As a result of all of this, for over a year now—play-by-play, accelerant after accelerant, town after town—the campaign has delivered the results we laid out and planned.

In Iraq, we’ve been helping the Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga to systematically dislodge ISIL from city after city—Ramadi, Hit, Rutbah, Fallujah, Makhmur, and Qayyarah, just to name a few. And our coalition is now [in January 2017] doing the same in Mosul—having isolated the city, the Iraqis with our help are on the verge of clearing eastern Mosul, and will then move west to clear the remaining portion of the city, right back at the Tigris. This is a complex mission that’s going to take some time to accomplish, but ISIL’s defenses are beginning to weaken and I am confident that ISIL’s days in Mosul are numbered.

In Syria, we and our local partners put an end to ISIL’s expansion and then began to systematically roll it back towards Raqqa, an important objective since it is the so-called capital of the so-called caliphate, and a hub for plotters of external attacks. After helping capable and motivated local Syrian partners defend Kobani, we and the coalition enabled them and other local forces to take Shaddadi, Tishrin Dam, Manbij, Jarabulus, Dabiq. And now [in January 2017] converging on Raqqa. As they successfully complete the isolation phase in the weeks ahead, we’re helping them generate the additional local forces that will be necessary to seize and hold that city in the weeks to follow.

In addition to taking back territory, our campaign is yielding results in denying ISIL the finances, the supplies, the freedom of movement, and the command and control it needs to survive. We’ve systematically targeted ISIL-controlled oil wells, revenue depositories, trucks for smuggling and transporting—indeed, just last month [in December 2016], in one of the largest air strikes of this particular kind to date, we destroyed 168 trucks in one strike one evening.

We’ve also deliberately focused on severing the territory ISIL controls in Syria from the territory it controls in Iraq. Leaders of the terrorist group can no longer travel now between Raqqa and Mosul without the risk of being either hunted down by our Expeditionary Targeting Force or struck from the air. And since we began accelerating our campaign, we’ve killed the majority of ISIL’s original cadre of senior leaders.

While these results in Iraq and Syria are encouraging, we must stay focused on the continued execution of this plan. The inevitable collapse of ISIL’s control over Mosul and Raqqa will certainly put ISIL on a path to a lasting defeat. But there will still be much more to do after that to make sure that, once defeated, ISIL stays defeated. The fight against ISIL will continue in Iraq and Syria. In addition, the United States and the coalition will need to continue to counter foreign fighters trying to escape and ISIL’s attempts to relocate or reinvent itself, if they survive alive from Mosul or Raqqa.

And, of course, ISIL’s lasting defeat will require the international community and the United States to stay engaged. In Iraq, we need to carry on our work to train, equip, and enable Iraqi Security Forces, including the Iraqi Army, police, border guards, counterterrorism forces, and other forces under the control of the Iraqi government, to liberate the remainder of Iraq, secure it and hold the areas cleared from ISIL even as we continue to support an inclusive and multi-sectarian, de-centralized Iraq.

And because, beyond security, there will still be towns to rebuild, services to reestablish, and communities to restore, the international community’s stabilization and governance efforts cannot be allowed to lag too far behind the military campaign. This at my judgement at this point in the campaign is my biggest concern.

As I said earlier, success in Iraq and Syria is necessary, but it’s not sufficient for dealing ISIL a lasting defeat. And that’s why we’re also focused on the other two critical objectives of our campaign, which are combatting ISIL’s metastases around the world, and helping to protect the homeland.

When it comes to combatting the metastases, we’ve taken correspondingly strong actions in support of capable and motivated forces in Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. For example, alongside our Afghan partners, we recently commenced the third offensive against ISIL in Eastern Afghanistan. In previous two operations, we and our Afghan partners killed ISIL’s top leader in the country and we also significantly degraded its capabilities and its ability to try to take root there.

Of course, destroying the ISIL cancer’s parent tumor in Iraq and Syria and defeating its metastases must also help us meet our campaign’s third objective, which is to protect the homeland. On that third objective, DoD is also working, as I said with our intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement partners both at home and abroad. For example, we’ve worked with the FBI to systematically eliminate members of an ISIL cell in Iraq and Syria that was inspiring attacks against our country, including against our armed forces. And we are continuing to prioritize ISIL’s external operations.

The campaign against ISIL and its results are another example of our military’s continued excellence and America’s continued leadership in the Middle East and in the world.

No other nation could have brought to bear the combination of resources we have, or assembled the coalition we’ve built, and led the execution of a comprehensive campaign as the United States has done. No other nation could’ve done that. We did so in pursuit of our nation’s interests—which in this case are aligned with many allies and partners who are also resolved to destroy ISIL; and we did so despite major, simultaneous, and growing military commitments in Europe and Asia, at the same time. And let me turn to them next.

Standing up to Russian Aggression, Standing with NATO Allies

First, I want to discuss Europe, where the Transatlantic Community is standing up to Russia’s provocations and aggression.

That’s a big change for many of us—Sam, me, and many other former Cold Warriors—who worked productively with Russia in the post-Cold War era. In the 1990s our two nations worked together—through the Nunn-Lugar program, and again on Kosovo, and I remember these and participated in both of them personally—with common, rather than cross, purposes.

Today, unfortunately, Russia’s aggression and provocation appears to be driven by misguided ambitions and misplaced resentment.

We see that in Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, in its counter-productive role in the ongoing tragedy in Syria, its attacks in cyberspace, its hybrid warfare, its violation of arms-control treaties and other international agreements, and its nuclear saber-rattling.

These actions are not what the world expects of a responsible state in the twenty-first century; rather, each threatens to undermine global security and erode the principled international order that has been so good not only to America, but also to Russia and the rest of the world.

Let me be clear, the United States does not, should not, seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia. We don’t seek an enemy in Russia. But we are also defending our allies, the principled international order, and the positive future it affords all of us. And we’ll counter attempts to undermine our collective security.

To do so, the United States is following a Strong and Balanced Strategy. In it, we’re addressing Russia’s actions and deterring its aggression while pursuing and preserving bilateral cooperation where U.S. and Russian objectives can be aligned. This strategy does not simply recycle the twentieth-century playbook used to deter Soviet aggression during the Cold War, because that playbook would not meet the Russian challenge or match the Russian challenge of today.

We haven’t had to prioritize deterrence on the Transatlantic Community’s eastern flank for over 20 years. And unfortunately, as I said, now we do. That’s why the United States is strengthening our military posture and presence in Europe to be more agile and quicker in responding to the threats that Russia might pose.

Our last defense budget request included significantly more funding for our European Reassurance Initiative, now renamed the European Deterrence Initiative—more than quadruple what we allocated the year before.

That’s intended to allow us—in addition to the two brigades we already have stationed in Europe—to rotate an Armored Brigade Combat Team into Europe on a persistent basis starting later this month. In fact, over the past few days, the equipment we’re deploying to support that Brigade Combat team has arrived in Germany and is on the rails as we speak [in January 2017]. ERI in 2017 will also enable us to pre-position a brigade’s worth of equipment and warfighting gear to be used by American forces flown into Europe, these among many other steps.

We’re also increasing military exercises with allies and partners to demonstrate resolve and build their resilience, while enhancing inter-operability with them.

We’re updating and refining our contingency and operational plans, including ways to overcome emerging threats such as hybrid warfare and anti-access, area-denial systems. We’re investing in the technologies most relevant to countering Russia. And we’re also recapitalizing our nuclear deterrent, because nuclear deterrence is not only the bedrock of our security, but also critical to sustain in light of Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling.