[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 114-87]
UNDERSTANDING AND DETERRING RUSSIA: U.S. POLICIES AND STRATEGIES
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Fourteenth Congress
WILLIAM M. ``MAC'' THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina ADAM SMITH, Washington
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JEFF MILLER, Florida ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOE WILSON, South Carolina SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
ROB BISHOP, Utah RICK LARSEN, Washington
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania JOHN GARAMENDI, California
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado Georgia
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia JACKIE SPEIER, California
DUNCAN HUNTER, California JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
JOHN FLEMING, Louisiana TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado SCOTT H. PETERS, California
CHRISTOPHER P. GIBSON, New York MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JOSEPH J. HECK, Nevada TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
MO BROOKS, Alabama DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
PAUL COOK, California MARK TAKAI, Hawaii
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma GWEN GRAHAM, Florida
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio BRAD ASHFORD, Nebraska
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama PETE AGUILAR, California
SAM GRAVES, Missouri
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California
THOMAS MacARTHUR, New Jersey
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma
Robert L. Simmons II, Staff Director
Katie Sendak, Professional Staff Member
William S. Johnson, Counsel
Britton Burkett, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California, Committee
on Armed Services.............................................. 1
Thornberry, Hon. William M. ``Mac,'' a Representative from Texas,
Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.......................... 1
WITNESSES
Farkas, Dr. Evelyn N., Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia............................. 7
Hill, Dr. Fiona, Director, Center on the United States and
Europe, The Brookings Institution.............................. 2
Stavridis, ADM James G., USN (Ret.), Dean, The Fletcher School,
Tufts University............................................... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Farkas, Dr. Evelyn N......................................... 69
Hill, Dr. Fiona.............................................. 49
Stavridis, ADM James G....................................... 78
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Ms. Bordallo................................................. 93
Mr. Garamendi................................................ 93
UNDERSTANDING AND DETERRING RUSSIA: U.S. POLICIES AND STRATEGIES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 10, 2016.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ``Mac''
Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ``MAC'' THORNBERRY, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. Committee will come to order.
Today the committee meets to hear testimony on
understanding and deterring Russia. Events just over the past
year, as Russia has consolidated its gains in Ukraine, has
intervened in Syria, has continued to take unprecedented
provocative actions against NATO's [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's] ships and planes, all point to the importance
of this topic and of making sure that we have the capability
needed to protect the country, our allies, and our interests.
That is part of the reason that the committee will again
have hearings to explore the security environment we face,
including threats and the current state of our military, before
we hear from the Secretary [of Defense] about whether the
administration's budget request answers those challenges.
But I view today not only about Russia. In many ways it
does present unique challenges, as it has the only nuclear
arsenal, which it continues to modernize, that is comparable to
ours; but other countries are also going to school on the
tactics Putin is using in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere. I
think we can expect to see more of these again and again in
other places by other actors.
So we need to understand the challenges presented by the
only nation that continues to pose an existential threat to the
United States, and we need to prepare for the wide spectrum of
national security challenges posed by Russia and by others.
Today we are grateful to have three highly qualified
witnesses to help explore these matters. But before I introduce
them I will yield to Mrs. Davis, of California, who is filling
in for Mr. Smith.
STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am happy to be
here for Mr. Smith, and we certainly welcome him back just as
soon as possible.
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing this morning.
Your expertise is a valuable resource to us on the important
topic of Russia's strategic motivations, and I look forward to
your testimony.
Russian nationalism, as we know, has fueled a foreign
policy marked by territorial aggression and expeditionary
military activities. They have used enhanced capabilities and
hybrid warfare techniques that have been instrumental in these
endeavors.
These developments are further compounded by Russia's
noncompliance with the Intermediate [Range] Nuclear Forces
Treaty and its energetic policy of discrediting the United
States, NATO, and the European Union.
So I am very interested, as is the chairman and I know all
the members here on the committee, in your thoughts on what may
be motivating Russia to be so adversarial and how the United
States and its many allies can most effectively respond to the
difficult security challenges Russia presents.
And particularly, how might the $3.42 billion which is
included in the President's request for the European
Reassurance Initiative--how might--which actually almost nearly
quadruples the prior budget request--how might that be employed
to counter Russian aggression?
Clearly the United States must take a lead role in
deterring Russia. I agree with Secretary Carter, who recently
said while we do not desire conflict of any kind with Russia,
we also cannot blind ourselves to the actions they appear to
choose to pursue. We must remain objective and clear-eyed about
Russian intent and we must be ready to contend with Russia from
a position of strength and in concert with our allies and
partners in the international community should it become
necessary.
Thank you, and I yield back.
The Chairman. As I say, we are very grateful to have three
highly qualified witnesses to help explore these issues.
I want to welcome Admiral Jim Stavridis, currently the dean
at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, but just prior, our
commander of NATO and of the European Command; Dr. Evelyn
Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia--also some experience, I
understand, over on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we
will try not to hold that too much against you; and Dr. Fiona
Hill, director of Center on United States and Europe at the
Brookings Institute, and also the author of, ``Mr. Putin:
Operative in the Kremlin,'' which a lot of people talk about.
Again, thank you all for being here. Without objection,
your full written statement will be made part of the record.
Dr. Hill, we will start with you.
STATEMENT OF DR. FIONA HILL, DIRECTOR, CENTER ON THE UNITED
STATES AND EUROPE, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. Hill. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Smith. It
is a great honor to appear here in front of the committee, and
I am very privileged to be here with such distinguished
colleagues.
I will just touch on a few highlights from my written
statement, and also offer some supplemental information to that
written text.
Mr. Chairman, as you have outlined and, Ms. Smith, as you
have also underscored, it is extremely important first of all
for us to understand the nature of Russian decisionmaking.
Russia is not the Soviet Union of the Cold War. We no
longer have a politburo or a communist party or central
planning. Russia is also not the weak military power of the
1990s and 2000.
Power in Russia today is very informal and it is rooted in
networks around President Vladimir Putin. There are no
significant checks and balances on Putin's presidential power,
and so Putin himself is one aspect of the Russian challenge.
However, waiting Putin out is not going to be a long-term
strategy for us because even if Putin were to disappear
tomorrow, the likelihood is that he would be replaced by
someone from within his inner circle. The inner circle of power
around Putin is a very tight group of the same age range, and
people whose professional and personal relationships date back
decades. Everyone around Putin shares the same convictions, so
he is not an anomaly.
I do want to touch upon for a few moments, however, about
Putin's particular style of leadership.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for mentioning my book. It is
always a great delight when somebody does something like that.
But the point of writing this book was to point out and to
underscore that Putin is a professional secret service
operative. He is very unusual among world leaders at present.
He has been trained, as he puts it, to work with people and
work with information. And this means that as president he
personalizes all of his interactions, both in Russia
domestically and in terms of foreign policy, just as he would
have done as a KGB agent, when he targeted, recruited, and
dealt with other agents and intelligence targets.
Putin has also been trained to conceal his true identity
and intentions at all times. This is what makes him
particularly difficult to deal with.
As the Russian head of state, he has a very great tactical
advantage. He always keeps his options open so he can adapt to
changing circumstances and he can continue to pursue his goals.
And he knows that if no one else knows what he wants or how he
is going to react, he can stay one step ahead of all of his
political opponents, including the United States and NATO.
In terms of his political convictions, however, Putin is a
very traditional, conservative Russian politician. And there is
a general consensus in Russia right now, deeply rooted in the
political leap since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the
current world order, including the European security order,
disadvantages Russia.
Russians see their state as one of just a tiny number of
world civilizational powers, like China and the United States,
and they believe that this means that Russia should have
special privileges internationally, especially in Europe. So
this is just to underscore that any successor to Putin, no
matter who this is, would be just as staunch a defender of what
they see as Russian interests as Vladimir Putin is.
I also now want to turn to the nature of the current
presidency under Vladimir Putin. Since the wars in both Ukraine
and Syria, Putin has transformed his presidency into what we
might call a wartime presidency. There has been a high command,
a centralized military, and political command set up inside of
Moscow, and all critical security and political issues are fed
into a small group of people around Putin there who are the
security team, what we might call the hard men of Russian
politics.
To be honest, we don't really know what happens within that
group, how deliberations take place, how information is passed
to Putin, and really who decides on what course of action. But
what we do know is that most of the people in this group share
the same operative perspective as Putin does. They come from
very similar backgrounds and, as I mentioned, they have the
same convictions.
None of these hard men of Russian politics, for the purpose
of this hearing, we should bear in mind, are actually military
men. Even the defense minister, Sergey Shoygu, who used to be
the minister of emergencies, doesn't come from the military.
The only person in this inner circle who does come from the
Russian military is Gennady Gerasimov, the chief of the general
staff, but he is a newcomer to the inner circle of Putin's
power.
Before today's wars, the turning point in our relationships
with Russia was the August 2008 war with Georgia. This was also
a turning point for Putin and his security team. It was a
decisive moment for Russia in understanding their relationship
with the West.
Moscow closely observed the reactions and political
responses of the United States and NATO and European powers to
the war, and they took the lack of U.S. and NATO military
support for Georgia and all of the disagreements about
appropriate countermeasures as a sign that they could exploit
fissures in the future. They also analyzed the performance of
their own military to decide on the course of Russian military
reform.
The key lesson of the war in Georgia in 2008 for Russia was
that no other European state was willing to engage in a similar
military adventure and to take Russia on. Since the Georgia
war, the Russian military has become a direct instrument of
policy for Putin and his inner circle. They seek to figure out
how to deploy it against opponents in foreign policy for
tactical effect. This gives Russia a great advantage, and it
also makes Moscow think that it can take a lot of risks.
So just to underscore again, Putin and his inner circles
think of the Russian military as an operational tool. They
experiment with the direct or threat of direct application of
military force, including the strategic and tactical nuclear
forces, to see what advantage they can gain.
However, I just want to point out before handing over to my
colleagues that the Russian military has several shortcomings
as an operational tool. Russia's military modernization over
the last decade has been beset by planning difficulties.
Essentially, the reform to the armed services began in 2008,
but it wasn't until 2011 when Russia began its rearmament
program and the revitalization of its defense sector.
So when the operations were launched in Crimea and then in
Ukraine in 2014, the Russian military was not quite ready for
prime time. This is one of the several reasons why the war in
the Donbass was launched as a covert operation. And it has also
been the case that the war in Ukraine has been seen by the
Russian military as more of a proving ground, as an exercise
base for the future.
And since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine, we have
seen the Russian military engaged in a series of large-scale
and snap exercises. Indeed, there are exercises going on as we
meet today. February is, in fact, the traditional exercise
season for Russia because the annual draft comes up next month
in March, which means that they will have reduced capacity as
the conscript force turns over.
So Putin's challenge currently is to figure out how to
maintain the military momentum that Russia gained in Georgia in
2008, and to keep on figuring out how to take the West, the
United States, and NATO by surprise, as they have done in
Ukraine and Syria.
One of the questions that we have to address today in the
hearing is whether Russia may be reaching the limits of its
ability to apply the military as a direct operational tool in
their future conflicts.
In Ukraine we see an effort to dampen down the conflict.
There is discussion right now about the future of negotiations
with the Minsk agreement.
Part of this is because the Russian military has found
itself squeezed as a result of international sanctions and the
economic downturn, and also by the conduct of the campaign
itself. The military budget has been squeezed by the reduced
prices from energy and the revenues in the budget, and also
because the state now has lower capacity for replacing the
armaments and material that have been expended in the war in
Ukraine.
The Western sanctions hit Russia in 2014 just as the
rearmament program was trying to reach its stride. Russia has
been denied access to critical foreign technology as well as
further revenues.
And the intervention in Syria may be more costly than
Russia basically admits at the moment, because the Syrian
government is also not paying for the weaponry that it is
receiving from the Russian government. So it is not just the
cost of Russia's own military expenditures in the war in Syria,
but also what it is also expending on behalf of the Syrian
government.
So Russia's dilemma is now one of prioritization--where to
allocate its budget and where and how to deploy its relatively
limited trained manpower. The Russian military is still
absorbing the effect of economic decline and the resources that
they have.
And for Russia and the Putin team, being at war in the
Middle East is actually unfamiliar territory. Russia's goal in
Syria is to consolidate Assad's regime to make sure that
something stays in place until there is a better arrangement
for keeping the Syrian state together.
But intervening in Syria has been a very risky proposition,
and to achieve the goal of keeping Assad in place, Putin
requires large numbers of other players, not just the United
States and European allies, to play along with Moscow at the
negotiating table, as well as trying to head off operational
setbacks, which will be inevitable on the ground in the Middle
East. At this particular point, it is not clear how hard it
will be for Russia to keep up the momentum that it has in
Syria.
Just to wrap up, with the economic downturn, Putin and his
inner circle are under considerable pressure to keep on
delivering foreign policy victories. These victories so far
have boosted the Russian public's ratings of Putin's political
performance.
We have to bear in mind that with this highly centralized
nature of Russian power, everything within the current system
depends on the maintenance of President Putin's charismatic
authority and his record as a leader. If the Russian people
lose their faith in Putin as president, then the political
system risks becoming destabilized.
Putin's ratings are still very high. They would be very
enviable in any context, but they are just a few percentage
points short of 90 percent in the most recent polls.
We have to remember that is also because of his record as
president, but it is also in large part because of the siege
mentality that we have in Russia today. Russians genuinely
believe--this is reflected in polls not just at the elite level
but at the public level--that we are out to get them in the
United States and in the West.
And although the Russian economy and the state budget have
taken a beating since 2013, it is the wars which have deflected
Russian public attention away from economic and political
demands. Putin and his team have been able to blame all of
Russia's woes on the United States and on Western actions and
sanctions.
Putin has shown he has been willing to pay a high economic
and diplomatic price as he seeks to tip regional balances of
power in Europe and the Middle East in Moscow's favor, but the
question is for how long. Can Putin keep the population
mobilized behind his presidency if things start to go badly
wrong for the military operation in Syria? You can be sure if
we are asking this question then Vladimir Putin and his team
also are.
So just to conclude, Putin's overriding strategy and his
overriding goal right now is to secure--is security for Russia
and his system and to press forward with his interests. We are
talking today about deterring Russia, but Putin and his
security team are also trying to deter us, the United States
and NATO, from intervening in any way militarily against Russia
in any of the conflicts in Ukraine or in Syria.
Putin cannot any more afford the resources for the mass
army total mobilization approach that the Soviet Union adopted
during the Cold War to defend itself. So the whole of Russia's
military modernization program is being geared towards a
combination of conventional nuclear and nonconventional
nonmilitary means, this so-called hybrid means of defense.
Putin has also, as I mentioned at the beginning, tried to
instrumentalize the idea of Russia military force to show us
that he intends to use it. This also means that he has to show
that he will use nuclear weapons under some contingency.
These are the ultimate deterrent, but they are not much use
as a deterrent if you don't believe that anyone is prepared to
use them. This is why there is so much signaling about nuclear
weapons, as I am sure we will hear from Dr. Farkas and Dr.
Stavridis.
So the goal for Putin is also to push away the United
States and NATO, not to actually exchange in any nuclear or
military exchange. This means that it is very tricky for us to
both take onboard the nature of Russian threat perceptions and
also to devise for ourselves coherent strategies and policies
for dealing with the Russian threat.
Thank you so much for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hill can be found in the
Appendix on page 49.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Farkas.
STATEMENT OF DR. EVELYN N. FARKAS, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR RUSSIA/UKRAINE/EURASIA
Dr. Farkas. Thank you very much, Chairman Thornberry,
Congresswoman Davis.
It is, indeed, an honor to appear before the sister
committee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where I
served as a professional staff member from 2000 to 2008. It is
also an extra honor to appear beside my former boss, Admiral
Stavridis, whom I hold in the highest esteem; and, of course,
one of our foremost experts on Russia, Dr. Fiona Hill.
So thank you very much.
I will get right to the point: Russia poses a geostrategic
threat to the United States and our interests. Indeed, last
week, as we all know, Secretary Carter listed it first among
the threats faced by our country.
It is unfortunate and in the 21st century to have--in this
21st century to have Russia and the United States opposed to
one another on fundamentals and most foreign policy issues. But
the reality is that the Russian government is pursuing policies
that run counter to U.S. national security interests and
values.
The Kremlin objectives are clear, and I have about five of
them that I will run through quickly: first of all, to retain
President Putin's position as the leader of the Russian
Federation, preserving the autocratic political system and
mafia-style crony economy that together comprise ``Putinism'';
second, to restore Russia's status as a great power; third, to
rewrite the international rules and norms to prevent
intervention in states to protect citizens; fourth, to maintain
political control of Russia's geographical periphery--and by
that I mean Eastern Europe and Central Asia; and, if possible,
to break NATO, the European Union, and transatlantic unity.
Now, we have seen what Russia can do with--even with its
unfinished military modernization in advancement of these
objectives. And since we can expect President Putin to be
reelected in 2018 for another 6 years, we can't wish this
problem away. We must use all elements of national power--
diplomatic, economic, informational, and military--to pressure
Russia to reverse course.
The United States must counter and resist Russia's actions
through a combination of deterrence, strengthening our allies
and partners, and communicating the truth about the Kremlin's
actions to the world. For the sake of brevity, I am just going
to focus on the military recommendations and we can talk about
the other ones--diplomatic, economic, et cetera--in the Q&A,
because obviously for this committee the focus is on the
military.
We must deter Russia from further military action. It is
very important. And I, therefore, enthusiastically applaud the
President and Secretary Carter's decision to more than
quadruple down on the European Reassurance Initiative to
establish a true deterrent to Russian military action against
NATO.
Congress should also urge the Pentagon to provide an
aviation brigade to support the armored brigade combat team.
And I can talk more about this, again, in the Q&A.
On the non-NATO periphery, Congress should continue to
support beefing up security assistance to Ukraine, Georgia, and
Moldova in particular. They need more training; they need help
with defense transparency and accountability. And we should
provide all three countries with antitank weapons, which will
provide them with the potential to deter the larger, more ready
Russian forces.
In Syria we must get our allies engaged on the battlefield
and provide equipment and other support to the Syrian
opposition. If we do also succeed in finding economic and other
leverage--and I mention some of that in the written testimony--
this could also mitigate the need for more fighting, but more
fighting is unavoidable right now.
The Defense Department should no longer do business with
Russia. This means no rockets used by the U.S. defense industry
should be Russian, and we should establish a new foreign
military assistance fund to help allies and partners throughout
Europe and Afghanistan transition from Russian to U.S. military
equipment.
We must be united with our allies and partners worldwide
and resolute towards Russian bad behavior. We need not enter a
new Cold War or an across-the-board standoff with Russia. Where
the Kremlin is open to cooperation and there are mutual
interests, of course we should work with Moscow.
But we should know that Russia will not work with us unless
the Kremlin sees it in their national security interest or we
have sufficient leverage to force a change in Putin's approach.
We need leverage to succeed in negotiations.
If we take the actions described in my testimony--and as I
mentioned, I go into more detail in the written--we will raise
the price to Putin for achieving his international objectives.
Russia will be forced to reconsider its approach.
Then perhaps the pent-up and misguided human resources of
the Russian people can be directed towards a future, and we
will have successfully managed what is currently the greatest
geostrategic threat to U.S. national security interests.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Farkas can be found in the
Appendix on page 69.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Admiral Stavridis, welcome back.
STATEMENT OF ADM JAMES G. STAVRIDIS, USN (RET.), DEAN, THE
FLETCHER SCHOOL, TUFTS UNIVERSITY
Admiral Stavridis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative
Davis. Please also pass my best wishes on to the ranking
member.
It is a pleasure to be back in front of the HASC [House
Armed Services Committee]. I have testified here many, many
times over the years, both as U.S. European Command, NATO
commander, and before that as commander of U.S. Southern
Command.
But today I am here in my personal capacity. I will kind of
draw on some of my research and work as the dean at the
Fletcher School at Tufts University, and also some work I am
doing at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
I will begin by saying that the top global challenge I see
for the United States today is, in fact, the European problem.
And that constraint is made of refugees coming in, economic
challenges, but a big portion of it is the overhang from
Russia.
And I think that for the United States our best pool of
partners are going to be the Europeans. And if they are facing
this challenge from Russia, as you have heard outlined so well
by Dr. Hill and Dr. Farkas, that has significant implications
for the United States.
There is good news about NATO. Let's face it, it is 28
nations, 50 percent of the world's GDP [gross domestic
product], and a significant defense spending, probably $900
billion in total--$600 billion from the United States, $300
billion from Europe. So there is a lot of capability in NATO
today.
But the spending is declining. Our European allies are only
spending about 1.4 percent of their GDP, well under the NATO
goal of 2 percent. And at the same time, as you have heard
outlined particularly by Dr. Farkas but as well by Dr. Hill, we
are seeing Russia doubling down on a military approach.
Russian defense spending is going up, even given the
constraints of the fall in oil prices and the general global
slowdown in the economy. Their defense spending has risen 25
percent in just the last 2 years.
Today they have about a million men and women under arms,
most of them conscripts; 2 million reserves; 270 significant
warships; thousands of military aircraft. They remain a very
significant military power who continues to improve their
forces in very specific areas.
So we need to be very cognizant of the challenges there.
And when we couple that capability on the part of Russia with
demonstrated intent to use it in Georgia, in Moldova, and, of
course, most dramatically, in Ukraine, followed by the
annexation of Crimea, something that, frankly, I could not have
imagined happening when I was the NATO commander just several
years ago.
So when you couple capability with demonstrated intent to
use it, and it is positioned alongside our greatest pool of
allies, you see the significance of this challenge.
A subset of this I think is the Russian cleverness in
approach of how they are using military force. Some have called
this hybrid warfare. It is a mix of special forces; information
warfare; cyber, an area in which Russia is demonstrating
extremely accelerated capability; and this element of surprise,
building real ambiguity into their maneuvers. Very concerning.
So when we put all of that together with the snap
exercises--and as Dr. Hill mentioned, we are going to see this
pattern repeated--and most recently--and neither of my
colleagues have mentioned this--we see significant studies
being done--I will cite one by RAND [Corporation] which just
emerged that indicates the Russian ability to sweep into the
Baltic capitals in really a matter of days--60 hours is the
number that was used. I participated in a recent war game
exploring this and I believe this is an accurate assessment.
So what should we do about it? Well, you are going to have
an opportunity, of course, to talk to my successor, General
Phil Breedlove, in the coming weeks. I am encouraged by the
increase in defense spending to focus on Europe.
As Representative Davis reminded us, this is almost
quadrupling. But let's face it, it is from a relatively low
baseline.
We have withdrawn brigade combat teams over the last few
years. We should strongly consider returning those to Europe.
And I think Dr. Farkas has hit the correct mix: Aviation, armor
is what is going to be needed.
As I look at the situation overall, I think NATO has the
long-range capability, but in the short term we face real
challenges from Russia.
So fundamentally, I think we need to continue to maintain a
posture of deterrence. We need to use sanctions and continue to
strengthen those as we look at Russian behavior.
We need to maintain our own nuclear deterrent.
Unfortunately, that is going to be part of this equation.
And I think we need to reassure our allies in Europe,
because by reassuring them we can hopefully encourage increases
in their own defense spending, which is their responsibility,
to put alongside our good work in Russia.
I will close by echoing something Dr. Farkas said, which is
we don't need to stumble backwards into a full-blown Cold War.
That is in nobody's interest. But I believe we should cooperate
where we can in places like Afghanistan, counterpiracy,
counternarcotics, counterterrorism, but we must confront where
we see the need to do so.
I think today when I look at Russian behavior broadly and
globally, to include Syria, where they are supporting a
reprehensible regime, I think we do need to confront. And that
includes significant deterrence. And the good work of this
committee, its support of the Armed Forces of the United
States, will enable us to be a strong partner in doing so.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Stavridis can be found
in the Appendix on page 78.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
There are a lot of issues one would like to pursue. I am
going to try to limit myself to just a couple that focus on our
responsibilities and how--what sort of military capability we
ought to help build to deal with the situation that the three
of you have described.
Later this week our Strategic Forces Subcommittee has a
hearing on our own nuclear deterrent.
And, Admiral, you just mentioned the importance of that as
one of the elements. Can you, and perhaps others, describe the
role of nuclear weapons in Russia's thinking and in how that
translates to what we should be focused on?
Because I think a lot of Americans don't realize that
Russia continues to modernize its nuclear stockpile; it
continues to manufacture new weapons with different
characteristics. Meanwhile, we are sitting here trying to keep
the 1980s versions working.
So the role of nuclear deterrence in this broader context
is what I am trying to understand.
Admiral Stavridis. Sir, as you know, today Russia maintains
about 1,500 strategic warheads, about 1,000 in reserve,
probably 2,000 to 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons. It is a
significant stockpile. As you indicate, it is being modernized.
The United States maintains some level to meet that, and
that mutual assured destruction philosophy will continue to
matter at the strategic level.
What concerns me in Europe, as Russian forces are not as
strong as they were during the Warsaw Pact days, you see a
potential--and we are reminded of it fairly frequently by
President Putin--of the use of nuclear weapons in matching NATO
forces. So it is the Russians who have indicated a reminder to
us. And here I think we are really looking at intermediate
nuclear range missiles as well as the tactical nuclear devices.
So I think, unfortunately, this is a significant resource
constraint, but it is necessary to modernize these in order to
meet Russian challenges.
I think Dr. Hill probably has some expertise on this, as
well.
Dr. Farkas. Well, if I can just add to that, I agree
wholeheartedly with the admiral. Obviously it is important for
us to maintain our nuclear deterrence with Russia. They
absolutely rely on their strategic nuclear forces to maintain
their status, frankly, as a global power.
But, given their conventional weakness relative to us, they
also place, unfortunately, too much emphasis on their tactical
nuclear weapons. And under President Putin, they have actually
refined their military doctrines such that they permit a
nuclear first use against a conventional attack.
So in response to a conventional attack against Russia, if
the Russian government deems it a threat to the existence of
the state, which of course is in the eye of the beholder or the
leader--if they deem it a threat to the existence of the state,
even if it is a conventional attack, they can use tactical
nuclear weapons to respond. And that is a very dangerous
development, especially given the fact that they have been
making these very loose comments, this loose nuclear rattling--
saber-rattling comments coming from the Kremlin, coming from
their ambassador in Copenhagen and elsewhere. So I think we are
quite worried about that.
And they also have a doctrine whereby they believe that
they can deter the United States and other countries from
intervening in an ongoing military operation, say against a
NATO ally or against some other country, by escalating in order
to then, they say, de-escalate. And the de-escalation would
mean if they escalate, the opponent--say the United States, we
want to come help our allies--we would say, ``Oh, this
escalatory attack coming from Russia,'' whether it is cyber,
tactical nuclear, you name it--``that is too much for us to
respond to. We don't want to escalate.'' So we de-escalate, in
essence, and let the Russians do what they would like to do.
So it is a bit complicated, and I don't--I probably went a
little bit into the weeds of the Russian doctrine. But I think
it gives you a sense of how dangerous the situation is right
now because, unfortunately, the Russians really are relying on
their tactical nuclear weapons to an extent that we find
alarming in the United States.
And the only other thing I would mention before I turn it
over to Dr. Hill is, of course, we are also watching very
closely the INF development, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces
and the fact that the Russians have violated that treaty. And
as I mention in my written testimony, I believe that the United
States needs to be prepared to deploy, unfortunately,
intermediate nuclear weapons back to Europe if the Russians do
not roll back their program.
Thank you.
Dr. Hill. Just to add to this, this is the area that we
should be paying the most attention to when we are trying to
figure out the Russian approach. As we have been making clear,
they are talking about tactical intermediate nuclear weapons
here, which is something quite different from the strategic
nuclear arsenal that we have been trying to address through the
New START [Strategic Arms Reduction] Treaty, which still seems,
actually, to be holding in place.
But it is that whole element of tactical surprise, which is
key right now to the military momentum that Putin and the team
around him have been trying to build up since the war in
Georgia in 2008. The whole point of everything that we have
seen has been to show us that the military is not just there
for show, it is there for use.
As I said in my oral remarks, it is there to be an
instrument of policy. And it is no good if people just think,
you know, you might be toying with the idea of using things.
People have to believe that you will use them under the certain
circumstances.
And this is why all of the contingencies that we have been
highlighting here have been put on the table. The team around
Putin wants us to think that Russia will, in fact, use tactical
and intermediate nuclear weapons.
This is part of the whole violation of the INF Treaty. And
we will be coming up to the anniversary of the treaty next
year, in fact--the treaty from 1987.
In many respect, Putin and the people around him want us to
go back to that mentality of 30 years ago, of believing that
the only way to engage with Russia directly is in these
military contexts. They want to be taken seriously and to be
seen as a credible threat by us and by NATO. And again,
credibility depends on making it very clear that this is not an
idle threat.
One of the biggest problems that the Russians perceived in
their engagements with the United States prior to the war in
Georgia in 2008 was that we did not take any of their threats
seriously. When they established a red line about the expansion
of NATO we didn't believe them.
In fact, in some meetings that some of us were in in the
past, we heard senior U.S. officials say things like, ``Well,
the Russians will shout and they will stomp their feet but they
won't do anything,'' because they haven't in the past. This is
in meetings that some of us in previous capacities took part
in.
The point was that they did not have the capacity to take
military action in the past under Yeltsin and, frankly, under
Gorbachev in the late period of the Soviet Union, when the
state was very much weakened. Putin wants to show that now the
Russian military has that capacity.
We didn't get the message in 2008. Now we are getting the
message.
So the whole point of this is not to engage in a nuclear
exchange, but just to make sure that we know that Russia means
business.
So we have got to actually have a different debate with
Russia now about deterrence. We have got to make it very clear
to people like Putin and those around him, who are not military
people--engaged in the past in conventional discussions, if one
can call it that, of deterrence; who are not members of the
politburo of the old Soviet military who understood how that
kind of deterrence works, that this is actually unacceptable
and that just even toying with the idea of using tactical nukes
in any kind of battlefield scenario will result in the most
dire circumstances.
So it is a very different debate that we need to be having
with Russia than we have had before.
The Chairman. Well, thank you all. I think it is a very
important issue about the lessons others draw from our actions
or inactions that applies in all sorts of places.
At some point I want to explore the hybrid warfare and what
that means for own capabilities. In the interest of time, I
will yield to the--Mrs. Davis for any questions.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And actually, that is probably an area that I wanted to go
into as well, and just having you talk more about Russia's use
of hybrid warfare, unconventional, more clever, all the--what
you had mentioned earlier. And is it true? I think part of it
is to exert influence and go as far as they can without
triggering Article 5.
So, then, where are we? And could you speak to that?
And obviously in terms of NATO and in terms of the European
Alliance it is difficult to actually draw a line in this
context, but take us a step further with it because the game
has obviously changed, as you said, that there is a real
difference in their capacity now, and yet we don't want to be
drawn into something for the sake of being drawn into something
to respond to their test. So----
Admiral Stavridis. Let me begin, if I could, with Article
5, since you brought it up. This is the fifth article of the
NATO Treaty and it says an attack on one shall be regarded as
an attack on all. It is kind of foundational to NATO.
Article 6 of the treaty actually goes on to define an
attack. It is a far less well-known article. It is really worth
getting out and reading; it is only two sentences long, but it
defines an attack as air, sea, and land upon the forces or
citizens of a NATO state.
So that would have been really clear as a definition in the
1950s, when the treaty was being constructed, implemented, and
developed. Today, with particularly cyber, it becomes
ambiguous.
So when is a cyber event a cyberattack? Is it when your
accounts are surveilled? Is it when your data is manipulated?
Is it when the data is destroyed? Is it when you have a kinetic
outcome--in other words a cyberattack that destroys your
ability to land aircraft, to move trains? When is a cyberattack
occurring?
Russia sees this ambiguity as an element in hybrid warfare,
and I think that is a good starting place for NATO is to think
about what is an attack in a Article 5, Article 6 context?
Because cyber will be big part of hybrid warfare.
A second element will be unmarked soldiers, so-called
little green men, typically moving across borders. The war game
I just completed with the Center for New American Studies here
explored that quite fully, and it is kind of special forces but
it includes this element of really taking off your military
badges so that in the information campaign alongside it, as a
state you can deny that these are your soldiers. You can say,
``These are volunteers. These are former Chechen veterans who
are on their vacation going into a nation.'' You build more
ambiguity in the little green men.
Alongside the cyber and the little green men comes the
information campaign, which I just mentioned. You deny
everything. You say, ``This is not state activity.'' We have
seen this again and again, particularly in Ukraine in the
Donbass region.
So these kind of elements strung together present a real
challenge in the NATO context exactly as you bring up,
Representative Davis----
Mrs. Davis. Yes.
Admiral Stavridis [continuing]. Because it is difficult to
make the call that we are under attack. And this potentially
could be used against Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
A final factor I will mention is the presence of Russian-
speaking minorities and a Russian doctrine that says: We will
defend Russians wherever they are; and, by the way, we will
define what a Russian is.
Mrs. Davis. Admiral, I just wonder whether you felt that
NATO would likely be much more definite about where these tests
would be responded to.
Admiral Stavridis. I think prior to Ukraine I think I would
have been more concerned. I think today, because of the way the
Russians have, if you will, revealed their hand so dramatically
in Ukraine and Crimea, I think the sensors are up in NATO.
People are really watching this.
And again, in the war game, which had a lot of European
colleagues involved, we moved very quickly to respond to this.
Dr. Farkas was at that war game as well and might like to
address it.
Dr. Farkas. Thank you very much, Admiral.
And thank you, Congresswoman.
I think the only thing I would add--I absolutely agree that
the problem with the unconventional approach is the surprise
and the ambiguity of what is an attack. I think the approach
that we have taken with our allies, in particular in the NATO
context but also with the non-NATO periphery countries, is to
try to strengthen their capacity. That is why this ERI
[European Reassurance Initiative] money is actually really
important because some of that goes to the special operations
training that we are doing with Baltic countries, again with
Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, all those periphery countries in
NATO as well as the ones outside.
If we strengthen their ability to respond, obviously that
will lower the likelihood that we will have to, as you said,
respond to a Russian attack--an unconventional attack ourselves
through NATO, that local forces can take care of it. And when I
say ``local forces'' I don't actually mean necessarily the
military forces, although our SOF [special operations forces]
folks are in there working with the military. We also need to
look at the local police, the law enforcement authorities,
national guard.
So part of the hybrid means that, unfortunately, as you
know, it is hard for us because of our authorities. We need to
be working closely with our State Department colleagues and
mixing funding, if you will, to conduct the training that is
required.
So I think strengthening the allies is really important,
and then another thing that I mentioned and the admiral
mentioned, the information campaign. We have seen now that the
State Department is setting up this new cell to address the
messaging with regard to the counterterrorism effort that we
are conducting with our allies and the need to get information
out to counter the radical Islamist ideology. Well, I would
argue that we need a similar cell like that to counter the
Russian propaganda.
So I will leave it at that and turn it over to Dr. Hill.
Dr. Hill. I will pick up on what Dr. Farkas just said about
the State Department cell. And I have to say, I am afraid, that
I don't think that that will actually do the business that we
need to be done.
I think, as we are all outlining here, that this is a very
sophisticated approach on the part of the Russian government,
and we have to be very cognizant of how broad-ranging that is.
And it again gets back to the very fact that Putin and the team
around him--and again, we have to just bear in mind that it is
not just Putin, it is a larger group of people--all have the
same outlook and perspective as operatives.
This is an unusual group of people that we are dealing with
as world leaders and the inner circle. It is very hard to find
some counterpart who is similar to this elsewhere.
And then again, they are not military people. It is the
coin of the careers has been dealing in a clandestine fashion,
and disassembling and dealing with information and
misinformation, and, you know, as Putin has always put it,
working with people to manipulate situations. So they all think
along these lines.
It is not some character flaw. It is what they have been
trained to do.
And it is incredibly all-encompassing. When Putin thinks of
an operation he doesn't just think about the military aspects
of this. As Admiral Stavridis said, it is all aspects of cyber
and it is political.
The State Department, frankly, will be run around in
circles if that is kind of the focal point of what we do, and
we don't have the capacity or the resources for this.
Russia is engaged in the information space in creating a
moral equivalency with the United States and with our allies at
all different levels. You will find from public opinion polls
across Europe as well as in Russia itself that everyone
believes that we are engaged in exactly the same activities.
Hybrid warfare is extraordinarily old. The Tsarist regime
used to engage in hybrid warfare. All the discussions of the
old game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire back
in the 19th century--these were all aspects of hybrid warfare,
of clandestine operatives, you know, running around trying to
subvert regional leaders from the Indian Empire onwards.
So everyone believes that we have been engaging in this for
some time. And in fact, what is different now is that the
Russians have said that they are going to engage the United
States and its allies in the same kind of tactics that they
believe we have been doing.
And I have to say that they firmly believe that we have
been engaging in clandestine operations in a continuous fashion
since the war in Afghanistan onwards. They don't believe that
we stepped down at all at the end of the Cold War in terms of
the kinds of operations that we have been doing. And in fact,
they took the operations that we have launched in
counterterrorism as just an affirmation that we have never
really changed our operational perspective either.
And also, with having Edward Snowden sitting in Moscow, it
is not just for the propaganda value. They believe very firmly
that we are engaged in exactly the same tactics that we are.
Putin's viewpoint is that the United States lies; it spies
on everybody; it engages in these kinds of activities. I am a
spy; of course I engage in these activities, and I don't lie.
And so the whole point of the information war is to show
that Russia and the United States are very similar and to kind
of discredit her is also in the environment. So we actually
have to counter that on multiple levels. It is an all-
encompassing political exercise.
And it also requires other leaders, our allies in the
European capitals, media, the think tank world that I belong
to, and everyone else to be very cognizant of what we are
dealing with. We all have to do our homework, both inside and
outside government, in figuring out how to contend with this.
Dr. Farkas. If I could, Mr. Chairman and Madam
Congresswoman, just to counter a little bit on the point about
the State Department can't actually compete with Russia. That
is true, but I think what I am proposing is a very important
component of the overall approach towards Russia, which
obviously in the U.S. context has to include private media,
public-private ventures, et cetera.
But I think what has been missing--and it was very
frustrating for me when I was in the government--was an ability
to share information with our allies, with our partners, and
with the world writ large, based on our excellent intelligence
sources.
We are not very good at declassifying and reclassifying
information that is not propaganda, showing pictures of what
the Russians are doing. We did it a couple of times, and
interestingly, the Open Skies Treaty was actually useful
because, unlike satellites, that is unclassified data that is
gleaned as a result of aircrafts that take pictures for the
purposes of our treaty requirements.
But in any event, I think that we can do more just by
getting some information out. That is the minimum that the
State Department could do and should do, together with the
intelligence community. But it should also be a push, not a
pull--not leaders like yourselves or executive branch members
saying, ``Declassify that,'' but actually the intelligence
community looking with the State Department, ``What should we
declassify?'' not waiting for somebody to tell them to do it.
So that is the only thing I wanted to point out there, that
it is important that we share that information.
The Chairman. Thank you all.
We are now going to have to operate under the 5-minute rule
to try to get to everybody, and I will yield to the
distinguished gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for being here today.
And I have a particular interest in what you are saying and
doing because in September 1990 I visited as a tourist to
Moscow. I was so hopeful, and I have studied Russian history
and Russian culture. I really appreciate their contributions to
the world.
But it was startling in 1990. It was like stepping back
into 1917 and it was the end of a failed socialist era of empty
stores, empty streets. But I was just so hopeful seeing the
pre-1917 architecture. It was just awesome--and then the
talented people.
But it has just been--what I was hoping for was a
partnership between the people of Russia, Europe, the United
States, for the betterment of the Russian people. But sadly, on
subsequent visits across the country with my family, we saw the
beginning of a free-market society, a modern society. But it
has evolved now, sadly, as indicated, into an autocratic
political system, a crony capitalist system of some type
benefiting the elite.
I am still hopeful for the country and the Russian people,
but what challenges we and they have.
With that in mind, I have a question for Dr. Hill and Dr.
Farkas.
And actually, Dr. Hill, you substantially already answered
the question.
But let me go to Dr. Farkas, from your point of view, which
is really interesting.
But as chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee, Russia's ongoing information propaganda operation
is of great concern. And I share the interest of the chairman.
What do you believe DOD [Department of Defense] should do to
better compete in a new sphere of hybrid warfare, and how do we
counter Russia's information propaganda operations?
Dr. Farkas. Thank you very much, Congressman Wilson.
I think I have laid out some of the components already, so
with regard to dealing with the hybrid, I think all of the
special operations training that is ongoing. And there is also
some assistance that is being provided to embassies on the
strategic communications front, so helping ministries of
defense communicate better within their society what they are
doing. And I am specifically thinking about Ukraine, where we
have been pretty active, helping our ambassador work with the
Ukrainians. So we need to do more of that.
I don't think, first and foremost, though, the strategic
communication is the Department of Defense's responsibility, so
I really do think that the State Department should take the
lead on that and DOD should be in support.
But the special operations forces have a special niche
capability with their so-called NIST [National Intelligence
Support Team] teams, these informational teams. They can help
embassies work with foreign governments.
The other thing, of course, is just in training them to be
able to see when things are happening and changing on the
ground. And there is an intel component there, so obviously the
Department of Defense's intel capabilities need to be brought
to bear on the situation.
So I think those are the main components, aside from the
ones that I already mentioned.
Admiral Stavridis. Can I just add to that mix--I think that
is a good shopping list, but it is also cyber, as I hope I
indicated. I think this is an area Russia is really moving
rapidly, along with other nations around the world, and I think
the ability to compete in that space is something we need to
emphasize as well.
Thanks.
Dr. Hill. Let me just add one small point, that there is a
very important role that our armed services can still keep
playing through professional-level exchanges with Russia.
Although we should not be doing any of the things that Dr.
Farkas warned us against in terms of some of the weaponry
issues and some of the joint ventures that we have engaged in
previously, those professional-level contacts are still of
extraordinary importance, especially for strategic
communications--it is messaging.
Because just as you said at the very beginning, we do not
believe that Russia is any kind of implacable foe or enemy.
What we have a problem with is the particular conduct and
posture of the current Russian government and the way that they
want to seek to use the military as a tool in their foreign
policy.
We have to make it very clear that there is still a
different possibility ahead of us for a different kind of
relationship, as we have already said, on many issues where we
have mutual interest. And those professional-level contacts are
very important in emphasizing that.
There is a great deal of respect for the U.S. armed
services among the Russian military, and we should capitalize
upon that when we communicate with them.
Mr. Wilson. And I have actually seen the benefit of people-
to-people, too. In my community of central South Carolina we
have a very thriving assimilating Russian-American population
who are--we have many visitors coming from Russia, and
hopefully they see the positive society we are.
Thank you. My time is up.
The Chairman. Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, to the witnesses, for your testimony today.
Admiral Stavridis, in your written statement you mention
that Russian submarine activity has risen to a level not seen
since the Cold War days. Could you elaborate on that?
Admiral Stavridis. Sure. If you look back at the Cold War,
we saw, if you will, ``The Hunt for Red October.'' We saw vast
armadas of undersea forces playing cat-and-mouse games
throughout the Arctic, through the Mediterranean, through the
Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap in particular, as well as peripheral
kinds of encounters, both under the ice and at the very bottom
of the pole, as well.
So that diminished significantly as we came out of the Cold
War. Now I would say we are back up to a level of activity that
I would say is probably 70 to 80 percent of what we saw during
Cold War times, and that implies more patrols coming closer to
the United States, more probing kinds of activities.
As you are well aware, this gets into highly classified
information quite rapidly, but I think I will close there and
say that a closed-session briefing on this might be of great
interest to the members.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you. And just again, in your testimony
you talked about, again, the change that is happening in the
landscape there in terms of military buildup, and that--I think
your term is, ``Unfortunately, we are not currently configured
to detect and respond to these types of moves in a robust and
immediate military fashion.''
Again, you talked about ground troops and air assets that
need to be boosted. Can you talk a little bit about naval
response? Again, on sea power, you know, we spend a lot of time
talking about the pivot to Asia-Pacific, and we have had some
of those briefings that you mentioned earlier. But I guess
could you talk about that configuration----
Admiral Stavridis. I can. In terms of the Russian fleet, as
I mentioned in my opening remarks, it is not a huge fleet; it
is 270-ish kind of ships. But its submarine force in particular
is extremely high-tech and extremely capable and is a real
instrument that is being used most aggressively at this point.
If we look at the building programs, what is on the waves
and what the Russians communicate to us about what they are
going to build, they are going to increase the conventional
surface force as well quite significantly.
So we are seeing robust activity, particularly in the
subsurface venue. And it is less about the platform and more
about the uses to which they are being put, which again are
much more aggressive than we have seen really in a decade.
Did you want to add something, Evelyn?
Mr. Courtney. We don't have a lot of time here, and I
just--so the lay-down that we, you know, have been looking at
for the last 10 years in terms of shifting assets to Guam and
other parts, I guess that is the question I was sort of--I
mean----
Admiral Stavridis. Got you. Sir, I would say the Pacific
pivot made some sense 2 to 3 years ago. I think at this point
we ought to be reassessing that as a theory, recognizing that
the United States is a global power and we have global
interests, of course.
But as I look at the strategic landscape of the moment, I
would say it is a good time to be reassessing whether we want
to shift a significant portion of the fleet into the Pacific.
Mr. Courtney. And lastly, the Russians have about 42
icebreakers shored up in the Arctic, and as Mr. Garamendi has
been working hard on the Coast Guard Subcommittee, you know, we
are definitely struggling to get up to speed. I was wondering
if you could just sort of comment on----
Admiral Stavridis. I can.
Mr. Courtney [continuing]. On that issue.
Admiral Stavridis. The Russians, as you know, are extremely
robust in the Arctic. They have a huge number of icebreakers.
We have a total of one operational icebreaker. China has many
more than we do.
This is something that needs to be corrected. I would
invite the committee to read into the record the article I just
wrote with General Schwartz about a solution for icebreakers.
There is no question that the high North is going to be an area
in which we need to be much better, and icebreakers have to be
part of that.
Mr. Courtney [continuing]. Dr. Farkas, I have 40 seconds
left. I don't know if you want to jump in on any of these
issues.
Dr. Farkas. I think really just to say that the submarine
force is an area that the Russians have emphasized in their
modernization, as opposed to the surface fleet. Most of their
modernization is very focused.
And the missiles are also something that--the missile
capability they have improved. And then, as the admiral
mentioned, it is what they could do. So we need to have good
situational awareness, and I think, again, the submarine fleet.
The only other thing I would add is that the Russian fleet,
of course, is also in the Pacific and our Pacific forces are
watching them closely there, as well.
Dr. Hill. And just one point, because China came up, that
Russia is not just thinking about the United States as a long-
term threat in the Arctic. For Russia, the Arctic and the Asia-
Pacific theaters--maritime theaters--are connected, and they
are literally connected physically.
And Russia is worried about Chinese, Korean, and other
incursions as the ice melts in the Arctic and shipping opens.
Because for Russia this is about their commercial fleet, not
just about their military posture in the Arctic.
So I think we have to have a very broad-ranging discussion
of the Arctic, not just from our own perspective.
The Chairman [continuing]. Thank you.
Mr. Franks.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here.
Admiral Stavridis, especially grateful to you for your
lifelong service to freedom, and appreciate you being here.
With that, I would like to direct my first question to you,
and that is, how important do you think it is for U.S. national
security concerns to cooperate to--between the U.S. government,
the United States Congress, and the Ukrainian National Security
and Defense Council? That is sort of a broad question, I know,
but----
Admiral Stavridis. It is. I have spoken and thought a great
deal about this.
I, for one, am a strong supporter of Ukraine. I think it is
an important nation; it is a big nation; and it is at play in
terms of either falling into a Russian orbit--that is obviously
the desire of President Putin--or fulfilling an opportunity for
a transatlantic relationship, a future grounded in the European
Union in economics with Europe. It is highly to the interest of
the United States that that competition move Ukraine in a
direction of the West.
Mr. Franks. Yes.
Admiral Stavridis. How can we do that the best? Through the
mechanisms as you are describing, through financial support,
and, I would argue, through carefully crafted military support
to the Ukrainian military, which I think is not destabilizing
but would in fact have a deterrent effect on Russia.
Mr. Franks. Yes. Well, couldn't agree with you more.
Let me shift gears in a completely different subject.
I was a little--``discomfited'' I suppose is an
understatement--at some of the comments of Russian General
Slipchenko here some time back and his cooperation with Iran,
and their electromagnetic pulse [EMP] ambitions and their, you
know, their military doctrine passive defense on how they would
be able to resist countries such as ours. And they mentioned
electromagnetic pulse there 22 different times.
What is your own understanding of Russia's EMP offensive
capability, and what implications does that have for us, both
directly and in their cooperation with Iran?
Admiral Stavridis. Again, without broaching into classified
information, I will confine myself to say Russia has a
significant EMP, electromagnetic pulse, capability. It could be
devastating in the United States. It is a mechanism wherein a
nuclear blast at the right level can knock out an enormous
amount of our cyber capability. Some have referred to this as
the event that causes the cyber Pearl Harbor.
This is a significant challenge for us. The fact that
Russia would even have conversations about that with Iran is
very disconcerting because this is the way a rogue nation could
use only one or two nuclear weapons to impact dramatically a
large society like the United States.
I will close on Russia and Iran by pointing out that today
we see the fulfilment of the sale of the S-300 anti-air warfare
system, highly prized by the Iranians. I think we,
unfortunately, will see nothing but further cooperation between
Russia and Iran in a variety of spheres.
Mr. Franks. Well, I obviously am glad you are on our side,
and I hope your voice is carried far and wide.
If I could shift gears, Dr. Farkas and Dr. Hill, I will
point this to both of you, related to how increasing our
assistance to European allies will affect Russia's behavior in
Syria. You know, there are a lot of folks at this point that
have thought, ``Well, with Assad being in power there is no
real chance of us dealing with anything of consequence there.''
But will Putin double down or will he begin to find his
resources growing thin? What impact can we still have there,
and especially with Russia's obvious support for the Syrian
regime?
Dr. Hill. Yes, just quickly on this, because it links into
Admiral Stavridis' response to you about Iran. Russia has not
intervened in Syria just because of us. Russia sees the order
in the Middle East as completely broken down now, the order
established since Suez in 1956, and it wants to make sure that
it has some say there because it is a whole set of interests,
including relationships with Iran, with Egypt, with Israel, and
many of the other players that we also have close relationship
with.
It also has a lot of tensions with countries like Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and now, of course, with Turkey, as a result of
the incident back in last November.
So Russia actually has a very tall order on its hands here
with the intervention. It actually needs the United States to
help it get out of what could potentially be a quagmire on the
military side into some kind of negotiation.
Its starting point is obviously to keep Assad in place in
some semblance of the Syrian state, which is what it is pushing
us towards right now. But Russia seeks a balance of power in
the Middle East that will protect its interests, as well.
So we do actually still have some leverage there as long as
we can remember that it is not all about us in the case of
Syria.
Mr. Franks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank all of you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Moulton.
Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for your wisdom and your service.
Under the leadership of the chairman I was able to visit
Ukraine and Eastern Europe a few months ago and--last year--and
I was struck by the enthusiasm that the Eastern European
countries shared at having us participate in drills. We had
tank drills going on; we were very enthusiastically positioning
aircraft; the military talked excitedly about extending our
plans to counter a Russian invasion further east with our new
NATO allies.
And to be perfectly honest, I was shocked at how little we
were doing to counter the Russian hybrid warfare threat. And it
reminded me of what it must have been like to see France
releasing excited press releases about their reinforcement to
the Maginot Line when Germany is building tanks.
And so when you look at the ERI and where we are putting
our resources, because we obviously, as we all know, live in a
resource-constrained environment, I just find it hard to
believe that we are making smart strategic decisions when we
are supporting all these tank drills at the necessary expense
of expansions in our cyber warfare, and other hybrid warfare,
and special operations, and other things like that.
So I was wondering if you could comment on that a bit and
speak specifically not just to the need to address hybrid
warfare, but at the right balance we need to strike with our
resources.
