Mr. Speaker, today marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In the post-World War II wasteland of Europe, the continent's weak democracies faced an existentialist threat from a military superpower with an expansionist Communist ideology and more battle-hardened divisions than all of western Europe combined.
In the postwar period, Louis St. Laurent and Lester B. Pearson determinedly advocated for a defensive transatlantic security organization which would ally countries with shared democratic values. In April of 1949, 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO established the principle of an expanding shield behind which nascent democracies would find security. Today, 29 countries are NATO members and 21 aspire to membership.
May NATO's defensive shield continue to expand, and in the words of Pearson, “promote the economic well-being of peoples to achieve social justice...on the side of peace and progress.”