One of the reasons NATO has endured so long — it was established in 1949 to defend western Europe from the then-Soviet Union — goes back to the work of its Parliamentary Assembly, Hutchison said.
The U.S. is the acknowledged leader of NATO in military heft and intelligence-gathering, she said. She recalled how the U.S. reoriented its defense posture during Trump’s first term, turning away from the war on Terror toward regarding China as the nation’s chief threat.
At the time, China was the biggest trading partner for some NATO members.
“That was a real wake-up call for our European allies,” Hutchison said, adding that only a united alliance of the world’s biggest economies can deter China from war.
“The only way we can really deter China from doing something adversarial is to say, ‘It’s going to be too expensive for you to do that,‘” she said.
Hosting the spring session of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly was a “coup” for Dayton, Hutchison said, setting the stage to potentially strengthen those bonds while celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian War.
NATO Parliamentary Assembly leaders were discussing ways to remember the accords, Turner recalled to the standing-room-only audience Monday.
“I said, ‘You darn well better be coming to Dayton, Ohio if you’re going to commemorate the Dayton Peace Accords,‘” said Turner, who has headed the U.S. delegation to the assembly for 14 years. “They agreed. They thought that was a pretty good idea.”
The assembly, representing members from the alliance’s 32 nations, will convene in downtown Dayton from May 23 to 26, uniting at a time when Trump, embarked on his second term, is again challenging members to contribute more to the collective defense. Some European Union leaders are pledging to spend more on their militaries. But they are also questioning the American commitment to NATO under Trump.
“From the viewpoint of the European Union, I think it’s a very strong wake-up call,” Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the European Commission, recently said.
The spring session in Dayton will be the NATO assembly’s first gathering in the United States in two decades.
“I’m really glad they’re going to see the other part of America, instead of just Washington, D.C.,” said Hutchison, a former Texas senator who served with John Glenn and Mike DeWine (among others) during her tenure. “I want people to see the middle part of our country, and the south part of the country.”
In chamber business, Beth Whelley, executive vice president of Fahlgren Mortine Public Relations, received the chamber’s Phillip L. Parker Volunteer of the Year honor.
And commercial food preparation equipment manufacturer Henny Penny received the chamber’s Soin Award for Community Impact. The employee-owned company was saluted for efforts to help Preble County and the Dayton area, and to strengthen its own employees.
“We’re on a journey to really impact people positively, starting with our employee-owners,” Rob Connelly, the Henny Penny chairman and the company’s former CEO, said in a video played for the audience. “But then it goes to the community. We want to make it a vibrant place, and we want the community to be the best it can be.”
With 2,200 members in a 14-county Southwestern Ohio area, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce is among the nation’s 25 largest chambers.
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