[Senate Hearing 115-200]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-200
UNITED STATES POLICY AND STRATEGY
IN EUROPE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 21, 2017
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JACK REED, Rhode Island
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi BILL NELSON, Florida
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
TOM COTTON, Arkansas JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
JONI ERNST, Iowa JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska TIM KAINE, Virginia
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
TED CRUZ, Texas MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
BEN SASSE, Nebraska GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
LUTHER STRANGE, Alabama
Christian D. Brose, Staff Director
Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
________________________________________________________________________
March 21, 2017
Page
United States Policy and Strategy in Europe...................... 1
Breedlove, General Philip M., USAF (Ret.), Distinguished 5
Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia
Institute of Technology.
Burns, Ambassador William J., President, Carnegie Endowment for 10
International Peace.
Vershbow, Ambassador Alexander R., Distinguished Fellow, Brent 21
Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council.
(iii)
UNITED STATES POLICY AND STRATEGY
IN EUROPE
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34.m. in Room
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator John McCain
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators McCain, Wicker,
Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Sullivan, Cruz, Strange, Reed,
Nelson, McCaskill, Shaheen, Gillibrand, Donnelly, Kaine, King,
Warren, and Peters.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, CHAIRMAN
Chairman McCain. Good morning. The Senate Armed Services
Committee meets this morning to receive testimony on United
States policy and strategy in Europe.
I would like to welcome our distinguished witnesses this
morning: General Philip Breedlove, who was relieved of his
obligation to appear before this committee when he retired last
year, yet has graciously agreed to submit himself before us
once again. I have no doubt he will soon regret that decision
and will wish for a speedy return to Georgia Tech where he is
Distinguished Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International
Affairs.
We are also pleased to be joined by Ambassador William
Burns, an old friend of this committee and of America, who is
the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace; and Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who is a
Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft
Center on International Security.
All three of these gentlemen combined have many, many
decades of service to this country and we are grateful they
would come and join us this morning.
Since the end of the Cold War, American policy and strategy
in Europe have been guided by the idea that Russia was, or at
least might become, a reliable security partner. To varying
degrees, each of our last three Presidents pursued a
partnership with Russia on these terms, and each time, high
hopes ended in disappointment, not for lack of good faith or
effort on the American side, but because of the simple fact
that Vladimir Putin has no interest in such a partnership. He
believes achieving his goal of restoring Russia as a great
power means diminishing American power, as well as the values
and institutions it sustains and defends.
Unfortunately, we as a country were slow to recognize that
fact. Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine, annexed Crimea,
repeatedly threatened our NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] allies, violated the INF [Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty] Treaty, rapidly modernized its military,
executed a major military buildup along its western border, and
interfered in American elections, all before policymakers on
both sides of the aisle truly began to come to terms not only
with the reality of Vladimir Putin's neo-imperial ambitions,
but also with the heavy price we have paid for a policy General
Breedlove once described as, quote, hugging the bear.
Until the end of the Cold War, there were a quarter of a
million United States forces stationed permanently in West
Germany alone. Today we have just a quarter of that number on
the entire European continent. This drastic reduction was not
merely the product of a post-Cold War peace dividend. Indeed,
as recently as the two years before Russia invaded Ukraine, the
United States withdrew two brigade combat teams from Europe. As
a result, while Russian tanks rolled into Crimea in 2014, the
United States had zero tanks permanently stationed in Europe.
Likewise, we let American intelligence on Russia's tactical
and operational capabilities languish, weakening our ability to
quickly detect Russia's large military movements and
effectively attribute its, quote, hybrid warfare tactics. We
unilaterally disengaged from the information fight, allowing
Putin's propaganda machine and army of trolls and hackers to
wage a war on truth with alarming success.
The bottom line is that three years after the invasion of
Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the United States has yet to
heed the wakeup call. We still have not adjusted to the scope,
scale, and severity of the new strategic reality we face in
Europe. We continue to lack coherent policy and strategy to
deter conflict and prevent aggression in Europe while
confronting a revisionist Russia that is hostile to our
interests and our values.
The good news is we have begun to fix the damage done by
years of false assumptions and misguided policy with the
European Deterrence Initiative. But that is just a first step.
The new administration has an opportunity to turn the page and
design a new policy and strategy in Europe backed by all
elements of American power and decisive political will. Each of
our witnesses has deep experience in the formulation and
execution of national security strategy, and I hope they can
begin to describe the basic pillars and underlying principles
of such a policy and strategy.
Some of the features of a new approach in Europe are
already clear: enhancing forward presence of United States
military forces; increasing investments in capabilities
necessary to counter Russia's advanced anti-access, area denial
threat; following through on modernization of our nuclear
triad; devising gray zone strategies for competition below the
threshold of major conflict in domains such as cyber and
unconventional warfare; providing defensive lethal assistance
to Ukraine; and working together with allies and partners to
arm ourselves to resist Russia's war on truth, counter Russian
disinformation, and strengthen the resiliency of our societies
and institutions.
What is also clear is that no United States policy or
strategy in Europe can be successful without our NATO allies.
As Chancellor Merkel reminded us years ago, the Freedom
Bell hangs in Berlin. It was a gift from the American people,
modeled after our own Liberty Bell. It rang on the day of
German reunification. But it also rang after the September 11th
attacks. Sixteen German citizens died when the towers fell that
day. When our NATO allies invoked article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty for the first time in history in response to
those attacks, German troops went to fight side by side with
American troops in Afghanistan. Fifty-four of them have given
their lives, and nearly 1,000 are still serving there today. We
must never forget or diminish the price our allies have paid in
blood fighting alongside America.
I thank our witnesses for their testimony this morning.
Senator Reed?
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
holding this important hearing on the security environment in
Europe.
I also want to thank our distinguished panel for appearing
before us this morning, and thank them for their extraordinary
service to the Nation in many different capacities over many,
many years. So we look forward to your testimony, gentlemen.
This morning's hearing provides an opportunity for the
committee to begin to examine in more detail the threat posed
by Russia's malign activities aimed at undermining the United
States-led international order, one where countries are
sovereign and free to make their own choices about integrating
economically and politically with the rest of Europe, rather
than being coerced into a sphere of influence. Hopefully this
morning we can also discuss what we need to do to respond to
and defend against that Russian threat.
This threat was brought especially close to home last year
with Russia's interference in our own presidential elections.
Countering Russia's malign activities is a matter of national
security, and we have a responsibility to ensure that any
examination of such activities by Congress, the intelligence
community, or the executive branch is not politicized. Russia's
attack on American democracy is just one part of a broader
Kremlin-directed assault on the cohesion of the NATO alliance,
the European Union, and other Western institutions and a
rejection of the post-Cold War vision of an integrated and
stable Europe. Our national security depends on our better
understanding Putin's world view and Russia's strategic aims in
its aggression toward the West. I am interested hearing our
witnesses' views on these matters.
President Putin has proven willing to use a broad range of
military and non-military tools to advance what he sees as
Russia's strategic interests. Militarily, Putin has used force
and coercion to violate the sovereignty of Russia's neighbors
and undermine their further integration into Europe. In the
Republic of Georgia, the Russian military has occupied two
separatist regions since 2008 and Moscow has recognized the
regions' independence from Georgia, contrary to the
international community's determination that these regions are
sovereign Georgian territory.
In Ukraine, Russia uses hybrid warfare operations by
combining influence operations with clandestine military and
financial support to separatists to seize Crimea, changing the
boundary of a European nation by force for the first time since
the end of the Cold War. Since then, Russia has sought to
consolidate its control by providing direction and equipment,
including heavy weapons, to separatist forces in eastern
Ukraine, while failing to fulfill its commitments under the
Minsk ceasefire agreements.
We have also seen Putin draw upon similar tools to prop up
the Assad regime in Syria, while seeking to mislead the
international community by stating the purpose of its military
involvement there is to counter ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria].
Putin has even gone so far as to engage in nuclear saber
rattling, conducting nuclear exercises during the 2014 Crimea
invasion. According to recent news reports, Russia is fielding
a missile system that violates the Intermediate-range Nuclear
Forces, or INF, Treaty and threatens all of NATO. I would be
interested in hearing from General Breedlove and our other
witnesses about their thoughts on whether United States and
NATO military forces are appropriately postured and trained to
deter Russian aggression across Europe and to respond in the
event of a crisis.
At the same time, the Kremlin's playbook also includes a
wide range of non-military tools at Putin's disposal to
influence the West. Russia employs an array of covert and overt
asymmetric weapons short of military conflict, including cyber
hacking, disinformation, propaganda, economic leverage,
corruption, and even political assassination. General
Breedlove, I would be interested in your recommendations from
your time as EUCOM Commander and SACEUR [Supreme Allied
Commander Europe] on how to detect and respond to the
appearance of ``little green men'' in Ukraine and Russian
disinformation operations intended to conceal Russian
aggression on the ground.
In addition, we need to better understand how the Kremlin
is conducting influence activities as part of a concerted
effort to harm Western cohesion and opposition to Russia. There
needs to be a recognition that Russian state-controlled media,
such as RT [Russia Today] and Sputnik, disseminates fake news,
amplified through social media, to undermine people's faith in
democratic institutions in Europe and in the United States.
Just last week, we heard warnings in the Banking Committee
about how divisions within the EU could weaken sanctions
imposed against Russia following its seizure of the Crimea
peninsula in Ukraine.
Moreover, Russia appears to be growing bolder in its use of
influence operations to coerce its neighbors and undermine
Western opposition. The January 2017 Intelligence Community
Assessment of Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent
United States Elections found that Russia's influence efforts
in the 2016 United States presidential election reflects a
significant escalation compared to Russia's previous
information operations. The report also warned that these
cyber-enabled multifaceted influence operations that the
Kremlin used to target the United States democratic process
likely represent a new normal in Russian conduct toward the
United States and our European allies and partners. This
pattern of Russian interference will only continue and
intensify over time if it goes unchallenged.
Countering this national security threat will require a
whole-of-government approach that brings together the
Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and others. I
would be interested in our witnesses' thoughts on how the
United States Government needs to be organized to counter the
Russian influence threat and how Congress might resource such
an effort. I will ask our witnesses whether they agree that
significant cuts at the State Department and other civilian
agencies would significantly hamper our ability to use
diplomacy, strategic communications, and other foreign policy
tools to counter these Russian malign activities.
Finally, what is clear is that we need a comprehensive
strategy for countering the anti-Western aggression from the
Kremlin. Such a strategy will need to be based on a clear-eyed
understanding of Russia's strategic aims and how it is using
the full range of influence operations to achieve these goals.
I intend to work with Chairman McCain to undertake the
necessary effort within this committee to examine this question
in depth. I believe we can work in a bipartisan fashion to
address this national security threat. I look forward to this
morning's hearing to begin to shed light on this critical issue
for our country and for European security.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. I welcome the witnesses. General
Breedlove?
STATEMENT OF GENERAL PHILIP M. BREEDLOVE, USAF (RET.),
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, SAM NUNN SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
General Breedlove. Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed,
thank you for this invitation to testify before you again. It
is an honor to be here to talk about United States strategy and
policy in Europe, and in particular, I applaud your inquiry
into United States-Russia issues.
United States-Russian relations are very much in the news
these days. I believe it is appropriate given their importance,
and I believe it is essential to look at these relations in a
thorough, dispassionate way. That is what I hope we do today.
There is much to talk about a new start with the Kremlin, and
given the right framework and circumstances, I believe that has
merit.
Our current vector in United States-Russian relations is
not a good one, and I believe if we do not find the right
framework for engagement, it will not improve. The key is that
framework and how we proceed.
Russia is a great power with a proud history, and they have
the world's largest country in terms of territory, and they are
a player on the world stage. Russia possesses the world's
second most powerful military: a nuclear arsenal comparable to
ours and conventional forces that are easily the most powerful
in Europe. While its economy is stagnant and it has been hit
hard by the low prices of oil and natural gas, it is still the
12th largest in terms of dollars. We cannot simply dismiss
Russia as a declining and regional power.
Again, given the right framework, it makes great sense for
our Government to have meaningful discussions with Russia at a
number of levels. We have much to discuss with the Kremlin.