Dr. Farkas. If I could just quickly on this, I think part
of what is important to bear in mind is that the base budget
also addresses the hybrid threat. So the special operations
community--and I give General Votel a lot of credit because he
turned around very quickly and came up with a plan to address
Russia.
And I actually suggest that the committee invite him--well,
now his successor--to brief you on their plans to address the
Russia threat, because they understood very quickly what was
going on in the aftermath of Crimea and, I would say, within
the Department responded very--relatively rapidly, for the
Department. So there is money in their base budget, and in the
U.S. European Command they have turned around and they are
already doing a lot of training. So they have been doing
training in other countries, not just in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, as you noted, they are just starting.
Mr. Moulton. Right.
Dr. Farkas. But they actually have a jump ahead. They have
already been working in the Baltics and Georgia and other
places.
So I think the base budget has some money there.
It is not necessarily a question of money, because what the
special operations forces do in terms of building that
resiliency internally doesn't cost as much, frankly, as the
importance exercises that ERI funds for us to demonstrate to
the Russians that we will be ready, that we will respond as a
unified alliance if they take military action towards us.
So I think it is hard to compare the dollars because you
just need more dollars to do the conventional stuff, whereas
the unconventional stuff generally doesn't cost as much.
Mr. Moulton. Right. But if Russia is beating us on the
unconventional side then does it really matter whether we are
training three tank battalions or five? Is that really an
effective deterrent?
Dr. Hill, perhaps you could comment on that.
Dr. Hill. It is really about the way that we approach this
issue. I mean, one of the reasons that we see that Russia has
been beating us in this regard is because they have had a very
strong sense of purpose and focus.
We have made a lot of mistakes in kind of miscalculating
Russia's intent, and that is kind of something that has now
come to bite us, frankly, since the war in Georgia. We saw that
as a one-off. We were taken by surprise by Crimea.
We didn't foresee what they were going to do in Syria, not
because we didn't see them moving material and equipment in
Syria; it is because we weren't able to anticipate what they
might be doing.
As we have heard, however, that our sensors are up now in
NATO and elsewhere. And I think what we have to do overall is
posture ourselves in terms of analysis, as well. It is not just
an issue of intelligence and collecting intelligence; it is how
we think about this issue. So that is going to be a key
element.
And I have to say that DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]
has been gutted over the last several years, in terms of its
work on Russia, because people have been redeployed from what
would seem is not a priority area----
Mr. Moulton. Right.
Dr. Hill [continuing]. Onto other areas--the war on
terrorism and elsewhere, which of course have been important.
So we have to basically put resources behind our analysis
again.
Mr. Moulton. So quickly, Dr. Hill and Dr. Farkas, would you
agree with Admiral Stavridis' admonishment that we should
reexamine the pivot to Asia and to the Pacific?
Dr. Hill. We definitely need a more holistic approach. When
Putin gets up every day he thinks about the huge Russian
landmass.
He is not the head of a second-rate regional power; he is
the head of a multiregional power. And we have to look at
Russia in that context and our own global posture, as the
admiral said.
Mr. Moulton. And, Dr. Farkas, would you agree with that?
Dr. Farkas. I would just say that we need to bear in mind
now that Russia is the immediate threat. And so that probably
does have some implications for the pivot.
Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Admiral, I just gotta--what is your answer to Mr. Moulton's
question about this conventional versus hybrid? There are some
people who believe that ERI will make our allies feel better
but it is not going to have any effect at all on Putin.
Admiral Stavridis. I lean toward solutions that are cyber,
special forces, unmanned vehicles. I think what is in the cusp
between the two is a battlefield capability that is anti-armor,
anti-tank.
That kind of lethal, distributed force I think has a role
to play that kind of falls in between the two categories. But I
think a battalion, armor, heavy tanks I think is unlikely to be
the solution there.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Stefanik.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, to the witnesses, for your thoughtful
testimony.
You testified earlier that despite the severe economic
challenges that Russia faces, they have increased their defense
spending by 25 percent in the last 2 years. Meanwhile, the U.S.
has had continued discussions about defense sequestration,
which unfortunately includes significant reductions in Army end
strength.
I want to look forward. As we are approaching a transition
of administrations, what policy changes in our defense strategy
do you think are needed to adequately counter Russia's recent
changes in its national security strategy? I am particularly
interested in Army end strength, in cyber, and also--you noted
this before--reassessing the so-called pivot to Asia.
Admiral Stavridis. I will start off. I am sure my
colleagues have something to add.
You mentioned a couple of things. I am a supporter of the
recent Army future commission that has just come out, headed by
my former colleague and very good friend, General Carter Ham. I
think that is spot on and lays out the numbers, I think,
appropriately. In very round numbers, I think an Army that is
about a million is what is needed between Active, Reserve, and
Guard.
In terms of cyber, I think it is time to add significant
capability and, in fact, to examine the question of whether or
not the nation needs a cyber force. We have an Army, a Navy, an
Air Force, a Coast Guard, a Marine Corps, et cetera. I think it
is high time to think about a cyber force--small, a few
thousand, but to grow.
The analog would be the Air Force of 100 years ago, which
didn't exist. But we gradually came to understand we needed
one. I think that is a conversation that we need to be having
now.
I do think we will continue to see an emphasis on maritime
and air activity globally.
And in terms of the pivot, I want to make sure we are all
on the same sheet of music here in that the world is big and
global and complicated; there is no simple answer of, gee, we
should pivot to Asia or not. We have global responsibilities.
But what we have seen of late in Europe and in the Levant
and the near Middle East causes me to think we ought to be
reexamining a huge shift of forces to the Pacific.
Thanks.
Ms. Stefanik. Dr. Farkas.
Dr. Farkas. Well, I have gotten to where I am today
generally by agreeing with Admiral Stavridis, so I agree with
everything that he said.
And the only other thing I would point out in addition to
my earlier comment about the base budget funding also a lot of
these activities, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has this
third offset and there is a slice of money that he is
requesting also in this budget--in this upcoming--in this new
budget request, which addresses critical capabilities that we
need to develop so that we can stay ahead of our competitors,
Russia and China specifically.
And I would mention in that context that they are looking
at--and I probably can't get into it too much more, but at
cyber capabilities, cyber teams, and things like that. So there
are other elements of the budget that do address the
unconventional threat, as well.
Ms. Stefanik. Dr. Hill.
Dr. Hill. I think what we have to bear in mind, based on
all the things that we have been talking about today, that
whatever we do, we have to make sure that we have flexibility
and adaptability in any of the mechanisms. Part of our problem
is we tend to fixate on big budgets and big issues of doctrine,
and often it makes it very difficult, then, for us to change
course as circumstances change.
I mean, this is the problem of being fixated on something
like the pivot to Asia or, frankly, on, you know, thinking
solely about the war on terrorism, or thinking of things in
terms of old challenges.
Russia may be the current and present threat, and Russia
has actually never really changed its posture toward the United
States. Instead of dealing with many of the other threats that
also face Russia, frankly, the United States is not--let's be
frank about it--Russia's main threat over the longer term.
All the transnational threats that we are worried about
Russia is, too. So we have to actually move in a direction in
which we change that calculus for Russia also, so that they
change their minds about thinking of us as a threat. That
requires some pretty astute diplomacy, including by the
Pentagon, not just by the State Department and our other
interactions.
And we have to make sure that we don't get ourselves
fixated on just the nature of the threat as it is. So we need
as many flexible mechanisms as possible, and we need to really
think to ourselves about how we adapt, not pivot one way or the
other.
So we have to be very careful that whatever we do, as I
think Admiral Stavridis and Dr. Farkas are saying, not to then
fixate on Russia, the Middle East, and the Levant as well, so
to have a holistic approach and figure out how everything will
fit together.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you.
My time is about to expire. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Takai.
Mr. Takai. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Farkas, you have stated publicly that your support for
defensive legal assistance in the Ukraine was not supported
within the Department of Defense. How should the committee
assess the Department's request to increase resources to deter
Russia? Can you discuss the divergent views with the Department
and the administration on U.S. policy towards Russia?
Dr. Farkas. Thank you, Congressman, for your question.
I think, as I mentioned in my written testimony and in my
oral statement, that the countries around Russia's periphery,
they have requested lethal defensive equipment, specifically
anti-tank weapons, the Javelin system. And thus far, the
administration has not seen the need to provide this equipment
to those countries, but I believe that it would be an important
potential deterrent to Russia. And again, because it is
defensive in nature I don't believe that it would cause some
kind of escalation dynamic that would be uncontrollable and
lead to the United States getting drawn into the conflict in
Ukraine.
So I do believe strongly that we should make that system
available to those countries.
As far as the discussion about the Russia threat, I think
you are hearing a chorus of voices, starting with, as I
mentioned earlier, Secretary Carter, talking about the Russia
threat, as well as Deputy Secretary Work, who has really rolled
up his sleeves and has been actively pushing items in the
budget for a while now to address the Russia threat.
So I think you are hearing one strong voice coming out of
the Department of the Defense and the administration writ
large, but it is not the voice that matters. And in fact,
sometimes if you talk too loudly you can--your strategy can
backfire. It is more important what we do.
And that is why I talked about across the board we don't
need to get into a confrontational dynamic with Russia. And
indeed, there are places where we need to talk to Russia. And I
don't want to veer too far off your question topic, but on this
strategic and some of the more dangerous elements of our
relationship we actually have to reengage in the discussion.
Mr. Takai. Okay. So, Dr. Farkas again, what lessons has the
conflict in Ukraine taught us about our own shortfalls, and how
would you--how would providing Ukraine with defensive legal
assistance--you mentioned the Javelin--change the playing field
on the ground in eastern Ukraine?
Dr. Farkas. Well I think, Congressman, we covered a lot of
the ways that we have learned. You know, we were quite shocked,
first of all on the diplomatic front, that the Russian
government took the fact that the Ukraine was interested in
joining the European Union as such an assault on their foreign
policy and that they reacted the way that they did, that they
took the opportunity of--well, of the failed arrangement, where
the Yanukovych, the president--the former president of Ukraine
fled, and then--and they took that opportunity to go in and
seize Crimea.
I think the thing that hasn't been mentioned, or maybe not
mentioned sufficiently, is intelligence. And again, I think I
want to elaborate a little bit on what Dr. Hill said.
I found it shocking in the administration--I mean, it
wasn't shocking but it was disappointing. We have actually a
lot of very good intelligence on Russia, but we do not have
sufficient analysts; we do not have sufficient resources to get
that information processed and get it out to the policymakers
fast enough. And so I really believe that we need more analysts
on the case.
The other thing that we found was the lack of ISR
[intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance]. I mean, this
is--obviously this committee is dealing with that issue all the
time in many different contexts, but we need more ISR for the
U.S. European Command.
Every interagency meeting we were in when we talked about
what can we do, there was always this discussion of, ``Well,
what is going on?'' And, you know, the satellite capability is
one thing, but we really need to have the eyes on all the time.
And so that is an area where I do believe we need to make sure
that we have sufficient resources.
And, of course, we could provide those resources to the
Ukrainians, as well.
Mr. Takai. Okay.
Dr. Hill, is it fair to suggest that President Putin
expects that the West will turn a blind eye to Russian
aggression and continue to cooperate with Russia? And what do
our allies and partners in the region need from the United
States?
Dr. Hill. I think that President Putin certainly did think
that there was a strong possibility that we might turn a blind
eye. This was one of his lessons that he took away from
Georgia. He took the lack of a robust response to this as a
sign that we weren't really serious.
All of the questions that we are talking about today from
our own perspective are questions that are being asked in
Moscow about their own perspective, in terms of analysis and
intelligence and their posture, all against--and against
deterring us.
Putin has been seeking to exploit as many fissures as
possible between hers and our allies, and this is one area
where I have something of a slight disagreement with Dr. Farkas
about we have to be very careful when we are discussing support
for Ukraine and elsewhere about keeping unity with our European
allies. This is really a very key element about changing those
expectations that we will get back to business as usual with
Russia.
Mr. Takai. Okay.
My time is up, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Gibson.
Mr. Gibson. Well, thanks, Mr. Chairman, and also the
ranking member, for holding this important hearing.
I am encouraged by the testimony today. It matches a lot of
the analysis that myself and others have been doing here very
recently.
In fact, we are going to be introducing a bill this week
that is surrounding the land forces and the need to stop the
drawdown.
Admiral, thank you for your comments as far as ensuring
that we keep the land forces strong.
Our bill will essentially stop this drawdown, keep the land
forces about 1,000,035 for the Army in the total Army, and I
think that is really important when you compare it to what the
current plan is right now. The administration's intent is to go
to 450,000 in the Active Army, 335,000 in the Army National
Guard, and then under 200,000 in the Army Reserve, for a total
of 977,000.
Admiral, in your comments--and actually, to all the
panelists--in your comments earlier I think you are making a
strong case for deterrence and, in addition, mention about the
armored brigade and the combat aviation brigade. In Europe I
think that the current situation warrants that.
But starting with you, Admiral, I would like you to comment
on, first of all, if you have any general comments about our
efforts. It is bipartisan. We are in double figures now.
Sergeant Major Walls, I appreciate his support, and we have the
support of chairman, which is very important.
