Q&A with Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO Supreme Commander

[MikeWB]

By
Julian E. Barnes

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      Julian E. Barnes
      The Wall Street Journal
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    * BiographyJulian E. Barnes

May 3, 2016 6:49 am ET
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The Wall Street Journal sat down recently with Gen. Philip Breedlove, the top commander of U.S. and alliance forces in Europe, to discuss tensions with Russia. Gen. Breedlove will step down Tuesday as the top commander in Europe, handing the reins to Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti. Here are edited excerpts of the interview:

WSJ: When you came into this command in 2013, did the U.S. and its allies have a sufficiently skeptical view of Russia, given the tensions that developed since?

Gen. Breedlove: When I came to this job, we were really focused on what NATO was going to look like going into the future. We weren't focused on Russia because we were still in the mode of trying to make a partner out of Russia, extending that hand to Russia.

And so the things that I was most worried about coming aboard was we're coming out of Afghanistan... We've been in this counter insurgency fight for 13 or 14 years. We've gotten really pretty good at it... But what we had not done was have a focus on sort of the centerpiece of NATO, which is that Article 5 collective defense. And we decided we would build an exercise regime that would focus on large collective operations and regaining that collective defense capability. Turned out it was prescient. We weren't very far into this conversation about how we would refocus our training and our exercises when we began to see Russia exercise its military power in invading and occupying the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea then later as it went into Donbass.

WSJ: Was the military Intelligence on Russia good enough when you came in, is it good enough now?

Gen. Breedlove: Please allow me to answer but try to tell the whole story because the answer is no, it wasn't good enough then, and no, it isn't good enough now. But let's look at why we arrived at that. We have to give our nation some credit and the intel community some credit. Intel is a fixed commodity and where we had been for several decades was focused on the Middle East on Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan on terrorism, CT, etc. etc... Our nation made policy decisions to refocus that limited asset into other areas, and frankly, by doing that, we lost contact with Russia at the operational and tactical level. Our intel community rightly kept the focus on Russia at the strategical level, on the nuclear forces level, etc... But the limited assets that had once been focused during Captain Breedlove's days in Europe on the operational and tactical capabilities of Russia had been refocused away.

Now that we see that Russia has not accepted that hand of partnership but has chosen a path of belligerence, we need to readdress where we're heading... The intel community has answered ...[with a] refocusing of our analytic capabilities. And what we need to look at now is do we need a refocusing or reallocation... of the technical capabilities.

WSJ: Could there have been a way for NATO to have handled relations with Russia differently so that Moscow did not feel surrounded? Or was it inevitable that this confrontation would happen given the personalities in charge of Russia?

Gen. Breedlove: Wow, that's a tough judgment to make. I wouldn't use the word "inevitable" but I think I would use the term as "understandable." Clearly, as the Cold War ended, as the wall came down, and the Soviet Union collapsed, there was, in the Russian mind, a restructuring and a rewriting of the rules. I believe it is important to understand what the Russian view is... Russia does not accept and does not care for the way the rules were rewritten at that time when they were in a weakened position. And so Russia is not interested in breaking those rules. They're interested in rewriting them. Their every effort these days are to be seen as equal on the world's stage.

WSJ: You said before that we can't treat Russia as if it were 10 feet tall. But did NATO, the U.S., underestimated their military capabilities, was the west surprised?

Gen. Breedlove: We need to be careful not paint them as 10 feet tall because they're not, and if we overstate, then we lose credibility. But I've also said they may not be 10 feet tall but they're pretty close to 7 feet tall. Russia has proved itself to be a learning and adaptive military force. They performed pretty badly in Georgia. A very small nation gave them a very hard time when they invaded Georgia. I believe what we saw when they went into Crimea is that they had come a long way in correcting the deficiencies they saw in their abilities in Georgia.

I think that "surprise" may be a very strong word, but it was very clear to us that Russia made drastic improvements in their abilities from Georgia to Crimea that they were learning and adaptive and got even better when they went into the Donbass [region of Ukraine].

WSJ: When Putin leaves the stage as he must sometime, is it likely that who will follow is another version of Putin?

Gen. Breedlove: In my group of advisers... I think the consensus—that I fully agree with—would be somewhere along this line that no, the decision making in Moscow is not about one person, but yes, it is about one person surrounded by a very small group.

And we all agree that we will probably be dealing with this one person and some resemblance of that same small group for some time to come in the future... We are unsure that we would be in a better place if Mr. Putin was not there. He may be a more reasonable voice in the middle of that group... We have a very strong leader who is surrounded by a small group of people who make the decisions. Most of those decisions are focused on the preservation of the regime. We believe that that group will be with us for some time. Their ability to shape the Russian people's approach and understanding is pretty firm. And we're not sure that we might be in a better place if we saw a change.

WSJ: We've had a series of incidents in the Baltic Sea. How worried are you about one of these incidents escalating?

Gen. Breedlove: Let me answer a question you didn't ask first which is "How do we try to keep that from happening again in the future?" We have mechanisms first and foremost to try to preclude further incidents so that we don't run increased risk of one of these things getting out of control... I have been a part of voicing our concern that we not allow something untoward to happen because of misunderstanding, someone feeling threatened and using their right to self-defense to end up in a place we don't want to end up in.

And so, yes, we're concerned and so we need to continue to build, and we and I think you heard as a part of the NATO-Russia Council, one of the three major items that was discussed was this transparency and to try to address these things that lead to situations that could be not good. And so we want to try to take some of the models that individual nations have and try to build more of a NATO approach. And I think that will be a continuing conversation as it was in the first one of future meetings, if there are future meetings of the NATO-Russia Council.

What actions do we take? I have been clear and I think the testimony of General Scaparrotti was clear that we need to make sure they understand that these are unacceptable and that we and they need to take positive steps to preclude these in future.

http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2016/05/03/qa-with-gen-philip-breedlove-top-commander-of-u-s-and-alliance-forces-in-europe/