First, we would like to make sure our relationship does not
deteriorate further. While we have more strategic matters to
discuss, we need to address shared concerns about Moscow's
current practice of flying warplanes dangerously close to us,
at times without their transponders on, and causing problems
with American and other NATO planes and ships. Such incidents
risk fatal accidents and even a clash between the United States
and Russia. We need to reestablish substantive communication
between our militaries in order to avoid such incidents and,
when they occur, to move toward deconfliction.
If Moscow really wants to improve relations, progress on
these questions should not be hard to achieve. With an
incremental approach and incremental successes, we can start to
look for more substantial meetings to take on more difficult
questions. Once we make progress in deconfliction, we can
address more global issues of mutual interest. Holding a summit
possibly in the future to launch that dialogue would signal a
commitment by Washington and Moscow and would provide an
important opportunity to address an issue important for over
half a century, that of nuclear disarmament. This area has been
dormant for some time now. Of course, before we can move to new
agreements on nuclear issues, it is important that Moscow moves
quickly to cease its violation of the Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces agreement.
Iran is another important area for discussion. Moscow and
Iran have worked together closely in Syria, and Iran has even
provided Russian warplanes a base for a brief period of time.
Yet, at the same time, Moscow worked with us and others in
persuading Tehran to sign the agreement on its nuclear program.
Our administration has indicated that it wants to take a second
look and improve the terms of that agreement. Is Moscow really
willing to partner on this, or does it prefer good relations
with Tehran at the expense of stability in the Persian Gulf?
A third area to discuss is working with the Russians to
counter Daesh or the Islamic State of Iraq and in the Levant
and other violent extremist organizations. If Moscow were a
reliable partner against Daesh, the advantages are obvious. The
complication, though, is that Moscow's military operation in
Syria has devoted little attention to these extremists. It has
instead been directed against our moderate allies and lately as
it works with Ankara against the Kurds.
In addition, Moscow's saturation bombing against towns and
cities has fueled refugee flows, exacerbating the refugee
crisis in Europe. In fact, there has been very little overlap
in our strategic objectives in Syria, and Moscow's principal
objective in Syria is to shore up the weak, yet savage Assad
regime. If we back off active opposition to Assad, which I
think would be a serious concession to Mr. Putin, can we depend
on Moscow to be a real partner in Syria and beyond against
Islamic extremism?
We can add other issues to this possible dialogue.
Cooperation in dealing with drug trafficking and space
exploration should be on the table. There is ample opportunity
that the Kremlin and the White House can achieve a great deal
when our interests are similar and we work together.
But we must, however, be realistic and not turn our eyes
from places where Moscow is challenging our interests.
President Putin has made clear that he wants to upend the post-
Cold War order established in Europe. He and senior Russian
officials have justified aggression in Ukraine by claiming a
right to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers there.
They have said that this principle applies elsewhere. Their
goal is to weaken NATO, the European Union, and the
transatlantic relationship.
Clearly there are two sides to every story. However, over
the past nine years, as both of you have mentioned, the Kremlin
has committed multiple acts of aggression in Georgia in 2008,
in Crimea in 2014, and since then, an ongoing, not-so-covert
war in Ukraine's east. It has agreed to two ceasefires and
violated each repeatedly.
Moscow has indicated by actions and statements that if it
succeeds in Ukraine, there could be future targets. All three
of our NATO allies in the Baltics, Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, are worried. Two of them, Estonia and Latvia, with
their large ethnic Russian populations are concerned that
Russia might try to use them as an excuse. Moscow sent this
message when it kidnapped an Estonian intelligence official
from Estonia on the same day that the Wales NATO summit ended
in September of 2014.
We have a vital interest in stopping Moscow's revanchist
policies before they move to other countries, especially our
NATO allies in the Baltics. Yes, we can conduct negotiations
with Moscow on global issues, but we also need to continue to
strengthen NATO's presence along its eastern flank. The Warsaw
NATO summit last summer took decisions to do that. The
administration should endorse those decisions and reaffirm our
article 5 commitment to defend each NATO member under threat,
and it should take the lead in enhancing NATO capacities to
deal with hybrid war, as you both mentioned, the appearance of
disguised Russian agents or ``little green men'' in allied
countries as an example. To underscore our commitment to the
Alliance, I agree with the President's plan to meet first with
his NATO colleagues before seeing Mr. Putin.
Mr. Putin understands the value of negotiating from
strength. We can demonstrate our strength by developing a more
forward defensive force and a more forward defensive force
posture to deal with the Kremlin's challenges to Europe.
Additionally, we should more fully support Ukraine against the
Kremlin's aggression. In our past, we have been reluctant to
provide Ukraine with defensive weapons so as to better defend
itself. Our team should review that decision.
Part of this is maintaining the economic pressure on
Moscow. Our and Europe's economic sanctions, which cost the
Russian economy 1 to 1.5 percent of its GDP [Gross Domestic
Product] in 2015, were imposed as an incentive for Moscow to
meet its Minsk commitments and withdraw from Ukraine's east and
as a deterrence against any additional aggression. It would be
a sign of weakness to ease those sanctions for anything less
than Moscow's full compliance with Minsk, which means a full
restoration of the internationally recognized border between
Russia and Ukraine. The more trouble the Kremlin has in
conducting its war in Ukraine, the less likely it is to cause
trouble for us with our eastern NATO partners.
The last six months have demonstrated that we must greatly
improve our cyber defense to block and deter operations that
the Kremlin has been conducting against us and others. The
latest dump of documents via Wiki is another reminder of the
need to raise our cyber defense. We also need to consider how
we can respond to future cyber attacks in ways--perhaps not
public--that would deter future cyber aggression. This is
another subject for discussion with Moscow once we strengthen
our position.
Finally, sir, the world and the United States have enjoyed
extraordinary peace, stability, and prosperity since the end of
World War II and the Cold War. As just one measure, in 1970
over two billion of the world's three billion people lived in
extreme poverty. In 2015, less than 1 billion of the globe's
nearly seven billion people are in extreme poverty. An
important reason for this is the peace and stability created by
the great institutions that the United States, with its
European partners, put together at the end of World War II, and
that, sir, includes NATO.
We have a vital interest in maintaining a strong NATO and a
vibrant Europe.
A dialogue with Moscow is possible. So too is cooperation.
If the Kremlin is ready to work with us against Daesh or to
improve the Iranian nuclear deal, we should be ready. But we
should not be shy or hesitant about defending our interests
when we are under challenge from the Kremlin. A policy of
strength requires nothing less.
[The prepared statement of General Breedlove. follows:]
Prepared Statement by General Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (Ret)
Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, thank you for this invitation
to testify before you again. It is an honor to be here to talk about
United States Strategy and policy in Europe, and in particular I
applaud your inquiry into United States-Russian relations.
United States-Russian relations are very much in the news these
days. I believe it is appropriate given their importance; and I believe
it is essential to look at these relations in a thorough, dispassionate
way. That is what I hope we do today. There is much talk about a new
start with the Kremlin, and given the right framework and circumstances
I believe that has merit.
Our current vector in United States-Russian relations is not a good
one, and I believe if we do not find the right framework for engagement
it will not improve. The key is that framework and how we proceed.
Russia is a great power with a proud history, the world's largest
country in terms of territory, and a player on the world stage. Russia
possesses the world's second most powerful military: a nuclear arsenal
comparable to ours and conventional forces that are easily the most
powerful in Europe. While its economy is stagnant and has been hit hard
by the low prices of oil and natural gas, it is still the 12th largest
in dollar terms. We cannot simply dismiss Russia as a declining and
regional power.
Again, given the right framework it makes great sense for our
Government to have meaningful discussions with Russia at a number of
different levels. We have much to discuss with the Kremlin. First, we
would like to make sure our relationship does not deteriorate further.
While we have more strategic matters to discuss, we need to address
shared concerns about Moscow's current practice of flying warplanes
dangerously close, and at times without their transponders on, to
American and other NATO planes and ships. Such incidents risk fatal
accidents and even a clash between the United States and Russia. We
need to re-establish substantive communication between our militaries
in order to avoid such incidents, and when they occur, to move toward
de-confliction.
If Moscow really wants to improve relations, progress on these
questions should not be too hard to achieve. With an incremental
approach and incremental successes, we can start to look for more
substantial meetings to take on more difficult questions. Once we make
progress in deconfliction we can address more global issues of mutual
interest. Holding a summit to launch that dialog would signal a
commitment by Washington and Moscow, and would provide an important
opportunity to address an issue important for over half a century:
nuclear disarmament. This area has been dormant for some time now. Of
course, before we can move to new agreements on nuclear issues, it is
important that Moscow moves quickly to cease its violation of the
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement.
Iran is another important area for discussion. Moscow and Iran have
worked together closely in Syria. Iran even provided Russian warplanes
a base for a brief period of time; yet at the same time Moscow worked
with us and others in persuading Tehran to sign the agreement on its
nuclear program. Our administration has indicated that it wants to take
a second look and improve the terms of that agreement. Is Moscow
willing to partner on this? Or does it prefer good relations with
Tehran at the expense of stability in the Persian Gulf?
A third area to discuss is working with the Russians to counter
Daesch, or the Islamic State of Iraq, and the Levant (ISIL), and other
violent extremist organizations. If Moscow were a reliable partner
against Daesch, the advantages are obvious. The complication, though,
is that Moscow's military operation in Syria has devoted little
attention to these extremists. It has instead been directed against our
moderate allies and lately, as it works with Ankara, against the Kurds.
In addition, Moscow's saturation bombing against towns and cities
has fueled refugee flows, exacerbating the refugee crisis in Europe. In
fact, there has been very little overlap in our strategic objectives in
Syria, and Moscow's principal objective in Syria is to shore up the
weak, yet savage, Assad regime. If we back off active opposition to
Assad--a serious concession to Mr. Putin--can we depend on Moscow to be
a real partner in Syria and beyond against Islamic extremists?
We can add other issues to this possible dialog. Cooperation in
dealing with drug trafficking and space exploration should also be on
the table. There is ample opportunity that the Kremlin and the White
House can achieve a great deal when our interests are similar and we
work together.
We must however be realistic and not turn our eyes from places
where Moscow is challenging our interests. President Putin has made
clear that he wants to upend the post-Cold War order established in
Europe. He and senior Russian officials have justified aggression in
Ukraine by claiming a right to protect ethnic Russians and Russian
speakers there; and they have said that this principle applies
elsewhere. Their goal is to weaken NATO, the European Union, and the
Transatlantic relationship.
Clearly there are two sides to every story, however, and over the
past nine years, the Kremlin has committed multiple acts of aggression:
in Georgia in 2008; in Crimea in early 2014; and since then an ongoing
not-so-covert war in Ukraine's East. It has agreed to two ceasefires--
Minsk I and II--and violated each repeatedly.
Moscow has indicated, by actions and statements that if it succeeds
in Ukraine, there could be future targets. All three of our NATO Allies
in the Baltics--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--are worried. Two of
them, Estonia and Latvia, with their large ethnic Russian populations,
are concerned that Russia might try to use them as an excuse. Moscow
sent this message when it kidnapped an Estonian intelligence official
from Estonia on the same day that the Wales NATO summit ended in
September of 2014.
We have a vital interest in stopping Moscow's revanchist policies
before they move to other countries, especially our NATO allies in the
Baltics. Yes, we can conduct negotiations with Moscow on global issues;
but we also need to continue to strengthen NATO's presence along its
eastern flank. The Warsaw NATO summit last summer took decisions to do
that. The new Administration should endorse those decisions and
reaffirm our article 5 commitment to defend each NATO member under
threat; and it should take the lead in enhancing NATO capacities to
deal with hybrid war--the appearance of disguised Russian agents or
little green men--in Allied countries. To underscore our commitment to
the Alliance, I agree with the President's plan to meet first with his
NATO colleagues before seeing President Putin.
Mr. Putin understands the value of negotiating from strength. We
can demonstrate our strength by developing a more forward defensive
force posture to deal with the Kremlin's challenges to Europe.
Additionally, we should more fully support Ukraine against the
Kremlin's aggression. In our past, we have been reluctant to provide
Ukraine with defensive weapons so as to better defend itself, our team
should review that decision.
