Excerpts from Nieuwsuur interview with Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Nieuwsuur: What has been the highest point on your agenda?

Assistant Secretary Nuland: We were primarily planning for a very busy transatlantic year. I think you know that in the United States we’ve been calling for a transatlantic renaissance in 2014. That it’s not enough for all of us just to recover. We really need to deliver prosperity and security and values not just for our own people but also globally. So we have an opportunity this year, both with the TTIP on the economic side and with the NATO Summit in September on the security side to really reinvest in our future together. So that’s what we’re working on. . . .

Nieuwsuur: Could Europe do more?

Assistant Secretary Nuland: I think this is the conversation that we’re having together, that as a NATO Alliance in the first instance we have a self-defense mission, but we also have a global security mission. We have done a lot in the past. We rid Libya of a dictator together. All of the decade of work that we’ve done together in Afghanistan. I think if called on, if asked for support, whether it’s security training, whether it’s other kinds of support, we need to have the flexibility to do that and we also have to be invested so that we can do that. And frankly, if we do it together it’s cheaper for all of us than if we each try to do things individually.

So as we plan for our NATO Summit in September we’re very much talking about future NATO and that ability to be flexible and unified in the way we offer support to countries that need it, particularly those struggling with extremism.

Image: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland