Why I am – visiting HMS Iron Duke in Klaipeda

This week the UK Royal Navy ship, HMS Iron Duke, visits Klaipeda. HMS Iron Duke (the HMS stands for Her Majesty’s Ship) is taking part in NATO activity in the Baltic Sea and will be doing some training with the Lithuanian Navy. She (ships in English are female) has already visited Tallinn and Riga.

HMS Iron Duke is a very visible sign of our defence activity in Lithuania. She is in fact the largest British military ship to visit Klaipeda. The UK has a wide ranging defence presence on land, at sea and in the air in the Baltic States. We have four Royal Air Force Typhoon jets currently taking part in the NATO Baltic Air Policing Mission, for the third year in a row. We are rotating troops through the region, for example taking part in large exercises in Lithuania like Exercise ARRCADE FUSION (which ran under UK leadership) and Exercise Iron Sword. And we have a British military officer in the NATO Force Integration Unit in Lithuania.

This is a growing partnership. This year we upgraded our defence team at the British Embassy in Vilnius. We committed last autumn to contribute UK troops to deliver training and capacity building in to the three Baltic States under the TACET (Trans-Atlantic Capability Enhancement and Training) initiative. At the end of last year, Lithuania joined the Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led collaboration complementing our work in NATO. The UK will lead NATO’s new ‘spearhead’ brigade, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force in 2017, which Lithuania will also participate in. And we have a constant stream of visitors between London and Vilnius to talk about defence and security issues.

We are doing all this different activity because we have a strong and unwavering commitment to Lithuania’s security. The UK Defence Minister talked again only last month about the UK’s commitment ‘to the sovereignty of the democratic nations of Eastern Europe’.

Of course, a key element of our defence support to Lithuania is through NATO, and our commitment to collective defence and security through NATO remains as strong as ever. NATO is at the heart of the UK’s defence policy. Last November the UK Government produced a Strategic Defence and Security Review. This said ‘NATO is the strongest and most effective military alliance in the world. It has formed the bedrock of our national defence, and of stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, for almost 70 years. Our collective Article 5 commitment, that an armed attack against one state shall be considered an attack on all, underpins the security of the UK and our Allies’.

We are also playing our part in committing resources. We continue to spend 2% of GDP on defence and our defence spending commitment will ensure that the UK remains NATO’s strongest military power in Europe. The UK’s defence budget is the second largest in NATO after the US, and the largest in the EU. The choices we have made to invest in our Special Forces, cyber, Maritime Patrol Aircraft, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance aircraft and Ballistic Missile Defence show our commitment to meeting NATO’s highest priority requirements. I know that Lithuania is actively working towards meeting the 2% of GDP spend on defence target and I really welcome this.

Our leading role in NATO is about more than just defence spending. In September 2014, the UK hosted the NATO summit in Wales at a point of strategic importance for the Alliance. We set in motion the most significant strengthening of collective defence in a decade, as well as new initiatives to tackle modern security threats. In NATO, we are currently leading a renewed focus on deterrence to address current and future threats. We are working with Allies to ensure that the NATO Warsaw Summit in July this year further strengthens NATO against current threats – from the East and the South – and adapts it to combat future ones. We will focus on cyber, countering hybrid threats, deterrence including strategic communications, and agile structures and decision-making.

Britain is committed to Lithuanian security and security of the Baltic States. We are putting our resources behind this commitment. I am visiting the ship in Klaipeda to thank the crew for their work contributing to the region’s security, and to underline just how substantive that commitment is, and continues to be.