Part of this is maintaining the economic pressure on Moscow. Our,
and Europe's, economic sanctions--which cost the Russian economy 1-1.5
of GDP in 2015--were imposed as an incentive for Moscow to meet its
Minsk commitments and withdraw from Ukraine's East, and as a deterrence
against additional aggression. It would be a sign of weakness to ease
those sanctions for anything less than Moscow's full compliance with
Minsk, which means a full restoration of the internationally recognized
border between Russia and Ukraine. The more trouble the Kremlin has
conducting its war in Ukraine, the less likely it is to cause trouble
for us with our eastern NATO partners.
The last six months have demonstrated that we must greatly improve
our cyber defenses to block and deter the operations that the Kremlin
has been conducting against us and others. The latest dump of documents
via Wiki Leaks is another reminder of the need to raise our cyber
defense. We also need to consider how we can respond to future cyber-
attacks in ways--perhaps not public--that would deter future cyber
aggression. This is another subject for discussion with Moscow--once we
strengthen our position.
The world and the United States have enjoyed extraordinary peace,
stability and prosperity since the end of World War II and the Cold
War. To take just one measure, in 1970 over two billion of the world's
three billion people lived in extreme poverty. In 2015 less than one
billion of the globe's nearly 7 billion people are in extreme poverty.
An important reason for this is the peace and stability created by the
great institutions that the United States created with its European
partners at the end of World War II to include NATO and the European
Union.
We have a vital interest in maintaining a strong NATO and vibrant
Europe.
A dialogue with Moscow is possible. So too is cooperation. If the
Kremlin is ready to work with us against Daesch or to improve the
Iranian nuclear deal, we should be ready. But we should not be shy or
hesitant about defending our interests when we are under challenge from
the Kremlin. A policy of strength requires nothing less.
The Atlantic Council takes no institutional positions on policy
issues and has no affiliation with the United States Government. All
statements of fact and expressions of opinion contained herein are the
sole responsibility of the author.
Chairman McCain. Ambassador Burns, welcome back.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR WILLIAM J. BURNS, PRESIDENT, CARNEGIE
ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Ambassador Burns. Thank you very much. Chairman McCain,
Ranking Member Reed, members of the committee, I am honored to
be with you again, and I am honored to join General Breedlove
and Ambassador Vershbow. I am glad to offer a few very brief
thoughts on the challenges posed by Putin's Russia and what to
do about it.
In the quarter century since the end of the Cold War,
profound grievances, misperceptions, and disappointments have
often defined the relationship between the United States and
Russia. I lived through this turbulence during my years as a
diplomat in Moscow, navigating the curious mix of hope and
humiliation that I remember so vividly, and the Russia Boris
Yeltsin and the pugnacity and raw ambition of Vladimir Putin's
Kremlin. I lived through it in Washington, serving both
Republican and Democratic administrations.
There have been more than enough illusions on both sides.
The United States has oscillated between visions of an enduring
partnership with Moscow and dismissing it as a sulking regional
power in terminal decline. Russia has moved between notions of
a strategic partnership with the United States and a later
deeper desire to upend the current international order where a
dominant United States consigns Russia to a subordinate role.
The reality in my view is that our relationship with Russia
will remain competitive and often adversarial for the
foreseeable future. At its core is a fundamental disconnect in
outlook and about each other's role in the world.
President Putin's deeply troubling interference in our
elections, like his broader foreign policy, has at least two
motivating factors.
The first is his conviction that the surest path to
restoring Russia as a great power comes at the expense of an
American-led order. Resentful of what he and many in the
Russian political elite perceive as a pattern of the West
taking advantage of Russia's moment of historic weakness, Putin
wants Russia unconstrained by Western values and institutions,
free to pursue a sphere of influence.
The second motivating factor is closely connected to the
first. The legitimacy of Putin's system of repressive domestic
control depends on the existence of external threats. Surfing
on high oil prices, he used to be able to bolster his social
contract with the Russian people through rising standards of
living. But Putin has lost that card in a world of lower energy
prices and Western sanctions and with a one-dimensional economy
in which real reform is trumped by the imperative of political
control and the corruption that lubricates it.
The ultimate realist, Putin is not blind to Russia's
relative weakness but regularly demonstrates that declining
powers can be at least as disruptive as rising powers. He tends
to see a target-rich environment around him. If he cannot
easily build Russia up, he can take the United States down a
few pegs with his characteristic tactical agility and
willingness to play rough and take risks. If he cannot have a
deferential government in Kyiv, he can grab Crimea and try to
engineer the next best thing, a dysfunctional Ukraine. If he
cannot abide the risk of regime upheaval in Syria, he can flex
Russia's military muscle, emasculate the West, and preserve
Bashar al Assad atop the rubble of Aleppo. If he cannot
directly intimidate the European Union, he can accelerate its
unraveling by supporting anti-union nationalists and exploiting
the wave of migration spawned in part by his own brutality. If
we cannot directly confront NATO, he can probe for fissures
within it and make mischief in the Balkans.
So what do we do about all of this? Russia is still too
big, proud, and influential to ignore and still the only
nuclear power comparable to the United States. It remains a
major player on problems from the Arctic to Iran and North
Korea. The challenge before us, it seems to me, is to manage
without illusions a difficult and combative relationship. I
would highlight five key elements of a realistic strategy.
First, we need to sustain and, if necessary, amplify the
steps we have taken in response to Russian hacking. It would be
foolish to think that Russia's serious assault on our election
can or should be played down however inconvenient. Russia
challenged the integrity of our democratic system, and it sees
Europe's 2017 electoral landscape as the next battlefield.
Second, we have to reassure our European allies of our
absolute commitment to NATO, as General Breedlove stressed. In
diplomacy, remembering your base is just as important as it is
in politics, and it is what should guide our policy toward
Russia. Our network of allies is not a millstone around
America's neck, but a powerful asset that sets us apart from
relatively lonely major powers like Russia and China.
Third, we have to stay sharply focused on Ukraine, a
country's whose fate will be critical to the future of Europe
and the future of Russia over the next generation. This is not
about the distant aspirations of NATO or European Union
membership. It is about helping Ukrainian leaders build the
successful political and economic system that Russia seeks to
subvert. This is just one dramatic example of why the
administration's proposed foreign assistance cuts are so
terribly shortsighted.
Fourth, we should be wary of superficially appealing
notions like a common war on Islamic extremism or a common
effort to contain China. Russia's bloody role in Syria and its
continued attachment to Assad make the terrorist threat worse,
not better. Its long-term concerns about a rising China to its
east are real, but for now, Putin has little inclination to
sacrifice the relationship with Beijing, critical to the more
immediate objective of eroding an American-led order.
Fifth and finally, we need to focus on critical and
practical priorities like rebuilding habits of communication
between the United States and Russian militaries, again as
General Breedlove stressed, to help forestall inadvertent
collisions in Europe or in the Middle East. As former Senator
Sam Nunn has argued, we should engage in our own cold-blooded
self-interest, as well as Russia's, on issues where we can both
benefit, particularly reducing the risks of nuclear
confrontation and of nuclear or radiological materials falling
into the wrong hands. For all our profound differences, Russia
and the United States share a unique capability and a unique
responsibility to reduce nuclear risks.
Mr. Chairman, I have no illusions about the challenge
before us. It really pays to neglect or underestimate Russia or
display gratuitous disrespect, but I am also convinced that
firmness and vigilance and a healthy grasp of the limits of the
possible are the best way to deal with the combustible
combination of grievance and insecurity that Vladimir Putin
embodies. We have a better hand to play than he does. We should
play it methodically, confident in our enduring strengths, and
unapologetic about our values.
Thank you very much.
[In lieu of a written statement, Ambassador Burns submitted
the following articles:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman McCain. Thank you.
Ambassador Vershbow?
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR ALEXANDER R. VERSHBOW, DISTINGUISHED
FELLOW, BRENT SCOWCROFT CENTER ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
Ambassador Vershbow. Thank you. Chairman McCain, Ranking
Member Reed, other members of the committee, it is an honor for
me to be able to speak before you today on United States
security strategy and policy in Europe and, in particular, how
to meet the challenge posed by an aggressive revisionist
Russia.
I submitted a longer prepared statement in which I describe
the many dimensions of the Russian challenge. Of course, the
watershed event occurred exactly three years ago with the
illegal annexation of Crimea and the launching of the ongoing
campaign to destabilize other parts of Ukraine. President Putin
tore up the international rulebook, and he ended a period, as
you said, Mr. Chairman, of more than 20 years when we looked to
Russia as a potential partner.
Three years later, the Russian challenge has become even
more serious. Not only have they continued the aggression
against Ukraine, they have engaged in political aggression
against our societies using cyber attacks, disinformation, and
influence operations to affect the outcome of elections and
undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.
In essence, Russia is trying to undo decades of progress
toward a more stable and integrated Euro-Atlantic community and
to go back to the days when Russia dominated its neighbors
through force and coercion. It aims to weaken and divide NATO
and the European Union and to reduce their attractiveness to
other European nations. It even sponsored an armed coup d?etat
in Montenegro last year to derail that country's accession to
NATO. It wants to reduce U.S. influence in the world. But I
think the main driver of what is going on is a determination to
preserve the Putin regime's grip on power by discrediting any
Western-oriented alternative and distracting the Russian people
from the country's economic decline. So as Bill Burns said,
that requires an external enemy.
Of course, now the challenge to the international order
extends to the Middle East with devastating consequences for
the people of Syria while contributing little to international
efforts to defeat ISIS. All of this is occurring against a
backdrop of a massive upgrading of Russian military forces in
every domain while Russia flouts its obligations under arms
control agreements, including violating the INF Treaty.
So while we should always seek constructive relations with
Russia, we must approach that relationship without any
illusions. Since it is Russia's actions which have
fundamentally changed our relationship, any change for the
better depends on changes in Russian behavior. To get there, we
need a comprehensive strategy that builds upon the combined
material and moral strength of our close allies and partners in
Europe and around the world. As in the Cold War, we must engage
with Russia but from a position of strength.
Now, what would be the elements of a comprehensive
strategy? As you know, I spent the last five years as Deputy
Secretary-General of NATO, and I am pleased to say that the
Alliance is in a much stronger position than it was three years
ago militarily and politically to meet the Russian challenge.
General Breedlove deserves a lot of the credit for that.
Since 2014, NATO has carried out the most significant
increase in its collective defense posture for a generation.
Allies have begun to reverse the decline in defense spending.
They have increased NATO's ability to reinforce allies at short
notice, increased the scale and frequency of exercises, boosted
cyber and missile defense, strengthened intelligence sharing,
and tried to speed up decision-making in a crisis.
At Warsaw last July, allies decided that credible
deterrence also required additional forces on the ground. So
they agreed to deploy multinational battalions in Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and also to increase NATO's
presence in Southeastern Europe as well. So now if Russian
troops or ``little green men'' cross the borders, they will
immediately face troops from across the Alliance from both
sides of the Atlantic rather than just national forces.
I am pleased to say that the United States is playing a
very key role in implementing these decisions, leading the
battalion in Poland and contributing additional combat
capabilities under the European Deterrence Initiative. This
initiative is critical to the credibility of NATO's defense and
deterrence posture, and I hope it will continue to receive full
support from the new administration and the Congress as a
demonstration of our unequivocal commitment to the Alliance.
But the United States is not shouldering this burden alone.
I am pleased to say that the UK, Canada, and Germany are
leading NATO's battalions in the three Baltic States, and 12
other allies have stepped up to provide units.
Nevertheless, there is a lot more that our allies need to
do in the coming years, which I spell out in my written
statement. They have to contribute more follow-on forces, more
investments in air and missile defense, precision strike, anti-
submarine warfare capabilities to counter Russian A2/AD
capabilities. That all requires resources, and I hope that by
the time of the mini-summit in late May, that all allies will
have concrete plans to accelerate the increasing of their
defense spending to meet the two percent of GDP goal.
Now, we cannot just circle the wagons and strengthen NATO's
28 members alone. There is also a need to do more to bolster
the capabilities of Russia's neighbors who are directly
threatened by Moscow and strengthen our partnerships with
countries like Sweden and Finland who can help the Alliance,
especially in the Baltic Sea region. Our packages of support
for Ukraine and Georgia through NATO have helped with the
defense reforms, but they would benefit from a lot more
resources.
Bilaterally, the United States nonlethal defensive weapons
assistance and training has helped Ukraine's armed forces
prevent further Russian incursions in the Donbas, but we should
consider expanding the support quantitatively and qualitatively
to include lethal systems such as anti-tank weapons, UAVs
[Unmanned Ariel Vehicles], and air defenses if Russia continues
its aggression in eastern Ukraine.
Of course, while it is not our focus today, NATO needs to
look south as well as east when it comes to strengthening its
neighbors. A bigger effort in defense capacity building for
partners in the Middle East and North Africa could address the
root causes of terrorism and migration.
Now, Russian interference in our presidential election and
its similar efforts in Europe call for a strong response both
at the national level and through NATO and the EU [European
Union]. We need to do more to ensure the integrity of our
election processes and institutions against cyber attacks and
foreign manipulation. We should devote additional resources to
detecting and analyzing Russian propaganda and influence
operations, work with the social media companies to label or
take down false stories before they go viral, and expand radio,
TV, and Internet broadcasting, especially in the Russian
language, to debunk disinformation and fake news. We should not
fight propaganda with propaganda, however, but project a
positive narrative about what the West stands for.
I think NATO could take a bigger role in the countering
influence operations and Russian active measures. These may not
be traditionally in NATO's mandate, but defending societies is
just as important as defending borders. Here we should join
forces with the European Union to forge and integrate a
strategy for countering the whole spectrum of hybrid warfare
methods since NATO does not have all the necessary tools.
Now, just a few words on how to engage with Russia. First
of all, I would agree that we need a unified approach with our
democratic allies, one consistent with our shared values and
principles. This means, first of all, that engagement should
address head on the fundamental reason why relations have
deteriorated in the first place: Russia's aggression against
Ukraine and its violation of the rules that have kept the peace
in Europe since the end of World War II.
Time is of the essence. In recent days, Russia has
increased its military and political pressure on Ukraine. The
Minsk process led by Germany and France may have prevented
further deterioration up until now, but it does not provide
sufficient leverage to induce Russia to reverse course and
withdraw its forces and its proxies from the occupied
territories. So I would argue that stronger, high-level United
States diplomatic engagement working with Kyiv, Berlin, and
Paris may be necessary to achieve real progress and avoid
another intractable frozen conflict.
So I would urge the Trump administration to make solving of
the conflict in eastern Ukraine the litmus test and the
essential first step in any reengagement effort with Moscow,
and as a first step, we should consult with our allies to
develop a common strategy. There may be things to talk about
with Russia on Iran, ISIS, North Korea, but the core issue that
we need to tackle head on is the aggression in Ukraine. Any
bargain with Moscow and any easing of sanctions should be
contingent on fully implementing the Minsk agreements and
restoring Ukrainian sovereignty over the Donbas, including
control over its international borders. Anything less would
reward Russian aggression and only embolden Mr. Putin further.
Last but not least, successful pursuit of the kind of
strategy I have outlined depends on Western unity and resolve.
That unity and resolve is being tested not just by external
challengers like Putin and ISIS, it is also threatened from
within: Brexit, public dissatisfaction with illegal migration,
and slow economic growth, a Turkey that seems to be drifting
away from Western values, to name just a few. As in the past,
United States leadership will be essential in holding NATO
together and in ensuring that decision-making by consensus
continues to be effective. At the same time, the United States
needs to demonstrate in word and deed that it supports a
strong, united Europe as an indispensable partner in dealing
with Russia and other challenges even as we work to overcome
differences on trade or refugee policy.
The perception that the Trump administration is skeptical
about the European Project could exacerbate internal divisions
within Europe and provide openings for Russian mischief making.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Vershbow follows:]
Prepared Statement by Ambassador Alexander Vershbow
the russian challenge
Three years ago this month, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and
laid the groundwork for its campaign to destabilize Ukraine. That
moment marked the end of a period of more than twenty years when the
countries of the West looked to Russia as a partner. Of course, even
before 2014, Russia had demonstrated a pattern of destabilizing
countries in its neighborhood, particularly Moldova and Georgia. But
Russia's aggression against Ukraine--including the first changing of
borders by force in Europe since World War II--represented a new
strategic reality, and a wake-up call for the United States and its
NATO Allies.
That new strategic reality is even starker today: Russia has not
only continued to undermine the post-WWII and post-Cold War
international order--an order based on respect for the sovereignty of
nations, and the rule of law--through its illegal occupation of Crimea
and its ongoing war of aggression in Eastern Ukraine; Russia has also
engaged in political aggression against our societies, using cyber-
attacks, disinformation, propaganda, and influence operations (what the
Soviets called ``active measures'') to affect the outcome of elections
and to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.
In essence, Russia is trying to undo decades of progress toward a
more stable and integrated Euro-Atlantic community. It wants to turn
back the clock to a time when Russia dominated neighboring countries
through force and coercion. Using military intimidation, economic
warfare and ``active measures,'' it aims to weaken and divide NATO and
the European Union, which it sees as the main obstacles to its expanded
power in Europe, and to reduce their attractiveness to other European
nations. It openly works to destabilize countries that seek closer ties
to the Euro-Atlantic community, as we are seeing in the Western
Balkans, even sponsoring an armed coup d'etat in Montenegro last year
to derail its accession to NATO. All of this is driven by a
determination to preserve the Putin regime's grip on power by
discrediting any Western-oriented alternative and distracting the
public from Russia's economic decline.
Moscow's challenge to the international rules-based order now
extends beyond Europe to Syria and the broader Middle East. As Russia
has provided greater levels of military support for President Assad--
including bombing moderate opposition groups and critical
infrastructure, and driving tens of thousands of civilians from Aleppo
and other cities--it has made it even more difficult to find a long-
term end to the war in Syria, while contributing little to
international efforts to defeat ISIS. Now, Russia may be seeking a
foothold in Libya, putting at risk international efforts to support the
government of national accord and end the civil war.
All of this has occurred against the backdrop of a massive
upgrading of Russian military forces, both conventional and nuclear.
After their forces' poor performance against Georgia in 2008, Russian
military spending has increased by one-third and its modernization
programs have transformed Russian capabilities in every domain. At the
same time, Russia continues to flout many of its obligations under arms
control and transparency regimes, as we have seen with the recent news
about the deployment of a long-range ground-launched cruise missile in
violation of the INF Treaty.
guiding principles
While we should always seek constructive relations with Russia, we
must approach the relationship without illusions. We need to recognize
that it is Russia's actions which have fundamentally changed our
relationship, and that any change for the better depends on changes in
Russian behavior. Meeting the Russian challenge in the years ahead
calls for a comprehensive strategy, building on the combined material
and moral strength of our close Allies and partners in Europe and
around the world.
To achieve a more stable and constructive relationship with Moscow
that is sustainable for the long term, we must speak with Russia from a
position of strength. During the Cold War, a strong deterrence paved
the way for detente, for arms control agreements, and for our
relatively predictable and stable relationship with the Soviet Union.
Our situation today is different, but it requires a similar approach. A
combination of strength and engagement is the best way to bring Russia
back to compliance with international law and with Helsinki principles.
elements of a strategy
A comprehensive strategy for meeting the Russian challenge should
have many elements, including: bolstering our defense and deterrence
against potential Russian threats; supporting Russia's neighbors in
their efforts to build strong, resilient societies and defend their
sovereignty; countering the Russians' revisionist, anti-Western
propaganda and other forms of ``hybrid'' warfare aimed at undermining
our democracies; and continuing to support the aspirations of the
Russian people for freedom and democracy over the longer term. In all
of these lines of effort, we have a greater chance of success by
working closely with our European allies and partners.
Bolstering Defense and Deterrence
When it comes to bolstering defense and deterrence, the NATO
Alliance today is in a much stronger position than it was three years
ago to meet the Russian challenge. Since the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO
has carried out the most significant increase in its collective defense
posture for a generation. Allies have begun to reverse the decline in
defense spending, with total spending up by 3 percent last year.
Through the Readiness Action Plan, Allies have increased their ability
to reinforce any Ally at short notice with a much larger NATO Response
Force of 40,000 troops and a quick-reaction Spearhead Force, ready to
move within days to wherever it might be needed. They also increased
the scale and frequency of military exercises, developed a strategy for
countering ``hybrid'' warfare, boosted NATO's cyber and ballistic
missile defenses, strengthened intelligence sharing within the
Alliance, and introduced measures to speed up decision-making in a
crisis.
At the Warsaw Summit last July, Allies took even more far-reaching
decisions to strengthen deterrence for the long term. Allied leaders
decided that, with Russia's continuing military build-up and its
growing anti-access/area denial capability, it is not enough to rely on
reinforcements alone. Credible deterrence also requires additional
forces on the ground. So at Warsaw, NATO leaders agreed to enhance
NATO's forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance with the
deployment of multinational battalions in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia, and to increase its presence in southeastern Europe as well.
So, should any country act aggressively against a NATO Ally, they would
immediately face troops from across the Alliance, from both sides of
the Atlantic, rather than just the national forces of one country.
The United States is playing a key role in implementing these
decisions, serving as lead nation for the multinational battalion in
Poland, and contributing additional combat capabilities as part of the
billion-dollar European Deterrence Initiative. The EDI (and its
predecessor, the European Reassurance Initiative) have ensured an
almost continuous presence of United States combat forces across NATO's
eastern flank--reassuring our Allies, enhancing interoperability and
readiness, and leaving the Russians in no doubt that they would pay a
heavy price for testing Alliance resolve. EDI is critical to the
credibility of NATO's defense and deterrence posture, and I hope it
will continue to receive full support from the new Administration and
the Congress.
When it comes to the eastern flank, the United States is not
bearing an outsized share of the burden. American contributions are
being matched by increased efforts on the part of the European Allies
and Canada. The UK, Canada and Germany have taken the leading role in
NATO's enhanced forward presence in the three Baltic States, reinforced
by units from 12 other Allies, and seven European Allies are serving in
succession as lead nation for NATO's rapidly deployable ``spearhead''
force. This is a good example of transatlantic teamwork.
Nevertheless, there's more that needs to be done in the coming
years. For example, while our Allies have stepped up by providing
forces for the eastern flank, they will also need to do their share in
fielding the follow-on forces--ground, air and naval--and the critical
enablers needed to back up these ``first responders.'' Right now, the
U.S. provides the majority of these forces, and allies should commit to
shouldering at least 50 percent of the burden within the next few
years.
Allies will also need to do their part in countering the Russians'
growing anti-access and area denial capabilities in the Baltic and
Black Sea regions, which could seriously impede NATO's ability to bring
in reinforcements. This means investing more in air and missile
defense, precision strike, and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
Allies will also need to commit more assets to the standing NATO
maritime groups to ensure that the Alliance is able to maintain freedom
of navigation in the North Atlantic. Despite the renewed emphasis on
territorial defense, Allies need to maintain and strengthen their
expeditionary capabilities so that NATO is fully equipped to fight
terrorism and manage crises beyond NATO's borders.
All of this requires additional resources. Allies must not only
adopt concrete plans to fulfill the pledge to raise defense spending to
2 percent of GDP by 2024, as Secretary of Defense Mattis called for in
February; they should accelerate these efforts if possible. They should
also speed up efforts to meet the even more important target of
devoting 20 percent of their defense budgets to new equipment and R&D--
a benchmark now met by only ten of the 28 allies.
Enhancing the Resilience of Allies and Partners
Spending more on defense is vital, but it is not enough. Russia
exploits the weakness and vulnerabilities of our societies and uses
cyber-attacks and propaganda to turn a country's citizens against their
own government and toward Russia. Allies must therefore strengthen
their resilience in key practical areas. Governments must ensure that
their cyber defenses are strong, that they have a high degree of civil
preparedness, and that their critical national infrastructure is
protected. Resilience is the essential first rung of the deterrence
ladder.
Moreover, we can't just circle the wagons and strengthen the
resilience of NATO's 28 members alone. Allies also need to bolster the
capabilities of Russia's neighbors who are threatened by Moscow, and
strengthen NATO's partnerships with other European partners, such as
Sweden and Finland, who can help the Alliance in key regions like the
Baltic Sea.
NATO has been engaged for many years in assisting Georgia and
Ukraine to carry out defense reforms, to raise the proficiency of their
armed forces, and to bring them closer to NATO standards. Since 2014,
NATO has expanded these efforts through the Substantial NATO-Georgia
Package and Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine, and it has
deployed a team of resident defense advisors to each country. But both
these efforts are relatively under-resourced in comparison to European
Union efforts in the police and judicial sectors, and I recommend that
the Trump Administration push for their expansion.
Bilaterally, the United States has provided non-lethal defensive
weapons assistance to Ukraine, and together with Canada, offered
valuable training to Ukrainian armed forces. This has helped them
prevent further Russian incursions in the Donbas. We should consider
expanding this support both quantitatively and qualitatively, to
include lethal defensive weapons such as anti-tank weapons and air
defenses, if Russia continues its aggression in Eastern Ukraine.
When it comes to strengthening its neighbors, NATO needs to look
South as well as East, by doing more to project stability to its
partners in the Middle East and North Africa. Helping Middle Eastern
neighbors build reliable defense institutions, secure their borders,
and fight terrorism in their own regions is the best way to prevent
them from becoming failed states and safe havens for ISIS. It would be
a tangible way for NATO to address the root causes of the migration
crisis and home-grown terrorism in Allied countries. It would also
reduce opportunities for Russian meddling. In many areas, such as North
Africa, defense capacity building could be done in partnership with the
European Union. It makes no sense to compete with one another, when
there is more than enough work to go around for both organizations.
Defending our Societies and Countering Russian Disinformation
Russian interference in the United States presidential election
last year and its similar efforts to influence the outcome of European
elections call for a strong response at the national level, but there
is also a role for NATO and the EU as well.
Nationally, we need to ensure the integrity of our election
processes and institutions against cyber-attacks and foreign
manipulation; we should devote additional resources to detecting and
analyzing Russian propaganda and influence operations; we should work
with social media platforms to label or take down false stories before
the go viral; and we should expand radio, television and internet
broadcasting aimed at debunking disinformation and ``fake news.'' We
shouldn't fight propaganda with propaganda, however, but project a
positive narrative, one that conveys what the West stands for, to our
own publics and to Russian-speaking audiences.
Multilaterally, we should urge our NATO allies to support a bigger
Alliance role in countering influence operations, disinformation and
``active measures'' by Russia. These are not traditionally problems
within NATO's mandate, but defending our societies is just as important
as defending our borders. Here too, closer collaboration between NATO
and the EU would make sense--in countering propaganda and
disinformation, in sharing intelligence about cyber and other
asymmetric threats, and in conducting joint exercises to ensure that
``little green men'' are not able to do to our countries what they did
to Ukraine. I hope the Trump Administration will give its full support
to the development of an integrated NATO-EU strategy for countering
hybrid warfare, building on the Joint Declaration by NATO and EU
leaders issued in Warsaw.
Principled Engagement with Russia . . . starting with the Ukraine
crisis
The last, and most challenging, piece of a new political strategy
for the United States and its Allies is how to engage with Russia, even
as we seek to deter and counter the multiple threats it poses.
Relations with Moscow are at their lowest point in decades, and
President Trump is certainly right in wanting to explore possibilities
to reduce the risk of conflict, lower tensions and find areas for
mutually beneficial cooperation. But it is essential that any
engagement with Russia be based on a unified approach with our
democratic allies, one that is consistent with our shared values and
principles. Most importantly, engagement should address head-on the
fundamental reason why relations have deteriorated in the first place--
Russia's aggression against Ukraine and its violation of the rules that
have kept the peace in Europe in the decades since the end of World War
II.
Recently, Russia has increased its military and political pressure
on the ground in Eastern Ukraine while using multiple levers to
undermine and discredit the Ukrainian Government and its policies of
reform. The Minsk process, led by Germany and France, has been useful
in preventing a further deterioration of the situation, but does not
provide sufficient leverage to induce Russia to reconsider its approach
and withdraw its forces and its proxies from the occupied territories.
Stronger, high-level United States diplomatic engagement, working in
close coordination with Kyiv, Berlin and Paris, may be necessary to
achieve real progress and avoid another intractable frozen conflict.
Time is of the essence.
If the Trump Administration wants to pursue improved relations with
Russia, solving the conflict in Eastern Ukraine should be the litmus
test and the essential first step. Any ``bargain'' with Moscow should
be contingent on full implementation of the Minsk agreements and
restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the Donbas, including control
of its international borders. Anything less would reward Russian
aggression and only embolden Putin to further destabilize his
neighbors. Trading away Ukraine's sovereignty and independence in
return for greater cooperation against ISIS would be a devil's bargain,
and it would ultimately fail: the 45 million people of Ukraine will not
quietly accept being consigned to a Russian ``sphere of influence.''
Indeed, if Putin remains intransigent, we and our Allies should be
prepared to increase the pressure on Russia even further by tightening
sanctions and stepping up military and economic assistance to Ukraine.
challenges to transatlantic unity
Pursuing a strategy along the lines suggested above would provide
the foundation for engaging Russia in a dialogue that upholds our
values and restores the credibility of the international rules-based
order. But as noted previously, success depends on Western unity and
resolve. That unity is being tested not just by external challenges
like Russia and ISIS; it is also threatened from within.
NATO has not been seriously affected by Brexit or the refugee
crisis, but Alliance cohesion and solidarity could be challenged in
several ways: by a failure of Allies to follow-through on rectifying
the imbalance in defense spending; or by an inability to maintain the
balance in addressing threats from the East and the South that is
essential to Allied cohesion. The latest, and perhaps the most serious,
challenge comes from a Turkey that seems to be drifting away from
Western values and developing closer links with Moscow. As in the past,
U.S. leadership will be essential in holding NATO together and ensuring
that decision-making by consensus is not paralyzed.
For its part, the European Union will be increasingly preoccupied
by negotiations over the terms of Brexit, while struggling to manage
popular dissatisfaction over illegal migration and feeble economic
growth. The perception that the Trump Administration is skeptical about
the whole European project could exacerbate internal divisions within
Europe and provide openings for Russian mischief-making. The United
States needs to demonstrate, in word and deed, that it supports a
strong, united Europe as an indispensable partner in dealing with
Russia and other challenges, even as we work to overcome differences
over trade and refugee policy.
Chairman McCain. Thank you, Ambassador.
General Breedlove and Ambassador Burns, Ambassador Vershbow
just mentioned the need to provide lethal defensive weapons to
Ukraine. Do you agree with that, Ambassador Burns?
Ambassador Burns. If Russia continues its aggression in
eastern Ukraine or stimulates another significant escalation of
fighting, I do.
I think that what is important, though, is--all of us I
think emphasized the significance of alliance unity and to make
sure that we are working these issues with our key NATO
partners as well, as well as with the EU, because we want to
just keep our eye on the importance of sustaining sanctions as
well, the economic sanctions that exist, until there is full
implementation of Minsk.
Chairman McCain. Would you not agree that from a morale
purposes alone, much less capability, that it would be helpful
to give lethal defensive weapons to Ukrainians?
Ambassador Burns. I think it would, again especially in the
face of an escalation of Russian-inspired fighting in eastern
Ukraine.
Again, the only thing I would emphasize is the importance
of very close consultation with our allies so that this does
not become a contentious source of debate and an opportunity
for Putin to drive wedges between us and our NATO and EU
allies. That is all.
Chairman McCain. Good point.
General Breedlove?
General Breedlove. Sir, I believe that every nation has a
right to defend itself, and my recommendation on this has not
changed since when I was in my previous capacity and I do
support that.
Chairman McCain. Ambassador Vershbow, there is a little
country called Montenegro. There are only 650,000 people there.
As of February, 23 of the 28 member states approved the
accession of Montenegro into NATO. Why is the accession of
Montenegro so important, and why does Russia oppose the
accession of such a small country?
Ambassador Vershbow. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think the number
is now up to 25, and I hope the U.S. will join the ranks of
those who have ratified.
I think Montenegro's accession is important, in part, as a
matter of principle that since the end of the Cold War, we have
taken the position, together with our allies, that countries
should be able to seek membership in NATO if they can meet the
criteria and contribute to stability in their region and in
Europe at large. We put them through a lot of rigorous reforms
and defense improvements to meet those criteria. Montenegro did
what we expected of them.
I think it also is a contribution to stability in the
western Balkans, which is still unfinished business. We still
see internal divisions in Bosnia. We still see problems now in
Macedonia. So I think setting an example that countries that do
do their homework, meet the criteria, contribute to stability
in their neighborhood can become members of NATO, even if they
do not bring a huge amount of defense capability to the
Alliance.
Russia opposes this because they I think are trying to draw
a red line in the face of any further NATO enlargement. They
are most concerned about Ukraine and Georgia, but I think they
see the Balkans as an area of traditional influence for Russia,
and they are using all kinds of means, including the coup that
I mentioned, to detail Montenegro's accession even at this late
stage of the process.
Chairman McCain. Even to the point where they tried to
orchestrate a coup to overthrow the democratically elected
government.
Ambassador Vershbow. Indeed, and even Serbia, which is
ambivalent about NATO, I think was quite alarmed that their
territory was used to hatch a plot against a neighboring state
that they consider a friend and not an enemy.
Chairman McCain. Ambassador Burns?
Ambassador Burns. No. I agree absolutely. I think it is
important for the United States to follow through and join our
other NATO allies in approving Montenegro's accession.
Chairman McCain. Some of us believe, General Breedlove,
that Vladimir Putin may test us more by further misbehavior in
Ukraine. If that happens, which there are some indications of
that already, what should be our response?
General Breedlove. Chairman, thank you.
An axiom remains from my childhood behavior with my father,
and that is we should not reward bad behavior. I believe that
we should better equip Ukraine to meet those challenges.
I think Ambassador Burns made a very important point too.
We need to work with our allies to bring them along with us to
the same conclusion and set its support. I have offered
thoughts in the past about defensive weaponry and ways that we
can help Ukraine to have more resiliency in the face of this
tough pressure, and I think those are all still very valid.
Chairman McCain. Senator Reed?
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your outstanding testimony. Very
insightful and extremely timely.
One issue I think we all agree upon is that a military
response is necessary, strengthening NATO--and I joined the
chairman with his leadership in advocating for providing
defensive weapons to Ukraine several years ago. That is
necessary but not sufficient. What we also require is an
economic and geopolitical strategy.
I go to some of the points that were raised by all of the
panelists. It seems to me that as Ambassador Vershbow pointed
out, the Ukraine is a key test of our resolve. There it is not
just defensive weapons, it is significant aid for political
capacity building, anti-corruption efforts, diversifying the
energy from Russian supply exclusively to non-Russian supply.
That calls for an all-of-government approach and significant
resources. Perhaps the analogy is after World War II, it just
was not lots and lots of U.S. soldiers and airmen, but it was
the Marshall Plan that helped. Although that might be out of
our scope at the moment, we have to make significant
commitments beyond just military support.
The point again that the Ambassador made about the
weaknesses or the perception in Europe of disarray, EU under
pressure, Brexit. It is alarming when we have American voices
sort of cheering on Brexit, cheering on sort of some elements
that would encourage the dismemberment of the EU rather than
its strengthening.
So I would ask all of you just to comment in general about
this notion of necessary military support, but we have to go
the extra step across our entire government. General Breedlove?
General Breedlove. Sir, I fully agree, and what we talk
about occasionally is using all the elements of our Nation's
power. We use a simple model in the military. We are taught
DIME, diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
Certainly Russia uses all of those tools in putting pressure on
Ukraine, and our not only the United States, but the Western
response should contain all of those.
As you mentioned, considering how we can help nations like
Ukraine who are under pressure in that more broad front, I
completely agree that the answer does not only lie in the
military.
Senator Reed. Ambassador Burns?
Ambassador Burns. No. I absolutely agree. I think that kind
of a comprehensive strategy is essential, and I would just add
two points, I think one kind of strategic and more specific to
some parts of Europe.
The strategic point is that I think now more than ever, it
is important for the United States to invest in our
transatlantic relationships at a moment when our partners and
our allies in Europe are under pressure almost any place you
look on the geographic compass from the west, the issue of
Brexit; from the south, whether it is terrorism or migration
flows; and from the east, a resurgent Russia. It is very
important for us to invest in that relationship and recognize
its significance to almost anything the United States wants to
achieve in the world.
The second and more specific comment has to do with what
you said about Ukraine and our earlier conversation about the
Balkans. I think what is at stake in Ukraine is enormously
important for the United States and for our European allies. It
is partly about security and defense, but it is also partly,
just as you said, Senator Reed, about the economic and
political health of Ukraine. It is true the Ukrainian
leadership has to do its own part and has to climb out of a
hole, which in part is self-inflected in terms of corruption
over the years. But you now have a leadership that is beginning
to do that, and we need the kind of sustained focus and
resources from the United States, from Europe that is going to
help Ukrainians to help themselves at this critical moment. I
think the same is true in the Balkans where we have to keep our
eye on the ball as well.
Senator Reed. Ambassador Vershbow?
Ambassador Vershbow. Thank you.
I would agree with my colleagues that supporting Ukraine
and all of Russia's neighbors that are targeted by Putin for
his sphere of influence deserve our support, and that is a
comprehensive effort, military, political, economic, helping
them fight corruption. And, of course, Ukraine in the last
three years, despite having to fight an undeclared war in its
eastern provinces, has made more progress on reform than in the
previous 20-plus years since independence in 1991. A lot of the
support they are getting for that effort is coming from our
European partners. So it is not just the U.S. that is trying to
help them shore up their security, their resilience, their
economy and to fight corruption, which is the real big
challenge that they face.
So the cuts in State Department resources for these sorts
of programs are misguided. This is not charity, but it is
investing in greater stability and security in Europe because a
more resilient and secure Ukraine is really the best response
to Putin's aggression. The more that Ukraine succeeds in
establishing a democratic society with a robust economy, the
more it will send a signal to the people of Russia that the
kind of system that they are stuck with under President Putin
is less desirable than going back to the path of openness,
reform, and better relations with the West at the same time.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Wicker?
Senator Wicker. Well, I appreciate the excellent testimony,
and I agree that the more Ukraine succeeds, the better off it
is for us in the United States and the West, and I think it is
one of the most profoundly important issues that we face in the
next year or two.
Let me see if I have discovered a little bit of a distance
between our witnesses today. Ambassador Burns, you took most of
your testimony from an article that you previously wrote in the
New York Times. You have four steps, and then you went beyond
that in your oral testimony today to mention that,
nevertheless, in spite of everything Russia has done and all of
our problems, there are still areas of cooperation that we
could reach.
So would you restate that and be more specific? Then I will
ask General Breedlove and the Ambassador to respond to this
idea that you have.
Ambassador Burns. Sure, I would be glad to, Senator. My
only point is that I think cold-bloodedly from the point of
view of not only American interests but Russian interests as
well and wider international interests, it is important for us
to continue to engage with Russia on issues like the safety and
security of nuclear materials, the danger of nuclear terrorism,
the danger of nuclear and radiological materials getting in the
wrong hands. Those are issues where I think the United States
and Russia, precisely because of our history and our nuclear
arsenals and our capability, really do have unique
responsibilities.
I think as General Breedlove said, I think it is also
important for us, even as we did at the worst moments of
tension in the Cold War, to sustain a habit of military-to-
military communication. So we are avoiding inadvertent
collisions whether it is over the Baltic States or in the
Middle East or elsewhere. I think there is practical in that
for us, whatever ever our profound differences with Russia on
many other issues.
Senator Wicker. General Breedlove, are you on the same page
there?
General Breedlove. Yes, Senator. There is no air between us
and those conversations. I would add things like transparency
and exercises. Just yesterday, another major SNAP exercise in
Crimea aimed at destabilizing Kyiv. Loose nuclear materials.
Senator Nunn is working on that hard. It is a place where we
can absolutely find, I think, some common ground, and believe
in CT [counter-terrorism] in many ways. They are as worried
about what is coming out of Afghanistan and the Balkans as we
are. So I do believe, again, reestablishing trust in an
incremental way, we need to sit down and work on these things.
Senator Wicker. Ambassador Vershbow, you are on the same
page there?
Ambassador Vershbow. Yes, Senator. I would agree that even
with these fundamental differences, we have to try to manage
the relationship, as Ambassador Burns said. I think, in the
short term, maybe the most we can do, which is try to reduce
the risks of some accidental incident escalating out of
control, trying to persuade the Russians not to give their
pilots the freedom to provoke our ships and surveillance
planes, more transparency, bringing more observers to exercise
it so we do not miscalculate in a crisis.
There may be geopolitical issues where we could try to
cooperate with Russia although, even as we have heard, fighting
ISIS is not as clear as it might seam, but the Russians really
have the same objectives in Syria or other parts of the Middle
East as we do. But we should test Putin on whether he is
actually able to contribute something real, and we do not have
to trade the sovereignty of Ukraine in order to get him to
cooperate on ISIS. If he wants to do that, he should do it on
its merits.
Senator Wicker. Okay. Thank you very much.
Will one of you comment or all of you comment on the value
of OSCE [Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe] in
all of this? OSCE is a 57-nation group. The United States and
Canada are members. It is consensus-based, and it has been
challenged in recent years by a far more aggressive Russia. The
organization's highest profile engagement remains the fielding
of an 1,100-person special monitoring mission to Ukraine, an
unarmed civilian mission that serves as the international
community's eyes and ears in the conflict zone. Of course,
there are many other duties of OSCE. But what value should we
place on OSCE's continuing role in the European security
architecture? Ambassador Burns?
Ambassador Burns. Yes, I am glad to start, Senator.
I guess I would say for all the limitations of the OSCE as
a big, sprawling institution, as you described, I think it has
continuing value, first because it embodies some of the core
values that we share with our European allies and partners in
terms of sovereignty of states, you know, the inviolability of
borders so that----
Senator Wicker. Those Helsinki principles.
Ambassador Burns. Right, so that big states do not just get
to grab parts of smaller states just because they can, and so
for all the limitations of the institution, I think its core
value is because it really does embody the Helsinki principles,
and it is important for us to continue to invest in that. It
also does good work in terms of the monitoring function that
you described in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Senator Wicker. General?
General Breedlove. Senator, if I could just add a much more
tactical--and I am sorry for that--observation. There are
limits and I could not agree with that more. But occasionally
with some of the fake news that was created in the Donbas and
other places as Russia invaded, even though OSCE was challenged
in it, often it was the source of the real news of what was
actually going on on the ground. Again, it has challenges but
it also provides some pretty good input for us occasionally.
Ambassador Vershbow. I would agree that OSCE still has
value, particularly because of the norms and values that it
upholds, even though the Russians are violating a lot of those
right now. But it gives us a basis on which to challenge their
misbehavior.
Its practical value may have declined because the Russians
have sort of turned against OSCE. They do not really like its
efforts to promote free elections and transparency in the
political processes since that is the antithesis of what their
system now represents.
The special monitoring mission in Ukraine I think has been
very courageous in trying to make the disengagement work even
half well. But even as the Russians authorize missions like
that, they shoot down the UAVs that have been purchased by that
mission. They threaten some of the monitors. They have denied
them access to sensitive areas when they are bringing lots of
weaponry. So OSCE is challenged, but I do not see any
alternative right now in trying to manage a conflict like in
eastern Ukraine.
Senator Wicker. Thank you.
Chairman McCain. Senator Shaheen?
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here this morning.
Ambassador Vershbow, you talked about the importance of
shoring up the European unity, and NATO is clearly one of our
ways to do that, our support for NATO. Do we think that
Europeans or NATO members will be concerned when they hear the
report that came out this morning that Secretary of State
Tillerson is going to skip the next NATO meeting to head to
Russia?
Ambassador Vershbow. Well, Senator, I think there is some
concern about that. I think hopefully there will be other ways
for him to engage at an early opportunity with his counterparts
from the NATO countries. Many of them are coming to Washington
in a few weeks for a counter-ISIS ministerial meeting. But
still, I would say yes--I am a NATO veteran and NATO junky--
that the presence of the U.S. Secretary of State, particularly
his first opportunity to join his counterparts at a
ministerial, is something that should not be passed up,
especially when we face so many challenges. But I think the
more basic question is consulting first with your allies before
you engage with the Russians. So hopefully there will be other
ways that he can do that.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
General Breedlove, actually I think all of you referenced
the concern about our nuclear arsenals, both ours and Russia's,
and the potential for reducing those arsenals. I thought your
idea of a summit was particularly interesting, General
Breedlove.
What kind of message does it send as we are trying to think
about how we reduce the nuclear threat when we have the
President of the United States talking about an arms race and
saying, ``Let it be an arms race,'' so committing to an arms
race against Russia?
General Breedlove. Ma'am, if I could just talk to the
basics a little bit. Clearly we have a Russia that has built
the discussion of use of nuclear weapons into its escalate to
deescalate doctrine. It speaks that often and writes often that
nuclear weapons are a logical extension of conventional
warfare, things that we would not want to be on the table.
I think the appropriate response from us and our NATO
allies is to remain creditable and ready and to have the policy
in order to present a clear affront to those thoughts from
Russia. What I thought we should do and what we have done I
think well in the past in NATO is to try to completely convince
that we are ready to respond if required, and I think that is
the policy into the future.
Senator Shaheen. What should we be thinking about in terms
of Russia's violations of the INF Treaty?
General Breedlove. Ma'am, my message on this has not
changed. We cannot let that go unchallenged. I tell you I have
great confidence in our new Secretary of Defense and in Joe
Dunford, who I have worked with before. My guess is that they
will modify or come out with a new approach.
But in the past, I think our former Secretary Ash Carter
testified in front of this committee and laid out a framework,
which I completely agreed with. I think that we have not really
started down that framework, and we either should or allow our
new leaders to modify and put theirs out.
But the bottom line is, again, we cannot let bad behavior
go unchallenged. This was not done by accident and we need to
respond.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you. I share that view.
Last December, we had folks testifying in response to what
we then learned was an emerging story about the Russian cyber
attack on our elections. One of the points that was made was
that Russia is looking at not just a military buildup, not just
pushing the envelope in eastern Europe in terms of its invasion
of Ukraine, but it is also looking at a huge propaganda buildup
in terms of support for RT and its other channels of
communication. It is also looking at disrupting Western
elections as part of a deliberate strategy to undermine the
West.
Ambassador Burns, can you comment on that--you were clear
that you think we ought to respond to Russia's actions--on what
else we should be thinking about as we look at the French and
German elections upcoming? I am out of time, so maybe you could
quickly respond.
Ambassador Burns. I will be very brief.
I mean, I absolutely agree with you on the seriousness of
not only of the Russian hacking of our recent elections, but
also what is at stake across the European elections this year
as well. I think this is part of a deliberate strategy on the
part of Russia. I think we are in the process not only of
taking steps ourselves which were announced by the last
administration, which are important to sustain the
investigations to get to the bottom of this remain extremely
important. Then I think working with our allies to shore up
their own capacity to resist this kind of disruption is also
very important this year.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you. Thank you all.
Chairman McCain. Senator Ernst.
Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us today and
your continued service to our country, as well as your enduring
commitment to forwarding or advancing our shared interests with
the people of Europe. I do think that that is very, very
important, and in the face of the resurgent Russian threat, I
think we can all agree that America needs your leadership as
well and expertise in these areas. So thank you for being here.
I am going to go back just to comment about Ukraine.
Congress gave the President authority to give lethal assistance
to Ukraine, and just last month, I joined a number of my Senate
colleagues in a letter to President Trump asking him to
expedite the use of that authority. I do think that that is
very important. We should honor our commitment to Ukraine and
utilize lethal assistance to them.
Now, General Breedlove, we have had a discussion about our
initiatives in Europe before. I believe that physical presence
is oftentimes the best reassurance, and as part of the European
Deterrence Initiative and Operation Atlantic Resolve, Congress
authorized $3.4 billion to enhance American presence in the
region. If you could, just describe to us what types of
presence that we might need, what certain troop levels, what
types of forces. Does that include the National Guard or
Reserve, naval forces, et cetera? And then also maybe, General,
if you could just let me know whether you think rotational
forces are appropriate or whether we need to have a more
permanent presence.
General Breedlove. Thank you, Senator. I could talk a long
time. I will try to be as brief as I can but get to your
questions.
The $3.4 billion--and first of all, may I thank this
committee and others who have worked on these ERI [European
Reassurance Initiative] initiatives across the last two years.
They are vital. Twenty years as the chairman called of hugging
the bear. We changed our orientation in Europe, and I believe
it is now absolutely vital that we reevaluate since we do not
have that strategic partner that we looked to have in the past.
The $3.4 billion does, as did the previous years, a broad
set of things from improving infrastructure, financing
rotational exercises and forces, and actually moving some force
to Europe. It is a broad approach, and I think that is right
and proper because we do need to relook at how we can reinforce
Europe. We are not in the practice anymore of arriving with
ships, transloading rail cars, et cetera, and we need to get
back to that.
Ma'am, I have testified in front of this committee before
that I believe our presence in Europe is not yet appropriate. I
used to say it is the road through Warsaw not to Warsaw,
meaning the agreements that we made in the Warsaw Summit were
the next logical step but probably not the last step.
I have also not changed my mind that I believe actual
presence, permanent presence----
Senator Ernst. Permanent presence.
General Breedlove.--is the best answer. But I believe we
are realistic in that that may not be a future that we can see.
We need to have the appropriate balance of permanent forward
forces, rotational forces, and prepositioned materials so that
we can rapidly reinforce, prepositioned materials that our
great Guard and Reserve forces can rotate on, et cetera. So I
believe it is a balance as the way to get to best solution that
we can afford and move forward with in the future.
Senator Ernst. Very good. I appreciate that.
Ambassador Burns, you have stated that we must reassure our
European allies of our absolute commitment to NATO. I agree
with that. I also think we need to reassure our non-NATO
countries that are also good friends to the United States, and
that is why I am proud of the Iowa State Partnership Program.
We are engaged with Kosovo. That is why I co-chair the Senate
Albanian Issues Caucus.
How else can we reassure countries in the Balkans and
Caucasus, those who aspire to join NATO, that they have our
support?
Ambassador Burns. I am sure Ambassador Vershbow can add to
this as well. But as you well know, there are a number of NATO
programs already that we work with partner countries, and I
think it is important to sustain those.
A lot of this is also just diplomatic attention as well in
the Caucasus, even as far afield as Central Asia, as well as in
the Balkans, the day in/day out effort to pay attention, to be
able to sustain assistance programs, not just in the security
area but in other areas as well, that are a tangible
demonstration of our commitment to the health of those
societies at a moment when, just as you said, Senator, I think
the Russians are busily trying to undermine prospects for the
future of many of those societies.
Senator Ernst. Ambassador, did you have any further
comment?
Ambassador Vershbow. I agree with that. I think much more
vigorous diplomatic engagement by the United States is needed
because things are unraveling internally in some of the
countries, Macedonia, Bosnia in particular. The situation
between Kosovo and Serbia is also deteriorating, and all of
this is because the Russians are throwing a lot of salt in the
wounds and trying to exploit historic tensions and grievances.
The European Union spends a lot, and they are actively
engaged diplomatically, but I think the countries in the region
still look to the U.S. because of our role in ending the wars
in the 1990s. I think strong United States leadership, working
with the Europeans, is essential to hold off the Russian
meddling and help countries like Macedonia finally get back on
the path of European integration, NATO membership, which they
have been struggling with for more than a decade and a half.
Senator Ernst. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Warren?
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
Right now, everybody knows that the American intelligence
community has concluded that the Russians conducted successful
cyber attacks against the United States last year in order to
influence our election. But people may not know that we are not
Russia's only target. A decade ago, some of NATO's Baltic
States also endured cyber attacks, which were believed to have
originated in Russia.
Now, in 2014, NATO updated its cyber defense policy to
clarify that cyber attacks are covered by article 5, NATO's
collective defense clause, meaning an attack on one is viewed
as an attack on all. But the Alliance has not publicly
clarified the threshold at which a cyber attack would trigger
article 5 or describe any of the types of responses that it
might employ.
So, General Breedlove, I want to thank you for your work
strengthening the NATO alliance. But I want to focus in this
particular area. Do you think the Russians are taking advantage
of NATO's apparent reluctance to determine when a cyber
intrusion is an armed attack and to make it clear when we will
respond?
General Breedlove. Senator, thank you for the question, and
the thrust of your question I think is spot on in that we need
to better understand and better articulate to the world
possibly where this all stands.
I think this is good new/bad news, and I will try to be
short. The good news is that three days before I started my--or
three days after I started my term as the SACEUR was the first
doctrine signed by NATO. So literally in the last three and a
half years, we have come a long way. Now NATO does have some
policy and doctrine and a wonderful center at Talinn, Estonia,
if you have not been there, to fight this, one of the real
capabilities of NATO. That is the good news. We have come a
long way.
Senator Warren. Right, and the bad news?
General Breedlove. The bad news is there still is, as you
have correctly pointed out, some definitive things that need to
be laid out and we are slow getting to those.
Senator Warren. Do you want to say a word about what those
are?
General Breedlove. Well, ma'am, I have been critical that
we do not have an offensive policy in NATO. It is completely
defensive. As a fighter pilot, I think the best offense is a
missile in the air headed in the other direction.
Senator Warren. All right. Thank you very much. I
appreciate it.
Russia will undoubtedly continue to use cyber tools to try
to interfere with and destabilize our NATO allies. If we are
ever going to deter that behavior, then we need to strengthen
the Alliance's capabilities and make clear what our response
will be both within the NATO alliance and make that clear to
the Russians.
I have one other question I want to ask about, and that is
the Syrian civil war started six years ago this month, and the
humanitarian crisis there has pushed massive numbers of
refugees to Europe. I saw some of this up close a couple of
years ago when I visited a refugee intake center in Greece and
a refugee resettlement center in Germany. I met with refugees
who had risked their lives on long and dangerous journeys from
many different countries.
European countries have struggled to deal with this surge.
Thousands of refugees remain stuck in camps and detention
centers. This is totally unsustainable.
Ambassador Burns, setting aside the obvious need to try to
get to the root causes of the crisis, what steps beyond
providing for humanitarian aid and supporting maritime search
and rescue efforts should the United States take to enhance
Europe's efforts to absorb refugees and migrants?
Ambassador Burns. That is a really difficult question, as
you know, Senator. I mean, I think just the sheer magnitude of
the humanitarian problem is going to require continued
expenditure of resources and the resources of our European
partners for some time to come, and that is where some of the
foreign assistance cuts that appear in the administration's
budget I think are really, really troublesome.
You are right. The core challenge is to move towards some
kind of political transition in Syria because of the simple
reality that unless the 70 percent of the population of Syria
that is Sunni Arab feel a stake in their future, Sunni
extremist groups, whether it is ISIS or some other acronym, are
going to have fertile soil in which to destabilize Syria and
create more human suffering.
Senator Warren. So let me ask about that. Is it helpful or
harmful if the United States dramatically reduces its admission
of refugees and migrants?
Ambassador Burns. I think it is undoubtedly harmful, and I
am entirely aware of the importance of ensuring the security of
American citizens in our own society. I am very familiar with
the processes that are employed to deal with Syrian refugees.
They are as strict and comprehensive as any that I have seen.
But a lot of this has to do with the leadership we demonstrate
in the world, and when we are moving in a different direction
than a lot of our European allies and partners are, it does
send a very complicated signal.
Senator Warren. I appreciate your point on this because it
seems to me that for our security, for Europe's security, and
because we are a decent and compassionate people, that we need
to help Europe manage the huge flow of refugees. But as you
say, we also need to lead by example here. The United States
has always been a beacon of hope for people around the world,
refugees and other troubled groups, and the last thing we
should be doing is continuing to push for illegal Muslim bans
that betray our values and our Constitution and do nothing to
keep us safe.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Cotton?
Senator Cotton. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today
and for your many years of long service to our country. You
have all been around the block once or twice in Europe and
Russia.
I know someone else who has been around the block once or
twice with them is Bob Gates. In his first memoir of his time
at the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], he writes of the many
specific policy questions that, in particular, President Carter
and President Reagan faced in places like Central America and
sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and pushing back against
Soviet aggression. But he puts as much or more weight on what
he refers to as the correlation of forces, long-term trends
that set the relative power of the United States against then
the Soviet Union and today Russia.
So he talks, for instance, about Jimmy Carter championing
human rights within the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact which
undermined the legitimacy of their regimes, his down payment on
a defense buildup after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan,
and in particular, Ronald Reagan's efforts to rebuild our
military to expand our nuclear forces to deploy INF forces to
Europe to counteract the Soviet Union's deployment, then
ultimately the strategic defense initiative, which he said kind
of culminated all of the trends the Soviet leaders had feared
for so long, you know, a growing Western economy, technological
advantages, military strength. That, while not the cause of the
ultimate downfall of the Soviet Union, it was kind of the
ultimate symbol of what the Soviet Union had feared for so
long.
I would just like to get your thoughts just going down the
row on how important, on the one hand, those specific bilateral
or policy questions are today--you might say Ukraine or Georgia
or what have you--versus the broader correlation of forces
between the United States and Russia. General Breedlove?
General Breedlove. Senator, I will probably disappoint
because I do not think you can discount either. I think they
are both incredibly important. As we talked a little bit about
earlier, I think that our Nation's power is not just its
military. It is broader than that. It is our values, our
diplomatic position in the world, the fact that we try to get
the right message out in our information campaigns. We need a
strong military, and of course, our economy is incredibly
important.
On the strictly military side, I obviously wore the cloth
of our Nation for 39 years, and I believe that we need to
remain strong and credible and be seen as strong and credible
in the world. I see that as a specific line of endeavor in our
future.
Senator Cotton. Ambassador Burns?
Ambassador Burns. No. I absolutely agree. I mean, I think
leverage is essential in diplomacy especially in dealing with
adversarial relationships like the United States-Russia
relationship. I think that is why it is especially important to
invest in our alliance system as well because that is what sets
us apart from Russia and China and other major powers. I think
that continued focus on especially our transatlantic alliance
is extremely important in that correlation of forces.
Senator Cotton. Ambassador Vershbow?
Ambassador Vershbow. Just to echo my colleagues, I agree we
need to look at American power in the broadest sense of the
word, military, political, economic, and our moral power, the
values that we represent.
As Bill Burns just said, having democratic allies who share
those values and are prepared to share risks with us is a real
asset for us in countering the Russian threat and other threats
around the world. So we have to strictly think of the
correlation of forces in a broad sense and try to use our
allies as force multipliers in dealing with threats that we
see, particularly the challenge from Russia with all its
different dimensions.
So in that sense, lots of lessons can be drawn from the
experience of the late Cold War that you described. Peace
through strength may be a cliche but it still is valid in
today's world.
Senator Cotton. To our two Ambassadors, Bob Gates described
George Shultz and his role in the 1980s, someone who often came
in for criticism from some of his fellow cabinet members of
perhaps being too soft or conciliatory towards Russia, even
though he supported many of these issues that we have described
as the correlation of forces like the deployment of INF forces
to Europe but also encouraging Reagan and ultimately prevailing
upon Reagan to proceed with various sets of talks or
negotiations with Russia to maintain open lines of
communications. Maybe most notably a few weeks after the KAL
[Korean Air Lines] 007 shoot-down outside of Korea, George
Shultz convinced the President that he should go forward with
consultations in Europe with his Russian counterparts.
How important is it that we maintain such an open line of
communication even while we resist and confront Russia and its
aggression throughout Europe and the Middle East?
Ambassador Burns. I think it is an essential part of a
successful strategy. I mean, we need to be tough-minded on
issues, just as you said, Senator. We need to be mindful of the
importance of building our leverage, especially through our
alliances. But we also ought not to be shy about engaging as
well and being equally direct in those kinds of channels of
communication as well so that we are managing a relationship
that is inevitably going to be complicated. We are looking for
those areas where we might be able cold-bloodedly to cooperate,
but we are able to push back in a lot of other areas as well.