But I am interested to hear your comment even beyond
homeland defense and deterrence, the criticality from your
experience of the ability to strategically maneuver. And here I
am talking about the joint global response force that we hope
will send a message, once we fully restore it, in terms of
helping us with course of diplomacy, and then how that CONOP
[concept of operation] then develops into early-on forces,
campaign forces, if necessary command and control, sustainment,
consolidation of gains, and effective transition, which we have
struggled with over the last 15 years, and how important
keeping the land forces strong is to that particular CONOP.
Admiral Stavridis. Happy to comment on that. And, you know,
I wouldn't be doing my job as a retired admiral if I didn't say
the words ``Marine Corps'' at this point. And I know you----
Mr. Gibson. Absolutely. And that is in our bill, and----
Admiral Stavridis. Absolutely. And I think I was happy to
see their force levels remain strong in this budget that will
be submitted to the committee and the Hill.
I think the two need to fit together. And General Ham and I
have had a lot of conversations about this, and this is where
the ability to use the Marine Corps in and around that
construct of the really heavy Army piece I think is critical to
your bill. And that would be the piece of advice I would give
is that it ought to be very holistic--it sounds like it is--in
terms of integrating Marine efforts alongside the maritime and
the air that have to go with it.
Mr. Gibson. Appreciate that. In fact, just for
clarification, the United States Marine Corps and Marine Corps
Reserve are both contained inside this bill to stop the
drawdown.
Fully agree. In fact, my experience being an infantry
commander, spent a lot of time with Marines, particularly in
northern Iraq as we were on a flank with each other at Nineveh
and Anbar Province.
So, and then for the other panelists for comments on this?
Dr. Farkas. Just very quickly if I could, and then I will
turn it over to Dr. Hill, the--on the Marine Corps it is an
excellent point that the admiral makes. The Department of
Defense has relied heavily on the Black Sea Rotational Force in
that area, the periphery area, and the NATO Balkan countries to
provide important readiness training and also preparation for
the Georgian forces to deploy with us to Afghanistan where, as
you know, they are the number two troop contributor. So I do
think the Marine Corps is an important component.
And as I mentioned in my written statement, aside from
mentioning the aviation brigade, I also think that we really
need to keep an eye on readiness and end strength so that we
don't end up having a hollow force because we are stretching
the Army too thin.
Dr. Hill. Just one very small point, which picks up on the
truncated response to Congressman Takai, as well. It is very
important, as Dr. Farkas has said, to keep our allies in mind
here, and to also make sure that whatever we are doing is also
complemented by our military interactions with them, as well,
because part of the deterrent effect will be us working in
lockstep, as we have in the past, with our NATO allies and
other partners.
And all of this interoperability, maneuverability of the
forces overall is extremely important, as I think Admiral
Stavridis has been making clear, as well.
Mr. Gibson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Some have attributed the increase in hybrid warfare across
the globe to the inability of the West, specifically the U.S.
and Europe, to find a way to integrate Russia and other rising
powers, the BRIC nations, for instance--Brazil, India, and
China, and Russia--the inability to find a way of integrating
those rising powers into the international order. I am
thinking--well, with that in mind, the extent to which
countries like Russia are using grey zone campaigns to grab
more influence and shift the terms of regional orders is not
really surprising.
Do you have any suggestions as to how we can provide a more
shared sense of ownership and a greater stake in the
international order or system so that rising powers will be
inclined to shape international politics without resorting to
grey zone aggression?
Admiral Stavridis. I think that is a very interesting
question, and I think its premise is roughly right, which is to
say that part of why there is an increase in grey zone activity
or hybrid warfare, or here I would really, Congressman, use the
term ``asymmetric warfare,'' is partly--of exclusion from
normal mechanisms. It is also, however, attributable to
technology.
In other words, tools are available in cyber, in social
networks, in information, that allow smaller, less-advantaged
groups to engage in these kind of activities. So it is a
combination of the two things.
It is interesting you mention the BRICs because I think
these are extraordinarily different cases. Brazil is a mega-
power which I do not think feels excluded from the
international order but suffers from a great deal of internal
challenges economically. With Brazil I think the prescription
is to engage them fully using economic leverage to pull them
into the global system.
India I think represents our best potential partner going
forward in this century. I think a U.S.-Indian relationship is
one that will be critically important, and here we have to
listen, pay more attention, have more exercises, more
engagement with our Indian colleagues.
I think we are actually managing the rise of China
reasonably well. And you see China engaging in relatively
responsible ways in the international order.
It is really Russia that is the outlier here.
And I do want to pick up on your point, which is to say
that all the things we have talked about today, which are
confrontational with Russia, must include a component of
collaboration, of dialogue. We can't afford to stumble backward
into a Cold War.
We should cooperate where we can. We should confront where
we must. And I think if we use that combination of deterrence,
hard power, and soft power tools, that is our best bet at
precluding a future of truly open conflict with Russia.
It is a very good question. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Dr. Farkas.
Dr. Farkas. Thank you for the excellent question, actually.
I mean, I think one answer is, of course, to be more
inclusive, perhaps, in the institutional context, so I am
thinking of U.N. Security Council, et cetera. These are items
that have been up for discussion for a long time, looking at
the composition of that council.
But I think otherwise, as the admiral said, it is really
Russia that is the problem, and the type of means that they are
using in order to assert themselves. So it is not that we
oppose Russia having a special role in its periphery or in
Europe writ large, or that we think Russia must become a member
of every club that we are in rather than counterbalance us
politically. It is the means that they are using that is
problematic for us.
And so how to get them to not use those means is really the
subject of my testimony, whereby what I think we need to do is
demonstrate to them that those means won't work. And that is
sort of the shortest answer I can give you.
Mr. Johnson. All right.
And, Dr. Hill, I wish I could hear from you on that point.
But let me ask you this: What sort of relationship do you
believe Putin is looking for with the West?
Dr. Hill. Actually, Putin is looking for the relationship
with the West that you outlined in really what was an excellent
question. He wants to be one of the chairmen of the board. I
mean, he wants to be in the same kind of arrangement that
Russia thinks that it has on the U.N. Security Council, which
is, you know, having basically a say in the global agenda and a
right to veto things that it doesn't like.
And the focal point right now has been in Europe and the
European security order, but also now in the Middle East, where
Russia sees the order breaking down. What we have to be able to
do is kind of articulate a broader vision for Russia of seeing
that the methods that they are using in Europe and the Middle
East will actually be counterproductive for Russia in a much
more global perspective.
Russia has key interests in the Asia-Pacific. We have
already mentioned the Arctic. And Russia is actually vulnerable
in both of those theaters, and it is also vulnerable, frankly,
in Central Asia, which is another area of its traditional
interest.
So we have to articulate a sense that if Russia wants to be
on the board with the rest of us then it has to play by rules
that we all generally share, including, frankly, China. We have
to engage Russia in different theaters and to show that there
is actually an alternative way of getting of our attention and
of being there present when we are discussing new rules of the
game.
So this is a real challenge. It is a diplomatic challenge,
but I think it also requires a showing from the military
perspective that we are talking about today that we mean
business and that we will not accept those methods.
And it is also important because the rest of the BRICs are
watching. China, India, you know, all the other rising powers
are trying to see how we handle this relationship with Russia.
So we should think about this crisis as a test not just for
Russia, but for how we want to set the tone for future
engagements internationally.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Gabbard.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Farkas, you talked about Russia being the most
immediate threat to the United States, and I think you and the
admiral both touched on the question of whether or not we
should be focusing resources on the Asia-Pacific or shifting
that back towards the East.
And I am wondering if you can comment on the seeming
conflict between the statements that you are making versus
those we hear from others within defense, especially with
regard to North Korea being our number one threat, especially
given the provocations that we have seen from them with the
missile tests, the nuclear tests, their increased capabilities,
the effect that that is having on the region, South Korea
looking to increase its missile defense capability with our
help, the changing and growing dynamic in the Asia-Pacific
region, and the list goes on and on.
Obviously, being from Hawaii, my home State feels very
directly the threat every time North Korea launches a missile
test, conducts a nuclear test, recognizing that within their
current capabilities we fall significantly within range. So I
wonder if you can argue that point on why you are right and
those who say that North Korea is our number one threat are
wrong.
Dr. Farkas. Thank you very much for the question. I worked,
as I mentioned earlier, for the Senate Armed Services Committee
and worked very hard and aggressively for Senator Levin, at the
time, on North Korea. And in fact, in 2008 I went to North
Korea, went to Yongbyon.
So I agree with you 100 percent, the threat from North
Korea is serious and we need to be addressing it. But I don't
think that it is at the same level as the threat that we are
seeing from Russia right now in terms of the potential dangers
we face with Russia.
The capabilities that the Russian Federation has far
surpass the capabilities of the North Korean regime, and I
think that we have the means to respond, you know--we have the
means to respond to both, but I think that to respond to Russia
requires a bigger undertaking.
So I hate, though, to rank----
Ms. Gabbard. Yes.
Dr. Farkas [continuing]. Threats. You know, they are both
threats and--but I emphasize the Russian one because it is here
and now, it is in our face. We really need to understand it
because there is a real danger that if we don't stand firm
against Putin he will take the opportunity to use military
force again, as he did in Georgia, as he did in Ukraine, even
before that in Moldova, as he did in Syria.
He will be tempted to use it again, and of course, the
worst case for us would be if he used it against a NATO ally
or, of course, God forbid, against us, although I don't--in
both cases I don't think it is probable, but it is still, for
the Department of Defense, obviously prudent to worry about the
worst-case scenario.
Ms. Gabbard. Yes.
Dr. Farkas. So I think that is the worst-case scenario, but
clearly I don't mean to say that the North Korean threat is not
important, and we need to focus on that, as well. We can't pick
among--you know, we can't pick, and I think the ranking thing
is a little bit overdone----
Ms. Gabbard. Yes.
Dr. Farkas [continuing]. Because, of course, terrorism is
the immediate and urgent.
Ms. Gabbard. No, I agree.
Dr. Farkas. And for the Europeans, terrorism and
immigration. So----
Ms. Gabbard. Yes.
Dr. Farkas [continuing]. The admiral perhaps would----
Admiral Stavridis. I would only add to that, I have written
extensively and have said that North Korea is the most
dangerous country in the world, and I think they are in a
tactical sense. I think Russia, because of its throw weight and
its strategic play, represents a significant strategic
challenge for the United States, if that helps how we
articulate it.
But I would not in any way understate the risks on the
Korean Peninsula in particular.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you.
Thank you both.
Dr. Hill, building a little bit off of that, and also
something you said earlier about how the U.S. and Russia are,
quote, ``on a long-term collision course,'' in particular as it
relates to Syria. I am just wondering if you can expand on that
a little bit and why you believe that is the case.
Dr. Hill. In the case of Syria, Russia has very
longstanding interests. This is a relationship that dates back
to the Soviet era.
The relationship preceded Bashar al-Assad's; it was a
relationship that Russia also established with his father. They
are very interested in propping up the regime and also keeping
the state of Syria together.
This is not a sideshow for Russia. It is actually a
domestic foreign policy issue.
Russia has exactly the same concerns as all of the other
neighboring states do and European states about the influence
of extremism on its domestic politics. Russia has the largest
indigenous Muslim population of any European country, and we do
think of Russia as a European country; and Moscow has the
largest Muslim population in its capital. This is an indigenous
Russian population.
The Russian government have recently stated that they are
following 2,800 foreign fighters from Russia in Syria. There
are foreign fighters from the neighboring countries in Central
Asia and the Caucasus.
So Russia has, you know, all the questions that we have
about the future of Syria, and they believe that keeping the
Syrian state together with someone like Assad, a strongman at
the head, is the best solution for them.
We have been on a collision course because obviously we
have not had the same starting point. We have the same end
point of wanting to keep some semblance of the Syrian state
together, but we did not want to begin with Assad.
So Russia has, as we have been discussing today, decided to
use their military as a blunt instrument in foreign policy to
force us to start from the same point as Russia has in
determining the future of Syria.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you. I agree with your assessment of
that and remain concerned about this head-to-head collision
path that we are on between the U.S. and Russia, specifically
because of that difference and those diametrically opposed
objectives in Syria.
Thank you.
The Chairman. So do you think it is possible for the U.S.
and Russia to reach a, quote-unquote, ``acceptable agreement''
on Syria?
Dr. Hill. I actually do. I think it will take a lot of
work, however, because it is--as we have been saying all the
way along, this is not a two-way game. It is not between the
U.S. and Russia by any stretch of the imagination.
Russia has differences not just with the United States but
with Turkey, which it very clearly expressed now on very risky
and very dangerous terms. Russia has a difference of opinion
with Saudi Arabia, with Qatar and other Gulf States.
And frankly, Russia also has a difference of opinion with
Iran. We have to be very careful here to make sure that we are
clear that Russia has not jumped into the sectarian divide in
the Middle East by any stretch.
Russia's Muslim population are predominantly Sunni, but it
also does have a Shia population inside of its own territory
and on its periphery. And Russia doesn't want to be part of a
religious war; it wants to actually stop these.
Russia wants to see some kind of new balance of power in
the Middle East. It doesn't want to see Iran actually get the
upper hand over other Middle East players, either.
So in many respects, Russia and the United States are on
very much the same page. We want stability; we want a new order
in the Middle East. We want to actually protect some of the
same regional players.
