Prime Minister Janša on U.S. Independence Day: We defend the values of a free democratic society

SLOVENIA, June 17 - On this occasion, he once again warmly welcomed Asel K. Roberts, the new U.S. Ambassador to Slovenia.

The Prime Minister's full address reads as follows:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Excellencies,

Dear Ambassador Asel Roberts, welcome to Slovenia.

You have chosen a festive time to arrive. We are delighted by your arrival, as much as we were by the arrival of the first U.S. Ambassador to Slovenia, who came shortly after our independence and victory in the War for Slovenia, and beat me in a tennis match within his very first month in the country.

We are celebrating the 250th birthday of the United States here at Križanke. In June 1988, thirty-eight years ago, this very venue hosted the Nova Godba festival, during which several performers openly spoke and sang in support of three political prisoners who were being held in the prison cells of the communist Yugoslav Army just a few hundred meters away on Metelkova Street.

At the time, we did not hear that support or those calls for freedom. In complete isolation, through the long days and nights of solitary confinement, we could only dream of freedom. Of freedom and of the free world. We imagined America, the United States of America, as the ideal embodiment of that free world. At the very end of those dreams of freedom, a small spark of hope flickered that one day we would win despite everything and experience both personal freedom and the freedom of the Slovenian nation. That we would live in a free and democratic society like America. That we would choose our own fate and laws and elect our own leaders, as free men of Carantania once did. That Slovenia, too, would become the home of the brave in a land of the free.

It happened sooner than we had dared to hope. In just over a week, we will commemorate the 35th anniversary of our statehood. This became possible because of the resistance of courageous compatriots who organized themselves into the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights. Because of the courage of the musicians who expressed their support here in Križanke during those hot June days. Because of the courage of the Slovenian people, which blossomed into the Slovenian Democratic Spring.

But it also happened because, beyond the Iron Curtain, beyond the Karavanke Mountains and beyond the heavily guarded borders, there existed a free world. A world that did not exist only in dreams. A world described to us by hundreds of thousands of our compatriots who found freedom and a better life in America. A world that demonstrated that people could live in freedom and, if they worked hard, prosper as well. A world where freedom of expression exists. A world where people know what is right and what is wrong. A world where you can openly criticize the government, form a political party, and freely choose among several options in elections.

Many ordinary Slovenians at the time could describe this idealized image of the free world with a single word: “America. That's how it is in America.”

For these reasons, the Fourth of July is not merely the birthday of the United States of America. It is also a day that, centuries later, profoundly shaped the modern history of the Slovenian people, as well as that of many other nations.

On this day in 1776, one of the most important documents of the modern age was adopted—the Declaration of Independence. It articulated one of the most powerful political and moral visions in history: that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.

Through it, the United States established its independence and at the same time laid the foundation for a new political order—a free democratic society—that has endured for 250 years.

Slovenians have a similar document in the May Declaration of 1989. Both the Declaration of Independence and the May Declaration are rooted in the same fundamental idea: that people have the right to decide their own future.

Both documents share the principle of popular sovereignty. They are based on the belief that legitimate authority does not derive from a center of power but from the people themselves—from their right to determine the future of their political community.

At the same time, both documents emphasize that freedom is the foundation of political order.

There is also an interesting historical parallel, one that is often cited at events such as this.

Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth, in which he marked a passage describing the Carantanian, or Carinthian, ceremony of ducal enthronement. This ancient ritual symbolically emphasized that a ruler had to demonstrate his legitimacy before the community. A free farmer would question him about justice, governance, and the protection of the land, and would then symbolically test him with a blow.

The message is clear: authority is not self-evident; it must be validated before the people.

Also, we should not forget that both countries—the United States and Slovenia—defended their right to self-determination. In both cases, the willingness to defend freedom and independence was essential to the creation of an independent state.

Slovenia and the United States are united by their membership in the community of democratic nations. Both countries believe that freedom, the rule of law, respect for human rights, and democracy are the foundations of security and prosperity.

In a time of geopolitical turbulence, it is our shared responsibility and commitment to preserve the alliance of the democracies of the Global West. That is why Slovenia and the United States are partners in NATO.

The world has changed, and NATO faces major challenges. Above all, because timely warnings issued by various American presidents over the past two decades were not adequately heeded within the Alliance’s European pillar.

After the end of the Cold War and the great enlargement, a united Europe forgot that the European Union was first and foremost conceived as a peace project. We became dependent on Russian energy, inexpensive Chinese products, the American security umbrella, and captives of anti-scientific ideologies, such as those predicting the imminent end of the world due to global warming.

Twenty-two years ago, immediately after joining NATO, Slovenia hosted a meeting of NATO defense ministers. At that meeting, a fundamental commitment was adopted: that every member state of the Alliance would devote at least 2 percent of its GDP to defense.

That commitment was subsequently reaffirmed in numerous documents and declarations. In 2012, at the NATO Summit in Chicago, it was agreed that the European members of NATO would increasingly assume responsibility for peace and security on the European continent and its surrounding regions, while the United States would focus more attention on the Pacific region.

And so it continued.

Yet even after a quarter of a century, most countries have failed to fulfill these commitments.

The consequences of our irresponsibility, of poor decisions—such as the one made in Bucharest in 2008, when concessions were made to Putin—and of weakening rather than strengthening the real power of NATO’s European pillar, enabled Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and, even before that, the creation of so-called frozen conflicts stretching from Georgia to Moldova.

Because there was insufficient strength to deter danger, we lost the peace.

Today, Europe is once again witnessing a major war—one that has already lasted longer than the First World War and whose outcome and resolution remain uncertain.

Yet despite its alarming consequences, Europe’s awakening to this harsh reality is still incomplete.

The financial costs of the war in Ukraine for Europe are significantly greater than the costs that would have been required for adequate and timely defense preparedness capable of deterring aggression in advance.

Unfortunately, Slovenia also remains far from fulfilling our shared commitments and therefore bears part of the responsibility for the consequences.

Today, the overwhelming majority of European leaders understand that responsibility for this situation lies not with the United States or its current President—who already during his first term warned in a timely manner about Europe’s military weakness and energy dependence—but with Europeans themselves.

It is true that only a few of us openly acknowledge these reasons, but that does not change the facts or the consequences of irresponsibility.

We are where we are, and the world is not as we would wish it to be; it is as it is.

We are living through a period of geopolitical turbulence—what some call a new Cold War—in which, alongside demographics, what matters most is real power, grounded in unity of purpose.

That unity of purpose, and indeed the survival of the civilization of the democracies of the Global West, depends on a shared set of values.

No alliance can endure without a common system of values.

When Slovenia joined NATO, the other member states welcomed us as a new member of a family that shares and defends the same values—the values of a free democratic society.

From the very beginning, the American vision of freedom that we commemorate today took on a distinctive expression in the famous motto, “In God We Trust.”

This motto emphasizes that freedom is not merely a political concept but also an ethical one.

For the Founding Fathers of the United States, freedom was understood not simply as liberation from external constraints, but also as the responsibility of the individual toward oneself, the community, and the state.

A person is free, but that freedom presupposes moral commitment.

Today, this is also our shared responsibility toward the alliance of the democracies of the Global West.

And despite all challenges, that alliance will prevail, because we all want the world inherited by our children to be safer and better than the one we live in today.

That responsibility will prevail for another reason as well: because Winston Churchill’s words remain true. In the middle of the last century, he said: “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”

To the American people, and to President Donald Trump, I extend my heartfelt congratulations on the 250th anniversary of the United States of America—the land of the free and the home of the brave.

God bless Slovenia, and God bless the United States of America.