Day will be held in Riga, and also in other places in Latvia, but we have such history, it's really difficult and sometimes quite bloody history of our country because through different wars we were involved in different armies, not voluntary, and of course we have the soldiers who were soldiers in Soviet army, who were soldiers in fascistic German army, and it's part of our history, nothing to do. But we are not so much worried about this situation because sometimes through the propaganda is trying to use Russian speaking population of our country, but I can say that the real ethnic Russians who are born and still live in our country, they are loyal to the state. We have only small part really, few more proactive pro-Moscow oriented persons who maybe are trying to provoke or are trying to make some provocations against the government, but it's just few persons. We had social survey among Russian speaking population and the results was quite surprise, like non-citizens, we have about 250,000 non-citizens, about one third of them will be ready to fight against any possible military aggression with armors on hand, and Russian speaking population more, about 50% are ready to do the same. It means that our Russian speaking population is ready also to protect our country. Fantastic. Thank you, Mr. Erwin. One last question before I turn over the audience. You mentioned about defense spending and clearly one of the outcomes of the NATO Wales summit was getting all NATO members to 2% of GDP. You said you're on track, the 2018 budget has been defined and on track, yet Estonian President Ilvis has been encouraging his Lithuanian and Latvian colleagues to do more to get there faster. Are there any plans to try to return to Parliament, seek more support for enhancing and meeting a 2% commitment before 2020? Yes, I mentioned on my speech that in the government we decided that we want to reach 2% of GDP by 2018 and we are on this track. Despite the economical situation in Latvia and in Europe we slow down and it's a little bit stagnated, but anyway, the first time in the government our main priority is security, external and internal security because we are speaking not only for strengthening our armed forces, we are speaking about strengthening our borders, strengthening policy of country. It means that we are thinking in both directions and doing. Great, thank you. I'm sure we have lots of questions from our audience. What we'll do, Mr. Minister, with your permissions we'll bundle a few of those questions. If you could please raise your hand, speak yourself and speak very clearly into that microphone. Sometimes it's a little difficult for us to pick up. I have one question here and the second question, Jill, and then the third one we'll take there. Hi, Minister, my name is Anya Grigas. I'm of Lithuanian origin and I'm a scholar of the region. I have a question to what extent you're worried about some of the not quite military action but some of the Russian engagement of the citizens, particularly I'm talking about the camps Russia hosts, the paramilitary camps for youth, like the Syus camp that was done in Kyrgyzstan last summer, and various such activities. So basically providing military training for the youth. Of course this is a very small percentage but still it's a type of activity for society. Yes, we have some small such activities but we are evaluating possible changes in our legislation. How to prevent such situations, totally avoid such situations, and this year we will make changes in the law. But normally from our side we propose to our youth other possibilities. We have youth guards under the Ministry of Defense and it's a special voluntary organization where any school children starting from 10 years to be a part of youth guards, they learn our history of army. We train them to survive in nature and of course give some military knowledge like marching during the parades or so on. It gives some small knowledge. Thank you. Jill Doherty from the Woodward Wilson Center. I was struck very much that almost everything you said depicted a situation which is very undefined hybrid threats. How Mr. Putin, you didn't use his name but I presume that's who you're referring to, assesses the situation, et cetera. I had two questions on that. You said that the leadership, it's questionable whether, if I understood it correctly, can correctly assess the situation. Do you believe that President Putin does not understand really what is going on or is it that he dissembles gives the impression that he doesn't precisely act in a premeditated way. And then the second question would be, I thought a very interesting point, how do you guarantee security without triggering a response that you might not intend? In other words, how do you actually protect yourself from these undefined threats without giving signals that are undefined that could be misinterpreted and lead to conflict? Thank you. Of course, I am sure that Putin understands what he is doing together with his partners. But here we must return back on Russian history because we must speak about centers of gravity of Russia, why they are doing so. And in history we saw a lot of examples, examples why Russia did in some way, in the same way in different times. It's Russian chauvinism, it's socialism ideas, this like Russia is the strongest country in the world and so on, it's this Russian world and so on. It means a lot of different examples. It's nothing new, they just continue the same things that they did during the Tsar time or during the Second World War or during the Socialists when also Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union. It's no changes. They want to keep their geopolitical interests in the post-Soviet territories. But we are 14, okay together with Russia, 15 independent sovereign countries and without real military aggression it's impossible to get a power in this country. It is the reason why they tried and started war in Georgia, no Ukraine. They have impact in other countries like in Moldova, Transnistria region and so on. It's a mechanism how to keep still pressure on this country. And second question was about... It's sort of escalation dominance. So as you're preparing yourself to deter hybrid threats there's a signal to Moscow that this is going to be an escalatory issue. For us, after the situation escalation in Ukraine we evaluate first of all all internal procedures how we can react on different conventional, unconventional threats including hybrid threats and of course our internal procedures for our armed forces has changed and according to this evaluation and time to time we have common exercises with our partners from Ministry of Interior with border control and so on like play scenario with green men how all will react to such situation. But in the same time the more important is that we need to establish very good early warning system because for any military case we need information from intelligence from other sources because we can proactive make decisions especially when we speak about paragraph number 5 before paragraph number 5, paragraph number 4 we can start consultations within NATO about possible changes in security in the region and it could be a decision that the YGTF for example will arrive more quicker because the situation could be escalated. Secondly, I already mentioned that we strengthen our armed forces to be ready for different situations and of course we are developing new capabilities in our army and third point is we really need visible NATO presence in the region it is a reason why in all auditories we are speaking that we need this presence not only on rotational basis of course it's very good also that different exercises is very good but in the same time we are speaking about permanent presence of NATO forces in the region because if any situation will escalate if NATO forces will be on place the reaction time always will be more quicker than according to all internal NATO procedures and it means all these three factors together make this deterrence effect against any country and I believe that if we will do the best on these three directions nobody will want to start escalation against independent country. Well Mr. Minister, thank you so much we understand you are seeing Secretary Carter on Thursday you have some other important meetings in Congress but also looking forward to the June NATO Defense Ministerial we will continue to see where there is progress on that and we are absolutely divided that a very clear Latvian voice message of commitment not only to defense spending but to deterrence it will be loudly heard. So we thank you for spending this hour with us and please join me in thanking the Minister for his time. Thank you.