Russia is just as concerned about the fate of Israel as we
are now. It is a very different relationship with Israel than
it was during the Cold War for Russia. It is a very important
bilateral relationship.
So there are a lot of things that we can talk about here.
We just have to get away from the idea that it is just a
collision between the two of us over actually a country that we
don't have any intrinsic interest in owning.
Russia does not want to own Syria as a protectorate. It
wants to eventually get out of Syria, maintaining its base and
other interests there, but to see an order emerging around
Syria and the Middle East.
So I do think that we can do this. We just have to be
clear-headed and do our homework.
Admiral Stavridis. May I add a comment, which is I agree we
can get to a diplomatic solution, but it will require us
accepting Assad for some period of time, which will be
difficult to swallow, given his level of atrocity against his
own people. I take some comfort from the fact that in the
Balkans we had to cut a similar deal. Milosevic stayed in
power, and in the end Milosevic died in a jail cell in The
Hague.
But we will get there diplomatically. It will require us to
take a hard swallow on Assad.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And to the three witnesses, thank you for your very
balanced assessment of the situation, particularly your desire
to share with us what appears to be, in my view, trying to
understand Russia, to look at the situation from the Russian
perspective so that we have a better ability to decide what we
want to do. I very much appreciate that.
There is a whole series of issues. In fact, I would like to
pull you aside and share 10 gallons of coffee with you over the
next 10 days.
A couple of issues: One, it seems to me the ambiguity that
NATO presently has with regard to little green men in the
Baltics is troublesome. So if you could speak to that, should
we not be clear as to what precisely would be a NATO incursion?
Admiral Stavridis. Thank you, sir.
We talked a bit earlier about Article 5 and then the
definition of an attack, which is Article 6, and the way
warfare has changed and morphed. I think because of what has
occurred in Ukraine, NATO is much more on alert, will work much
harder to identify through intelligence, surveillance,
reconnaissance activities.
And I think, frankly, I wouldn't want to speak for the
Baltic States, but I am assured they would take a very
aggressive posture, and I think they would immediately use
lethal force. And I think that would be a salutary effect. So I
think NATO has moved in its direction.
I agree we should do this over 10 gallons of vodka.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Garamendi. Well, that would terminate conversation for
sure.
Any further comments about should we be ambiguous about
this or should we be clear as to what a threat really is?
Dr. Farkas. Yes. The admiral just whispered, ``Clear.'' And
I think we, yes, clear. I mean, that is what the--our Baltic
allies would like, and that is what we owe to--owe them.
We are, as I mentioned earlier, doing a lot of work with
our special operations forces. We need to do more, though, to
help law enforcement in the Baltic countries, and also the
Balkan countries, Romania and Bulgaria.
Mr. Garamendi. I am going to say thank you for that, but it
seems to me we need clarity as to what is an incursion, what is
an attack. Any ambiguity will lead to, I think, a very
difficult situation.
So I got two other things.
You talked about cyber warfare. What agency in the United
States government is responsible for a cyberattack on the
United States?
Admiral Stavridis. This is a confused situation in our
government. I will give you kind of two answers to it and throw
in a third.
The Department of Homeland Security is broadly responsible.
The National Security Agency, which is part of the Department
of Defense, provides the tool sets and, I would argue, will be
where this response will occur. And the Department of Defense
has a specific set of responsibilities to protect military
capabilities, notably our strategic nuclear systems.
So that is just the beginning, and we would probably need
20 gallons of vodka to really get through the cyber structure
in the government, but this is an area that I think this
committee could profitably spend a great deal of time
examining.
Mr. Garamendi. I asked the question for a specific reason,
which is everybody is responsible and, therefore, nobody has--
--
Admiral Stavridis. Nobody is accountable as a result.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Chairman, we need to deal with this. We
are talking about a foreign cyberattack.
I noticed that the budget has a whole lot more money for
cybersecurity, which I think they mean how to protect our
databases. I think there is something far, far beyond that that
we need to address, and that is why would anybody that wants to
do harm to the United States spend all their on building a
nuclear weapon for an EMP attack when you can simply hire a
bunch of teenagers and take down the entire grid system, the
electrical grid system in the United States?
Admiral Stavridis. You are right to emphasize the grid. Of
all the things that are vulnerable--financial, health,
military--the segment that is most vulnerable is our grid
system.
Mr. Garamendi. Thirty-six seconds: Why are we engaging in a
new nuclear arms race that will cost us $1 trillion?
Admiral Stavridis. The short answer is, in the 24 seconds,
because Russia is expanding their modernization capability with
an enormous focus on nuclear weapons and they have a leader who
frequently mentions that we should not forget that they have
nuclear weapons. I think it is, unfortunately, a necessity for
us.
Mr. Garamendi. Agreement from the----
Dr. Farkas. I would agree with that. I mean, we have to
deter Russia.
Mr. Garamendi. And we need to do that by spending $1
trillion on an entire new system?
Dr. Farkas. Well, I am not going to argue about the dollar
amount, but I do think we need to keep our force modernized so
that we can continue to deter Russia. As the admiral said,
unfortunately that is the reality.
Dr. Hill. We also need to find a way of pushing back to
arms control discussions, particularly as we reach next year
and the 30th anniversary of the Gorbachev-Reagan summitry.
Perhaps we need, you know, to channel the cooler heads of that
period, as well, and----
Mr. Garamendi. So there may be another path available to
us?
Dr. Hill. There may be. Correct.
Mr. Garamendi. I thought so. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
The Chairman. I am going to prevail upon you all for just a
couple more questions hopefully.
Dr. Hill, I gotta ask you about this: A line of argument is
that Putin wanted to cooperate with us until the Balkans
happened and we bombed, you know, Syria, and we didn't listen
to him on a couple other things and then he went off in a
completely different direction. Is that true, or has he always
been who we see today?
Dr. Hill. I think it is the problem of understanding other
people's threat perceptions and the environment in which they
operate. I think it was always a very hard sell to persuade
someone like Putin and the people around him that, you know, we
actually meant well towards Russia.
This is somebody who was trained in a Cold War environment
to be deeply suspicious about the United States. I don't think
he is actually in any way intrinsically anti-American, but he
is always deeply suspicious of threats to Russia.
And the way that he has interpreted and read world events,
based on information that is being passed to him and also his
own worldview and perspective, is that beginning, frankly, in
2003, with the U.S. invasion of Iraq--it isn't really to do
necessarily with the Balkans--that we, the United States, have
been in the business of regime change. And based on what he and
others saw in the Balkans in the 1990s, that Admiral Stavridis
is referring to, that we might eventually get around to him and
to Russia.
Back in 1999--and I can say this with good authority
because I was actually in Russia during the NATO bombing--
across the whole spectrum of the Russian political system
people believed that if NATO could bomb Belgrade that meant
NATO could bomb Moscow. We might think that is preposterous;
that was their threat perception.
And since then, Putin and the people around him have talked
themselves into seeing that everything that we do fits into
that frame. And it has really been--the pivotal point was the
protests in Russia in 2011, 2012, where we laughed this off
when Putin claimed that the State Department had been behind
the protest, that the protestors were being paid for by U.S.
nongovernmental organizations, but he firmly believed it.
Again, he believes that we have continued with active
measures since the Cold War, that we have never stepped back.
The Chairman. Okay.
Dr. Hill. And so the problem has been how to persuade
someone who thinks like that that in actual fact this is not
the case. So that is the challenge that we have had.
The Chairman. And he has some sort of--or those people
around him have some sort of self-interest to perpetuate this
myth. Of course, one of the things that we have not talked
about today is the use of assassination, which has also been in
the news here recently.
I would like to broaden out for a just a second and ask
each of you to address this.
And actually it is based on an article, Dr. Farkas, you had
that Putin is trying to rewrite the international rules because
he sees the international order since the end of World War II
as being developed by us for us. And so part of what is going
on here is not just promoting strategic interests in this or
that place, but a fundamental rewrite of the international
order so it can be more to their advantage.
Now, we hear the same thing on the Chinese, by the way. But
if you would start and just address this briefly, if you could,
this attempt not just to, again, protect their interests, but
to change the whole ballgame.
Dr. Farkas. Thank you very much, Congressman--or Mr.
Chairman.
Unfortunately, Putin is trying to rewrite the rules, and
that is precisely the problem that we have. The means that he
uses run counter to the rules.
So in his belief system he believes that minority rights
allow him to go in and seize territory, so to take territory in
Georgia--you know, he is occupying 20 percent of Georgia right
now; to go into Ukraine and take Crimea, and then do the
military operations that he is conducting right now in the
East.
So in his view, he has the right to intervene in order to
protect those Russians, and Dr. Hill mentioned that as well,
the ethnic Russians.
He also would like to prevent us from intervening in order
to support peaceful transitions or not-so-peaceful transitions
from autocratic, despotic rulers to democratic systems. So the
Arab Springs, for example--the Arab Spring--I mean, you can
take Tunisia, you can name any of them, but he was absolutely
opposed to any kind of outside intervention and he perceived
them as being on the--in the same model as the Iraq
intervention, where we intervened and we got rid of Saddam
Hussein.
His view is he wants to intervene in order to protect the
dictator, in order to keep the Saddam Hussein or the Bashar al-
Assad in power. So it is a different understanding----
The Chairman. Because that is a way of protecting himself.
Dr. Farkas. Right. And it is a different understanding of
the balance between sovereignty and human and minority rights
that we have had since the Second World War.
Admiral Stavridis. Can I just add to that, Mr. Chairman,
one thing we haven't touched on greatly is domestic political
concerns for Mr. Putin. And I don't need to tell a committee of
politicians that that matters pretty deeply how you are
perceived, where your power base comes from.
And so much of his appeal to the Russian people is tied
into this idea of himself as a strong man. If you look at
Russian history, they roll the cosmic dice: One time they get
Ivan the Terrible, the next they get Peter the Great; one time
they get Stalin, then they get a Gorbachev.
The dice have landed definitively on Putin. He will
continue to play that strongman card. He has got to win. He has
got to be seen as winning and he has to be seen as capable of
pulling these levers of power. It is fundamental to who he is
domestically as well as all of the geopolitical points we have
talked about today.
The Chairman. And, Dr. Hill, in your comments also--one of
you all mentioned earlier, I noted, ``deflect public
attention.'' Part of the reason he is more aggressive is to
distract people. Again, an argument that is made about China,
as well.
So if you could address this change the international order
question?
Dr. Hill. Yes. Changing the international order is very
much on the agenda for Putin and the team around him in Russia.
I mean, I think, you know, as Dr. Farkas has been saying, there
has been a very strong consensus in Russia--and I would say it
actually has been since 1999 and the NATO bombing of Belgrade--
that the order is not working for them and that there needs to
be some way of wresting a veto out of the international system,
particularly in Europe, for Russia to block things that it does
not like.
In terms of the internal political situation in Russia now,
Putin is actually in a more precarious position than he might
have seemed from the perspective of his ratings. We are talking
about 88 to 90 percent in public opinion.
Some of this is real. It is based on Putin's long record as
a Russian leader since 2000. I mean, he really has had a lot of
signature achievements, especially in the economy and in terms
of stability in the political system.
The cosmic dice actually seem to have rolled in a--into a
good place, as far as most Russians are concerned, and we
should be really well aware of that.
The problem is--and it is one that perhaps other
politicians would envy--that there is no political alternative.
And that is risky because the only alternative to Putin is
Putin-in-the-past. All of his ratings depend on how he
performed prior to that opinion poll being taken.
And in the past Putin was actually seen to be lacking at
different points. There would be a crisis and his ratings would
fall.
If you look at the ratings of the political system of the
Russian government and of the performance of the Russian
economy and the state outside of Putin's performance, you see a
very different picture. Russians are not happy with the way
that their country is being governed.
So Putin is the ultimate populist figure right now. He has
to at all times appear to be in charge and in control. That is
something I guess we are all familiar with in many other
settings.
So this is Putin's challenge: He has to show that if the
economy is failing that someone else is to blame. It is the
United States; it is Western sanctions. And he is putting all
of the spotlight onto military victories in Syria and in
Ukraine and onto being the big international player.
The period when we are all bemoaning a lack of
international leadership, Putin is trying to demonstrate it. It
is not in the way that we would like, but it is now very
important for his own validation, legitimacy, and ratings at
home in Russia.
The Chairman. Okay.
Let me ask one other thing: Admiral Stavridis, at the end
of your written statement you say, ``We prevail by outthinking
our opponents.''
Give us a grade. How are we doing at outthinking our
opponents?
Admiral Stavridis. In the case of Russia, B-minus at best.
What I was trying to get at there, Mr. Chairman, was not
only the topics we have talked about today, but also using our
ability to learn and understand the history, the culture, the
language. We need to be capable of reaching across a divide
like this, and that requires real intellectual capital--
scholars, students, analysts. We have touched on that a bit.
We have volumes of data about Russia but we are not very
good at understanding and analyzing it. And oh, by the way, if
you really want to understand Russia go easy on the CIA
[Central Intelligence Agency] reporting; go back to reading
Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, and Lermontov, and Pushkin, and the
great Russian writers. They tell us a lot about the situation
we face today. That is what I was getting at in that----
Mr. Garamendi. Can we bring on the coffee and keep going?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Charles Hill wrote a book about understanding
opponents based on its literature, which is what--but let me
just take subset of the question to our responsibilities. Part
of what we are trying to do is promote some reforms to help the
Department of Defense be more agile in a very complex world. A
lot of that is the thinking that goes on within the military.
