Question: There’s another person here this morning who helped with that speech, Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And he’s with me now. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being here.
Secretary Blinken: It was nice being with you.
Question: Late last evening, I went to Omaha Beach myself, and I saw a note on a memorial there from the next generation, this generation, that said, “Thank you for our freedom.” Is that the case today?
Secretary Blinken: Very much so. It is a debt we cannot possibly repay to those who came here to defend freedom. And if they had not come here, if they had not shown courage, if they had not shown a common purpose in what they did, we might not be here today. We see it in the fallen men behind us. We see it in the extraordinary veterans who are here today, the veterans of the Normandy landings.
Question: Yes. D-Day helped win the World War — helped win World War II, and World War II helped bring into existence the world we live in today. Rules, order — Secretary Austin talked about that in his speech. I was able to listen to excerpts of it.
Secretary Blinken: This is correct.
Question: Now it might seem that the system is faltering, particularly as we see the war in Ukraine and now, overnight, Vladimir Putin is saying, if you arm Ukraine to attack us, we will arm your enemies to attack you.
Secretary Blinken: This order has been challenged, but this order is strong. We see it now in the extraordinary resolve of more than 50 countries, for example, who are helping to defend Ukraine, defending Ukraine against the aggression that is being carried out by Russia and Mr. Putin. We see it in solidarity not just in Europe but all over the world, including Asia – countries standing up in defense of freedom, in defense of the same rules that you mentioned that were established after World War II. And there was a purpose behind it.
After two world wars, we wanted to do everything possible to ensure that there was no third world war. And at the core of it is an international order, an understanding that one country cannot violate the territory of another by force, cannot change its borders by force, cannot occupy its land, cannot try to dominate its future. If we do not stand up for those rules in our time, we risk seeing the time we are remembering today.
Question: What’s remarkable is that what you just said has been the position of American presidents, Republican and Democrat, for decades. But what we see in Gallup polling is that most Americans – two-thirds, in fact – are not satisfied with America’s role in the world. Now, that can mean a lot of things, but one of the things it certainly means is that there is some disagreement about what we should do to maintain security.
Secretary Blinken: Well, there were differences of opinion even before World War II, and that’s nothing new. And of course the world is an incredibly dangerous place. It’s an incredibly challenging place. But we’re all the stronger in being able to face those challenges because we have a unique ability to bring other countries together. The alliance that we have today – just the NATO alliance – is stronger. It’s bigger than ever. It’s better resourced. And as I go around the world I hear that one country after another is looking to the United States, looking for engagement, looking for leadership. And that’s – that’s really our comparative advantage because our adversaries, they don’t benefit from these alliances. They have to force other countries to help them. Maybe they actually have to bribe them to help them. We have voluntary alliances.
And, Tony, in the days after World War II, there was something called enlightened self-interest. We did it – yes, partly altruism, but mostly because it was in our interest to do so. Preventing something bad from happening, meant we didn’t have to deal with something big later. Getting new allies, new partners, that benefited us.
Question: Can you just confirm and tell the American people about the use of US weapons inside Russia? I know that the rules for using our weapons by Ukraine were recently loosened by the Biden administration, and we understand that there have now been attacks on Russian territory with US weapons. Is that true?
Secretary Blinken: Look, we’ve adapted. We’ve always adapted. What the president said the other day was that as Russia was amassing its forces in Ukraine, attacking Ukraine from across the border, where Ukraine couldn’t get there without permission to use our weapons, we needed to adapt. And so our weapons, other people’s weapons, are being used in this case to attack the Russians as they’re attacking Ukraine.
Question: Madeleine Albright called America the indispensable nation. And so on a day like this, I wonder if you could complete the following sentence for me: If not for America, then for what?
Secretary Blinken: If America didn’t exist, there would be chaos, anarchy, and ultimately the things that we take for granted, the democracy that we take for granted, would be at risk. Look, this day is really special to me, Tony, because 80 years ago my father dropped out of college to join the Air Force and he was getting ready to fly. My stepfather was somewhere else. He was in a concentration camp a few hundred miles from here. And the forces that came to Normandy 80 years ago and then began the march that ultimately, 11 months later, ended World War II, liberated my stepfather from the concentration camp. That’s what America stands for, to so many people around the world.
Question: Yes. And as we were talking about earlier, we are all children of their sacrifice, this D-Day generation.
Secretary Blinken: We are, we are.
Question: Thank you very much, Secretary Blinken.
Secretary Blinken: It was nice being with you.
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