December 5, 2025
Transcript
Secretary Pete Hegseth Greets Swedish Minister of Defence Pål Jonson at the Pentagon
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Minister Jonson, welcome to the Pentagon, your entire team. It's great to have you, great to see many of you again. The military relationship between the US and Sweden, of course, is incredibly important. And we very much appreciate Sweden's increased leadership in defense and security issues in Europe as well as the rapid integration into NATO in just over a year. Allies, as you know, have made a historic commitment at The Hague across NATO to spend five percent on defense by 2035. And Sweden has already led the charge and responded to this call for action to increase defense spending, which is quite meaningful to us and to President Trump.
Sweden's support is vital to enabling Europe to take the primary responsibility for its conventional defense and your growing leadership in NATO. And we talked about this in the hallway and in previous meetings on force development and defense industrial production. I think it's going to be critical between our two countries.
That cooperation helps us build the strong forces, the hard power — because that's what it comes down to, hard power needed to preserve peace. So Mr. Minister, we've done a lot together. We're doing a lot together, a lot to do in the future with very little time to waste, so we're grateful to have you at the Pentagon.
Thanks for being here. And as we say again here, Merry Christmas, to you and your entire team. Welcome.
MINISTER PAL JONSON: Well, thank you so much, Secretary Hegseth, for the warm welcome. We of course met at several NATO ministerials, but it's also wonderful to have this bilateral as well. But let me start off also by expressing our condolences in regard to the targeted National Guardsmen last week shooting as well. So our sympathies are with you in this difficult time as well.
And thank you also for acknowledging all the work that we're doing in Sweden on the defense efforts as well. As you know, we have tripled our defense budget in seven years and we've doubled it in four years as well. We actually have a broad political support for that, both the bipartisanship and we also have a strong domestic support for it. Let me also thank you also for the support for helping us integrate into NATO because we really tried to hit the ground running by not coming into NATO just by consuming security, but actually producing security.
It was important for us to early on get the mechanized battalion to Latvia to get our Gripen fighter, doing the air policing over Poland, being the framework nation in Forward Land Forces Finland, having — doing — delivering security, delivering hard power and making sure that we can deter and defend every inch of allied territory.
Let me also say a few words on our bilateral cooperation as well. I think one of the cornerstones that of course this agreement that we have and that's something we want to further develop as well on the Defense Cooperation Agreement. I think it enables us to deepen our cooperation. We have also been having very good experiences with the State Partnership program as well, working with your National Guard, in your case, that's been New York that has exceeded even our expectations.
And we — this has been very rewarding for us as well. And of course, our soldiers are exercising shoulder to shoulder in a number of different exercises as well, with your Marines and many others as well. Finally, let me just say a few words also on defense industrial collaboration because I think, sir, that this is an area where we both punch above our weight.
Sweden produces platforms in all domains. Right now, we are at the stage where we need more defense. We need to scale up production. We need to transform economic clout into combat power as well. I think there's many things that our two countries can do together as well. Final point as well, we appreciate the PURL initiative.
As you know, we contributed to the two of the PURL packages. We stand ready to do more. We get it. We get that this is the moment for Europe also to shoulder a larger responsibility for its own security and also to shoulder a larger responsibility for support to Ukraine. And if we can use the PURL and use your strong defense industrial base in order to do it, we stand ready to further expand that kind of cooperation.
So once again, Mr. Secretary, great to see you. Great to see you here at the Pentagon and we look forward to our discussions. Thank you.
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Look forward to, it as well.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4350810/
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