Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at Hudson on the eve of NATO’s seventy-fifth summit:
Key Insights
1. America’s actions will determine the path of the free world.
“While democracy is not perfect, the burden of self-government is certainly far lighter than the yoke of tyranny. But right now, absent American leadership, we’re looking at a future that could be well-defined by communism and tyranny, rather than liberty and opportunity and security. In Europe, Putin has made it clear that his plans don’t stop with Ukraine. He’s likened himself to Tsar Peter the Great, and you can read his essay about restoring the Russian Empire—an empire that would include our military partners in Vilnius, Helsinki, and Warsaw. Xi Jinping made abundantly clear he’s interested in expanding his communist footholds, including in the South China Sea. In the Middle East, the ayatollah wants to resurrect the caliphate and eliminate Israel.”
2. An axis of adversaries is working to undermine the United States militarily and economically.
“Today, we don’t face one primary enemy as we did in the Soviet Union, and so far, thankfully, we don’t see a new kind of Tripartite Pact. But we do see a group of nations openly aligned against the United States. It’s an interconnected web of threats. I refer to it as a China-led axis, composed of partner regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and even Cuba. Now they each have their own cultures and their own specific sinister aims, but they all wake up every morning thinking how they can take down America. And they’re increasingly using their collective military, technological, and financial resources to empower one another in their various efforts to cut off our trade routes, and steal our technology, and harm our troops, and upend our economy.”
