Acting Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Charles E. Summers Jr. provided the following readout:
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan met with Latvian Minister of Defense Dr. Artis Pabriks today at the Pentagon to reaffirm the defense relationship between the United States and Latvia.
Secretary Shanahan thanked Minister Pabriks for Latvia’s support for NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence, hosting the NATO Center of Excellence for Strategic Communications and meeting NATO burden-sharing commitments.
The leaders discussed a broad range of defense issues, including efforts to improve interoperability and regional command and control measures. Secretary Shanahan and Minister Pabriks agreed to continue working on shared security goals resulting from the U.S.-Baltic Summit in 2018.
During the visit, U.S. and Latvian defense officials signed a five-year Defense Cooperation Strategic Roadmap. The roadmap identifies specific security cooperation priorities the United States and Latvia agreed to focus on from 2019 to 2024. Latvia is the second Baltic nation to sign such an agreement. Lithuania signed a similar agreement April 2, 2019.