 Good afternoon, everybody. I'm delighted to welcome you for this INA webinar this afternoon, and we're particularly delighted to be joined by Mr. David Helvey, who is the Deputy Representative in Europe for the US Secretary of Defense, and also the Deputy Defense Advisor to the US Mission to NATO. He will speak to us on defending Europe, American perspectives on the Madrid summit and NATO's new strategic concept. Just a few of the rules for the webinar today. Mr. Helvey will speak for about 20 minutes and then we will proceed to question and answers with our audience. You will be able to join using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen, and please feel free to send your questions in in the course of the session as they occur to you. And we will come to them to as many as we possibly can when Mr. Helvey has finished his presentation. Just a short background to today's talk. At the NATO summit in Madrid on the 28th, 29th of June, last week, politicians and officials met in what has been the largest defense meeting since the Second World War. NATO's new strategic concept was released, and it successes the threat environment and orientates the alliance to meet the challenges posed by the present security landscape. It was a very different security document to that which was released 10 years ago. Then Russia was a partner, and China did not feature as a security threat. Now Russia is assessed as the most significant threat to allied security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. In strong terms, the concept highlights that China poses a threat to the interest security and values of the rules-based international order. The concept also deals with climate change as another threat. So the US of course is crucial to NATO and for the future of European security. And that's why it's very important for us to hear the views of Mr. Helvey today. So that allows me to formally introduce Mr. Helvey. As I mentioned, he is deputy representative in Europe for the US Secretary of Defense and also the Deputy Defense Advisor to the US Mission to NATO. He is responsible for planning, recommending, coordinating and monitoring US Department of Defense policies, programs and initiatives in Europe, as well as the formulation and presentation of the Department of Defense policies to the US Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador Tullian Smith. Before his present taking up his present post in November 2021, Mr. Helvey has had a long and distinguished career and background in Indo-Pacific security affairs. He served as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, where he was responsible for overseeing the execution of the United States defense and security policy in the Indo-Pacific region. There are a number of other details and CVs, but just let me mention he's been awarded a number of honors and as well worth mentioning the honors, including the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive, the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, and the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal. I think that's a good point to hand over Mr. Helvey to you to speak to us on this topic, which we really are anxious to hear because it affects us all. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Cross, for that very kind introduction and thank you to all of the group online for joining. And thank you in particular to the Institute for Internet, Institute of International and European Affairs for providing this forum for having this discussion. I think this is a great initiative and the timing is absolutely impeccable. You know, we've all struggled through this pandemic, but one of the things that I think stands out as a silver lining, if there is one, is our discovery in the use of tools and technology to bridge distances and enhance connection. It's physical and the virtual in a way that allows us to be in more than one place at a time. Although I do truly wish that I could be in Ireland to be able to do this type of thing in person instead of here in Brussels. I think the weather here is fine and I'm certainly pleased to be able to be with you today. This is a good opportunity, as the ambassador said, to provide an update on what's been going on here at NATO, in particular in life of the Madrid summit that we had last week, and what all of this means for US security as well as European security. There have been many adjectives used to describe this summit, but I'll use three. It was truly significant. It was truly historic and it was truly transformational. First in terms of the significance, we knew long before people started arriving in Madrid that the summit would be significant. Taking our tasking was from the last summit that we had for NATO in Brussels in 2021, where we were told that we had to develop a new strategic concept to better reflect the chain security environment and to set guidelines for the alliance going forward. That was going to be a pretty heavy lift to begin with. We saw opportunity to improve relations between NATO and the European Union with our development of a strategic concept in parallel with work that was going on in the other side of Brussels to develop the European Union's strategic compass. So again, there's real opportunity there to develop greater alignment between these two great institutions. We also took on the task of carrying forward and resourcing the ambition that was laid out for the alliance in the NATO 2030 agenda, looking both at the present and the long term implications of a whole raft of issues, whether it's emerging