If you were to put a couple items on our agenda to consider
when it comes to improving the intellectual agility of our
military, what would you have on that list?
Admiral Stavridis. Not speaking specifically to Russia,
which I addressed a moment ago--yes, very broadly I would say
we need to continue to put an emphasis on graduate education.
And I say that with a certain amount of self-servingness, as
the dean of a graduate school of international relations, but
continuing to put emphasis, as Ike Skelton, who is over your
left shoulder right there, built into this committee a sense of
how can we educate our future leaders in the military. And that
ought to happen at every level.
If you want a practical proposal I would say take a look at
the National Defense University and ask the question of why is
that not a capstone to which all the service war colleges
report and build a structure that definitively puts education
on the agenda where Chairman Skelton believed it should be? I
think it still is taking some hits if not below the waterline
then pretty close to it.
The Chairman. Okay. That is helpful.
And Mr. Garamendi is right. We are going to need more
coffee to finish these.
Mr. Aguilar.
Mr. Aguilar. I don't want to stand in the way of the
chairman and the panel having lunch either, so I will be very
cautious here.
I did want to pick up on the theme of aggression.
And, Dr. Hill, you just talked about Syria, as well.
At this moment Russian-backed Syrian forces are working to
encircle the rebel-held parts of Aleppo. Assad is on the cusp
of a major victory and thousands of civilians are fleeing.
There is a serious concern that those in the city will stay
and be cut off from food and other types of foreign aid.
Because of the Russian aggression and interference, we are on
the cusp of another siege in a heavily populated Syrian city.
With Russia playing such a large role in this offensive,
what would you recommend be done to counter the crisis, if
anything? And do you think--what do you think are the
implications of this offensive on our efforts to counter Russia
in the future?
Dr. Hill. I think part of our problem is that it is not
just a military issue here; it is--there is a certain
psychological element to this.
Putin and the people around him have been engaged in
similar military operations not just in their periphery, in
Georgia and Ukraine, but within their own territory in
Chechnya. And if you look back to two wars in Chechnya,
beginning in 1994 and the Russian Federation, you can see a
very clear focus on basically pursuing a goal no matter what to
preserve the state.
And Putin, I think, looks at Assad and sees Assad as being
in the same situation that he, Vladimir Putin, was when he came
into office in 2000, when the war on Chechnya had erupted
again. And Putin was determined, no matter what the
consequences were in terms of civilian casualties or the
destruction of Chechnya's capital city, Grozny, to prevail.
So Putin is pushing his forces behind Assad to make sure
that Assad prevails. So I am afraid the civilian casualties are
not really factoring into this in an operational way.
So we have to figure out how to engage with Russia not just
in military ways but to change that psychology, to show that in
some respects this will have consequences for Russia as well,
in the way that it is viewed in the Middle East and in the way
that it is viewed more globally. Because Russia now believes
that the refugee problem and the civilian crisis are somebody
else's problem: They are Turkey's problem; they are Lebanon's
problem; they are Jordan's problem; and they are now Europe's
problem.
And that is not something that they are going to step away
from. If they are exposing that problem, that is not theirs to
deal with.
We have to show that civilian casualties actually matter
and that the broader psychology of this war will be very
detrimental to Russia in the longer term, that they need to
rethink the way that they are pursuing this.
Dr. Farkas. If I could just add to that, as I said in my
opening comments, I think, unfortunately, we have to do more
militarily to support the Syrian opposition and work with our
allies. And Secretary Carter is trying to do that right now,
get some more, you know, metal into the game, if you will.
As Dr. Hill mentioned, it is not just a military problem.
And ultimately what we need against Russia is leverage.
So if we can get it on the battlefield, great. If we can't
get it only through military means, which I think is probably
the case, we should look at other measures.
So can we come up with a package of sanctions that we can
implement with our Middle Eastern allies and partners against
Russia? Because right now we have sanctions where we are
sanctioning Russia in the Ukraine context, but perhaps there is
something we can do to signal to Russia that what they are
doing in Syria, their--the way they are waging the war, the
disingenuousness, you know, saying they are going after ISIS
[Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] when they are not, the type
of bombs they are using, the civilian casualties, et cetera--
that that is unacceptable.
But we need to be looking for leverage, ultimately.
Admiral Stavridis. I would only add that we have a couple
unpalatable futures ahead if we are going to solve this
diplomatically. One I have mentioned already, which is I think
we are going to have to accept Assad for some period of time.
The second one, which we haven't touched on, is a partition
of Syria. I think that increasingly that may be part of the
solution.
That sounds quite unthinkable, but if you look back on the
Balkans 20 years ago you saw Yugoslavia break apart--really 30
years ago--erupt in war 20 years ago, and ultimately those
problems were solved by partitioning, by accepting Milosevic
for a period of time, and by working with the United States,
with NATO, and with Russia collectively. I think there are some
lessons there from history looking at the Balkans that may have
to be applied.
No one is going to walk away a complete winner from this
process.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you.
I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Ms. McSally.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks for your testimony.
Admiral Stavridis, it is good to see you again. I have a
couple questions for you.
The first is as we talk about, you know, budget-saving and
downsizing all the time here, oftentimes a target is
headquarter staff. There is discussion of bloated headquarters.
And having worked at a COCOM [combatant command], I see
some value in the COCOM staff. And so I just wanted to ask for
you to, you know, just share your perspectives on how important
it is to have the right size of a staff at the COCOM so that
they are not an obvious target, because if we, you know, if we
get too small in those areas then there are capabilities that
are just not going to happen.
And if you also have a comment on EUCOM [U.S. European
Command] separate from AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command], because I
think that is something that gets talked about, you know,
having 92 countries in your responsibility versus having that
peeled off where you can really focus on the challenges you
have all mentioned today. That is just my first question to
you.
Admiral Stavridis. Sure. First of all, great to see you, as
well, and thanks for your service on our EUCOM staff.
I think that the process of rightsizing our staffs is
something that has to go on consistently. There has been an
enormous growth in staffs, broadly speaking, over the last 20
years, including the Department of Defense, the NSC [National
Security Council] staff, and, of course, right here on Capitol
Hill. It strikes me as we are in a world of rapid-moving
information and technology we ought to be able to do some level
of consolidation.
Having said that, I believe in the COCOM model, the
combatant command model. I think it makes a great deal of sense
and it allows us to have the kind of regional specialization
that I think is crucial.
Whether or not EUCOM and AFRICOM ought to be remerged, I
think at the moment that probably is not a good idea. It is
worth examining that.
More profitably, perhaps looking at NORTHCOM [U.S. Northern
Command] and SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], there might be
some synergies there that could be addressed. You could also
look at TRANSCOM [U.S. Transportation Command] and DLA [Defense
Logistics Agency].
So I think there are areas where mergers would make some
sense. I wouldn't at this minute advocate one between EUCOM and
AFRICOM.
I do think we need to put downward pressure on staffs, but
we need to do it in an informed way.
Ms. McSally. Great. Thank you.
I know you talked about in your testimony about moving Army
forces out of Europe and how that has not been ideal, but we
have also moved some air forces out of Europe, as well. You
know, 81st Fighter Squadron closed down. First time we didn't
have A-10s in Europe in decades. But now we are deploying them
back to Europe, which I am guessing is probably more costly for
us to do that.
So could you comment about the importance of our air assets
there for deterrence and training, as well?
Admiral Stavridis. Sure. And you mentioned the A-10. I
think, like a lot of people currently in uniform, I also am an
A-10 fan. I think they are a simple, workable answer, and I
think in a European context could be extremely important if we
really went to the dark end of the spectrum. Certainly they
could be useful in many other areas.
I also am a big fan of special forces aircraft in Europe.
We are moving, as you know, some of the V-22s in.
At the end of the day, the good news about airplanes is you
can fly them and they can move and they can come in. But there
is a real power in having them present that allows you to deter
and, again, at the dark end of the spectrum, conduct
significant operations.
So as I mentioned on land forces, I would also echo we
ought to be looking again at cuts in the European theater on
the air side.
Ms. McSally. Great. Thanks.
And last quick question, again in the budget pressures we
are all often focused on making sure we have hard military
power, but there is the soft engagement, which I believe is
also valuable. And I was a professor at the Marshall Center, as
you may know, and so I just, again, as the former SACEUR
[Supreme Allied Commander Europe], can you just comment on the
value of the Marshall Center and how that is important for the
European theater and dealing with potential Russian aggression?
Admiral Stavridis. I can. Marshall Center Garmisch is an
iconic example of what we talked about a moment ago that
Chairman Skelton built into the system, which is education as a
tool of national power that goes alongside it. It is where we
create soft power; it is how we learn how to use hard power.
Not only the Marshall Center, but really all of these
regional centers, which are a pittance in the big scheme of
things, I think are extraordinarily valuable to the Department
and to the nation.
Ms. McSally. Do you have any ideas--there have been
discussions of consolidation of some of those centers. Do you
have any perspective on that----
Admiral Stavridis. I think the budget savings are so
miniscule that that probably does not make a great deal of
sense.
Ms. McSally. Great. Thanks.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thanks so much.
The Chairman. This has been very helpful, and I am very
grateful to each of you for sharing your expertise with us
today in some very complex, difficult issues that the country
faces.
So the hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
February 10, 2016
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
February 10, 2016
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[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
February 10, 2016
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GARAMENDI
Mr. Garamendi. In your spoken testimony, you stated that
``unfortunately'' the United States must modernize its nuclear forces
to counter Russia's new emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons, its
nuclear ``first use'' policy, and its doctrine of ``escalate to
deescalate.'' Which specific U.S. nuclear weapons systems do you
believe must be modernized? What specific roles would each system play
in deterring a Russian threat to NATO? To the extent that these roles
are currently played by lower-yield U.S. nuclear weapons such as
nuclear gravity bombs and nuclear cruise missiles, which could
potentially be met with advanced conventional systems, such as
hypersonic weapons and advanced, conventional cruise missiles?
Dr. Farkas. Given the Russian nuclear modernization, their
doctrine, verbal saber-rattling and violation of the Intermediate
Nuclear Forces Treaty, the United States must ensure that our nuclear
deterrence is robust and effective.
Mr. Garamendi. In your spoken testimony, you stated that
``unfortunately'' the United States must modernize its nuclear forces
to counter Russia's new emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons, its
nuclear ``first use'' policy, and its doctrine of ``escalate to
deescalate.'' Which specific U.S. nuclear weapons systems do you
believe must be modernized? What specific roles would each system play
in deterring a Russian threat to NATO? To the extent that these roles
are currently played by lower-yield U.S. nuclear weapons such as
nuclear gravity bombs and nuclear cruise missiles, which could
potentially be met with advanced conventional systems, such as
hypersonic weapons and advanced, conventional cruise missiles?
Admiral Stavridis. [No answer was available at the time of
printing.]
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO
Ms. Bordallo. The Russian deployment last fall of a Borei-class
submarine carrying long range nuclear capable ballistic missiles to
Vladivostock, and the potential of a second sub arriving this year
indicates Russian intentions to increase its presence on and beyond its
Pacific Coast. In your opinion, what impact would a corresponding
decrease in U.S. Navy ships, as well as unilateral and joint exercises,
in the region have on our ability to project power and reassure our
allies and partners?
Dr. Hill. The deployment of a Borei-class ballistic missile
submarine indicates that Russia intends to continue to operate
ballistic missile submarines from its Pacific coast as well as from the
Kola Peninsula. This is a long-standing practice of the Russian navy,
just as the United States operates ballistic missile submarines in both
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The number of U.S. Navy ships as well as the number unilateral
exercises and, in particular, joint exercises obviously affect the U.S.
ability to project power in the region as well as to reassure U.S.
allies and partners in the Western Pacific. But I would consider that a
separate issue from the question of the Borei-class submarine
deployment.
Ms. Bordallo. The Russian deployment last fall of a Borei-class
submarine carrying long range nuclear capable ballistic missiles to
Vladivostock, and the potential of a second sub arriving this year
indicates Russian intentions to increase its presence on and beyond its
Pacific Coast. In your opinion, what impact would a corresponding
decrease in U.S. Navy ships, as well as unilateral and joint exercises,
in the region have on our ability to project power and reassure our
allies and partners?
Dr. Farkas. The United States must continue to project power and
protect freedom of navigation in Asia-Pacific and maintain our nuclear
triad as part of nuclear deterrence. This means that the Navy must be
funded ensure the right mix of platforms and capabilities.
Ms. Bordallo. The Russian deployment last fall of a Borei-class
submarine carrying long-range nuclear capable ballistic missiles to
Vladivostock, and the potential of a second sub arriving this year
indicates Russian intentions to increase its pres-
ence on and beyond its Pacific Coast. In your opinion, what impact
would a corresponding decrease in U.S. Navy ships, as well as
unilateral and joint exercises, in the region have on our ability to
project power and reassure our allies and partners?
Admiral Stavridis. [No answer was available at the time of
printing.]
[all]