The Vote Is Won. Now the Real Work of Keeping Our Promises Begins.
Ratifying the Trilateral Defense Framework was the easy part. The commitments we've made — to the EU, to China, to each other — are only meaningful if we build the institutions, the capacity, and the culture to actually honor them.
I was in the Senate gallery on Tuesday when the vote was announced. The numbers went up on the board — 67 in favor, 12 against — and the chamber erupted, and people around me in the gallery were embracing, and more than a few were crying. I understand why. This was a real thing that happened, a consequential decision made under real pressure, and the people who made it knew what they were doing. The celebration was earned.
I want to offer, in the spirit of that seriousness, a different kind of response to the same event. The treaty is ratified. The instrument is signed. The Framework is real. Now: what does that actually require of us?
The Trilateral Defense Framework commits RONA to treat an armed attack on either partner as an attack on itself. It commits us to share intelligence. It commits us to staff and maintain a joint threat assessment center in Montpelier. It commits us to participate in quarterly ministerial councils, to coordinate our defense posture with nations whose strategic interests overlap with ours but do not perfectly coincide with ours, and to make decisions, in future crises, in consultation with partners who will have their own legitimate perspectives on what we should do. These are not theoretical obligations. They are real, and they are demanding, and most of RONA's government is not yet fully equipped to meet them.
The intelligence-sharing obligation alone requires RONA to build, within eighteen months, a certified secure compartmented information facility in Montpelier that meets both EU and Chinese standards — two sets of standards that were not designed with each other in mind and will require significant technical and diplomatic work to reconcile. The joint threat assessment center requires permanent senior staffing from RONA's Defense Ministry and intelligence services, which currently do not have the depth of personnel to sustain that commitment while also meeting their existing obligations. The Defense Ministry has quietly acknowledged, in internal communications that were described to me by two people who have read them, that it is currently short by approximately 200 qualified analysts.
None of this means the treaty was wrong. It was right, and the case for it was compelling, and I supported it publicly and stand by that support. It means that the treaty is not an endpoint. It is, as treaties always are, a commitment that has to be made real by the unglamorous institutional work that follows the signing. The senators who voted yes did something important. The civil servants, military officers, and diplomats who now have to deliver on what those senators promised will do something harder. I hope we remember them when we celebrate, as we should, the days when RONA shows what it is capable of.