and disruptive technology, cyber space, energy, climate, women, peace and security, and something that's near and dear to my heart, the Indo Pacific. So no doubt we knew going into this, that this would be a pretty heavy lift to prepare for the summit. Then as we all know, February 24th happened. Major war returned to Europe in ways that many thought impossible, even up until the 23rd of February. But what we're witnessing now is the greatest challenge to the pillars of your Atlantic security that we've seen in seven decades. So again, this forum is part of the backdrop to the preparations for this summit. This crisis drove much of what the alliance had on its agenda through the fall and became truly its overarching focus. How to respond and respond to this crisis we did. We get in a unified, coherent and effective way. The first thing that we focused on was how to reinforce the Eastern flight. This was the task and the guidance that was given to us, not only by our president, but by the presidents and prime ministers and head to state and government of the alliance. We activated plans and mobilized the NATO response force for the very first time. We employed crisis response measures to give the NATO military authorities the tools and the resources that they needed to deter escalation and to defend all allies. Indeed, many of the adaptations that NATO had developed following the 2014 crisis in the seizure of Crimea and the work in the Donbass. Many of these adaptations that we created just on paper, we were able to put into practice very swiftly following the launch of this invasion. And as an alliance, like we demonstrated strength and speed to significantly enhance our posture on the Eastern flight, we expanded very quickly the number of battle groups from four to eight, and we now have a total of 170,000 forces in the east, along with 40,000 of them operating under NATO command and control today. And for the United States part. We quickly added some additional 20,000 troops to Europe, bringing to bringing our total in the European area of responsibility up to over 100,000. The president, at Madrid also made a number of significant announcements, including the permanent stationing and the fifth core headquarters in Poland. A commitment to maintain an additional rotational brigade combat team in Europe with its headquarters in Romania. And the rotational deployments in the Baltics, maintaining a truly combat credible heel to toe presence, along with our other allies and the host country forces there to ensure that we've got a strong defense forward. The president also announced he was sending additional fifth generation fighters to the United Kingdom and additional destroyers to Spain, bringing the total from four to six. Following the following the launch of the invasion allies were determined to help Ukraine defend itself as NATO as an institution NATO has been focused on speeding humanitarian assistance and other non-lethal support to Ukraine. But as allies, and on a bilateral basis, we've been providing the sorts of lethal assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That's been ensuring that the that the Ukrainian resistance has the equipment that they need to continue prosecuting the fight. The United States, for our part, since the since the start of this conflict we provided over $7 billion worth of equipment to Ukraine, which includes a whole raft of equipment, air defenses, including manned portable air defenses anti tank systems, unmanned air systems armor artillery including cannon and high Mars which is the advanced rockets, as well as essential communication equipment that's enabling the Ukrainian forces to be on a better communicate enhancing their survivability and mobility. We've also been coordinating other responses, leveraging NATO's the ability of NATO to serve as an essential forum for coordination dialogue and sharing of information on all matters related to security we use NATO as a forum to talk about how we can coordinate the imposition of invasions, which are a national function and the EU function, but we've been able to talk about how we can coordinate that to ensure that Moscow pays a steep price for its invasion. And lastly, we've also been watching very carefully China and Russia, and the growing China Russia nexus. We saw the joint statement in the lead up to the invasion where China talked about opposing NATO expansion. This was one of the first times. We also saw as being significant it demonstrates a progressively deepening strategic partnership between Russia and China, which is something that China should all be mindful of. It also demonstrates that China self described image as a guardian of sovereignty and territorial integrity rings rather hollow. And we also have witnessed China's amplification of Russian disinformation, which certainly should give all of us further cause for concern. And lastly, that was just the significant part of the Madrid summit. In terms of the historical. As the ambassador mentioned in her opening remarks, we now have a new strategic concept, which is the first strategic concept we've had since 2010. It's an important document and that reaffirms that NATO's key purpose is to ensure collected collective defense of all allies. And it reaffirms that the three core tasks of the alliance including deterrence and defense crisis prevention and cooperative security do remain the stars that we steer by as an alliance. It recognizes the role of cyber and space as domains that must feature in all of our security planning across the entire spectrum of conflict from peacetime crisis and the conflict of war time. And there's the role of hybrid warfare as, as a growing characteristic of modern combat. I mean we saw it post 2014 we see it today in Ukraine. We've seen it with Belarus. We also see it with China. We see it elsewhere and this is something that we're going to have to deal with going forward. It also describes the promise and the peril in emerging and disruptive technologies. And through the defense innovation accelerator for the North Atlantic or Diana. It seeks to put NATO on a path to continue leading in defense transformation for years to come. The strategic concept also talks about the impact of climate change on security for all of us and lays out a very ambitious agenda for human security including way of peace and security which is something that we are seeing every day in Ukraine as being absolutely essential. It's not limited to Ukraine, but this is something that's brought into our, into our living rooms every day. In contrast to 2010 when Russia was seen as a potential partner as the ambassador noted the new strategic concept captures the threat that Russia poses not only to the Euro Atlantic area and beyond. But China's ambitions and coercive policy challenge our interest security and values and this is the first time that we have included China and we've seen China as a feature in the strategic concept which means fundamentally the important thing is that this means that this is now a concern for all of the allies in NATO. As Secretary Blinken said at the close of the summit, we're not looking for conflict here, but we're trying to make sure that together we're upholding the rules based international order wherever it's being challenged. And if it's China that's challenging it one way or another and we'll stand up to that. You see we tended to look at security through different regional silos which I think this strategic concept recognizes that we now have to break down. I think all of these problems touch on all of us and their different competencies and different perspectives and different assets that countries need to bring the bear really shows that together we have to work on these because together we can prevail. Also at the summit we unfolded a new force model and a new structure which continues to drive the types of deterrence and defense adaptations that enable us to be able to respond so swiftly to the launch of the crisis and we're going to continue forward. In terms of implementing the new force posture and additional planning associates and we continue driving just to turn some defense agenda kind of going forward. The leaders in Madrid endorsed a new posture which includes the new, the eight battle groups that I mentioned before. And what this ensures is that there's a strong defense across all domains that scalable flexible and adaptable from the Baltics to the Black Sea and across the entirety of the 360 degrees of our area of responsibility. In terms of defense investment that Madrid NATO allies made the pledge to meet 2% of defense spending, which a majority now have plans to reach it by 2024 which is, which is pretty important. This is a continuation of the commitment we all made in 2014. But I would also note that most allies now see 2% as a floor, rather than ceiling, meaning a baseline target. In fact, since 2014, as the Secretary General is very proud to point out, we've seen $350 billion worth of new non US allies spending on defense. That demonstrates the commitment in capitals to really resource European security allies also agreed to increase significantly common funding which is important if we're going to be able to meet the ambitious agenda that we set for ourselves in 2030. Again, all this was truly historic, but I also mentioned that the summit was transformational, which means all of the above. And, and the fact that we also had agreement to begin the accession process for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance now Finland and Sweden are both strong democracies with highly capable militaries. And we think their membership will strengthen NATO's collective security and benefit the entire transatlantic alliance and we think of just how fundamentally transformational and this is. Sweden pride itself on 200 years of military not alive, but they had decided that given the security environment that their security is best met by joining this alliance Finland as well. Recognizing that their security and the collective security of Europe is best met by them being inside the alliance is truly transformational. And then for the first time we have participation in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the head of state and government level, which underscored the growing linkages between the transatlantic and Indo Pacific and the common states that we all have in the space international or how we can move forward and implementing a shared agenda for security. And I would note with great sadness that we lost a leader in driving those linkages with the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Abe this morning. In some, I would note that the Madrid summit was a great success. And from a US perspective, we demonstrated our unwavering commitment to the transatlantic bond and to NATO's article five commitments. The attack on one is an attack on all and it provided an opportunity to advance collective efforts with allies and partners from across Europe and across Asia to strengthen those based international order. And so with that I'll pause and I'd be happy to take some questions from from the audience here.