Ambassador Vershbow. Absolutely. As difficult as the
Russians may be and as hostile as they may be in a lot of
areas, we have to talk to them. We have to try to find ways to
persuade them to change their policies or offer ways out of
some of the impasses that we face.
I think that is why George Shultz was one of the most
successful Secretaries of State--I had the honor of working
with him for a few years--because he was very tough when we
still needed to be tough with the Russians in the early 1980s,
but when the changes began under Gorbachev and Foreign Minister
Shevardnadze, Shultz recognized there was an opportunity to
begin to change the relationship to move away from Cold War
confrontation, reduce nuclear weapons, and helped President
Reagan seize those opportunities.
So we have to be alert to possible cracks in the facade
that Putin projects. I personally am skeptical that there are
that many opportunities out there, but if we can get past this
current Ukraine crisis and use United States diplomatic
leadership backed by real leverage, including the possibility
of lethal assistance to Ukraine, if Putin does not play ball,
we might be able to kind of get to a better place and then
begin to rebuild step by step the kind of partnership that
George Shultz was seeking in the late 1980s under President
Reagan.
Senator Cotton. Thank you all.
Chairman McCain. Senator Peters?
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to each of our panelists for your leadership in
this area over many years and for the discussion here today.
In my first question, I want to return back to an issue
that has been discussed previously related to the cruise
missile deployments in violation of the Intermediate Nuclear
Forces Agreement, which I find very troubling, and from
listening to the testimony of all three of you, I think all of
you agree with that. I think it is interesting and would like
to have your comment that while the Russians are moving forward
in violation of that treaty, on the one hand; on the other
hand, when it comes to the START [Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty] treaty, they seem to be in compliance there. There is a
disconnect between compliance with one treaty and another. I am
wondering what is behind that. What do you think may account
for that?
Actually, General Breedlove, you mentioned the Russian
strategy to escalate to deescalate, which is a very troubling
strategy. Is it perhaps related to that as to why they are
deploying these cruise missiles?
General Breedlove. I am going to defer, Senator, on the
piece about the START to my more learned colleagues.
What I would like to do is maybe address your latter
question and leave the other for them.
Senator Peters. Right. Thank you.
General Breedlove. I think there are multiple reasons why
the Russians are fairly blatantly violating the INF. I think
they have expressed for a long time displeasure with our
deployment of missile defense into Europe. There are two sides
to every story. While I do not agree with their position, I can
understand that they believe they have told us and told us and
told us, and now they are bringing some tougher tools to the
table to try to address some of those issues.
Secondarily, I think that they know that this is a very
divisive discussion inside of NATO, and I agree with my
colleagues, who have both, I think, said that one of Mr.
Putin's greatest desires is to bust up these Western
organizations so that he can deal with Western nations
individually vice with large organizations. So I do believe
that they have several reasons that they are proceeding on the
INF, and again, maybe I do not agree with those reasons, but we
have to understand what they are thinking along those lines.
Senator Peters. Ambassadors?
Ambassador Vershbow. I think it is partly about missile
defense that the Russians are violating the INF Treaty, but I
think it more reflects a longstanding grievance that they have
had that other countries in the world such as China, Pakistan
have intermediate-range missiles which could reach Russia, and
they have no missile of the same capability to deter and
respond. It is sort of not a very convincing argument because
they have their intercontinental systems which can be used in
nuclear scenarios against those countries.
But I think they may also believe they can get away with
this violation because of the ambiguity of some of the
technologies involved and assessing what is the maximum range
of a cruise missile compared to its overall weight and payload.
So they may think that they can get away with cheating, and we
cannot let that happen. So I think in terms of responding, we
need to kind of first look at what is the enhanced threat that
we face and find ways to neutralize that threat. It does not
mean it is tit for tat. We may not need to violate the INF
Treaty ourselves. There may be alternative systems, both
defensive and offensive such as air-launched cruise missiles
deployed forward in Europe that could neutralize any military
gains that the Russians could perceive from this violation.
But it does not bode well for long-term stability if they
are prepared to cheat. The New START agreement is still being
complied with. Let us hope that they do not violate that one
too.
Ambassador Burns. Senator, the only thing I would add is on
your second question about escalate to deescalate, I agree with
you on the seriousness with which we ought to view that issue
because if Russian doctrine changes to the point we are faced
with a conventional inferiority, you know, they are willing to
resort to early use of battlefield nuclear weapons, that
creates a whole new area of potential tension and instability.
It is another of the reasons why we ought to be engaging with
them in what used to be called strategic stability talks, first
to try to get to the bottom of what it is that they have in
mind and then, second, working with our allies to be very, very
clear and blunt about our concerns about that and about the
dangers of it.
Senator Peters. Given that response, is it reasonable to
think this weapon actually is more effective in that strategy,
which is certainly very frightening, to escalate/deescalate?
You are more likely to use a weapon, this cruise missile, than
you would a strategic missile. Is that another reason why they
would want to deploy it?
General Breedlove. Senator, I think that is what they write
about. It is another step and rung in the ladder of tools that
they can use. Where we think more in terms of a nuclear
threshold, they see it as another logical step.
Senator Peters. Thank you, gentlemen.
Senator Reed [presiding]. On behalf of Chairman McCain, let
me recognize Senator Sullivan.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank you, gentlemen, for not only your testimony
today but your decades of public service, which I have had the
opportunity to witness for a number of years. So it really has
been exceptional. So I just want to commend you for that and
your families, by the way.
Would you agree that one of the most strategically
important advantages we have right now as the United States and
have had really for generations is that we are an ally-rich
nation and our adversaries or potential adversaries, Russia,
China, Iran, North Korea, are ally-poor? Would you agree that
that is a key strategic advantage the United States has?
Ambassador Burns. Absolutely. I think it is among our
greatest advantages and has been for decades.
Senator Sullivan. So you look at, like I mentioned, the
Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, Iranians. Nobody
wants to be on their team. Nobody is clamoring to be part of
the--as matter of fact, they all look to be alliances with
themselves just because they have so few other countries that
are interested in actually teaming up with them.
So is it also true that Russia--I know is the focus of this
hearing--but also China see as one of their goals to undermine
these alliances, split us apart from our key long-term allies?
Ambassador Burns. Absolutely.
Senator Sullivan. So I know it is early days in the Trump
administration. I think we have a lot of cabinet members who
understand this, but what do you think the Trump administration
is doing right to strengthen alliances and push back on Russian
attempts to undermine them, and where can they improve? I will
open it up for all three of you gentlemen.
Ambassador Vershbow. Well, Senator, first I would agree
that we are very much advantaged by having networks of
alliances in Europe and other parts of the world. The Russians,
in particular, seem to alienate their neighbors. The only way
they feel they can keep their neighbors under control is by
keeping them weak and unstable. So that means in the long term
that is a very unsustainable way to build relationships. So I
think we have a natural advantage and we should not psych
ourselves out.
But it is a little early to make----
Senator Sullivan. No. It is very early.
Ambassador Vershbow.--broad judgments about the new
administration, but after some question marks that were raised
about whether NATO is obsolete in the mind of President Trump,
they have, I think, reassured allies that they still value
NATO, value the transatlantic relationship, recognize that
allies are contributing in Afghanistan and other operations.
But I think the jury is still out as to what kind of agenda
will the Trump administration lay out for NATO. Where does it
want NATO to evolve and take on new missions, new roles? I
think there is more we could ask our allies to do through NATO,
not just spending more money but doing more things to deal with
the root causes of terrorism, of migration. So I look forward
to what that agenda is.
I think sending messages to our east Asian allies. The
Mattis trip, now the Tillerson trip I think have been very
clear that those alliances with Korea and Japan will remain
high priorities.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Ambassador.
Any other? General Breedlove, Ambassador Burns, what they
can be doing better, what they are doing well now? It is a
really important issue. Right? It is the key strategic issue.
We have this great advantage. We need to double down on it not
undermine it ourselves.
Ambassador Burns. We do, and I think the honest answer is
there is a lot of uncertainty right now on the part of our
allies, notwithstanding the efforts of a number of the new
cabinet principals to emphasize the commitment, but there is
uncertainty, given things that were said during the campaign by
President Trump and some of the signals coming out of the White
House since then. It is really important I think to reassure
our allies and partners. There are some good opportunities in
the next few months with meetings in Europe.
Senator Sullivan. We can do that as well here. Right? At
the U.S. Senate.
Ambassador Burns. Absolutely, and I think the more that can
be done like at the Munich security conference and other
places, the better.
Senator Sullivan. Let me ask another question, just
switching gears here, on the Arctic. You know, General
Breedlove, you were very aware and watched as the Russians
engage in this massive military buildup in the Arctic. Many of
us I think in a bipartisan way on this committee certainly were
concerned that we did not have a strategy. We put in a
provision in the NDAA two years ago to actually have a
strategy. It is a little better than the lack of one that we
previously had. We really did not have one.
General Mattis, in his confirmation hearing, has talked
about the Arctic being key, strategic terrain, sea lanes,
resources, and that Russia is aggressively taking action. In
the new strategy, it talks about the importance of protecting
sea lanes, resources through freedom of navigation operations,
kind of like we have done in the South China Sea although not
nearly enough.
General Breedlove, can you comment on this? More
specifically, if Russia decided to deny access to vital United
States resources in the region or international sea lanes,
shipping lanes in the Arctic, do we have any capability
whatsoever to conduct a surface FONOP [Freedom of Navigation
Exercises] to challenge that? What should we be doing about
that?
General Breedlove. Senator, thank you. I understand the
question. Let me just reframe a minute.
We ought to try to make the Arctic an opportunity. We are
early in this conversation. We ought to make it an opportunity
and not a place of competition. But we need to, with a very
wary eye, look at the actions that you have mentioned that
Russia is taking in the north. Our abilities as are other
nations' and, frankly, Russia's abilities to operate in the
north are still challenging. This is a tough place to be. But
what we do see as a Russia moving out to establish capability
there--that could be used appropriately or nefariously. I
believe this and I have spoken before that we need to look at
our capabilities. Are they deep? Do we have the right ones? I
think there is work to be done there.
Senator Sullivan. Can we conduct a FONOP there? Is the
answer not no? It is not even close.
General Breedlove. If I understand, I think we can but
realizing that we would have to be there at the right time of
the year and the right time of conditions. We do not have some
of the capabilities we need to operate up there when the ice is
challenging.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you.
Chairman McCain [presiding]. Senator King?
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Breedlove, in your testimony, you touched upon a
question that I think is of surpassing importance in the
situation that we are in now. This discussion today has been
about high-level strategy and deployment and those kinds of
things. You mentioned the danger of confusion,
misunderstanding, and accidental war. I think one of the most
profound books about foreign policy, which I recently reread,
is ``The Guns of August.'' We stumbled into World War I. I
think every policymaker should read that book. It is eerily
prescient of the situation we are in now.
Number one--and Senator Cotton mentioned this--it seems to
me that given the danger of a Russian pilot inadvertently
hitting a ship instead of buzzing it or a Chinese pilot in the
South China Sea doing the same and the escalation from there,
to me that cries out for better communication and open lines.
My understanding is that that has somewhat diminished both on
the military-to-military level and at the highest level. Your
thoughts? Any of you? General Breedlove?
General Breedlove. May I modify the scenario and tell you
what worries me? I really believe the pilots are good enough
not to hit one of our aircraft. I am often asked about this
scenario. What worries me and what worries others are in one of
these fly-bys, if the Russian aircraft just simply has a
mechanical malfunction and hits the water, what is going to
happen? Are we going to be blamed? Will be used as a simple
tool to create a catastrophe, et cetera, et cetera? Frankly,
our Aegis cruisers and destroyers are very capable of defending
themselves against Russian aircraft. I do not worry about that
piece. But I worry about the accident that then escalates into
something wholly unintended.
Senator King. Exactly. Is it not critical in that piece to
have open lines of communications?
General Breedlove. Sir, we do have some but they are not
adequate. We still have what we call INCSEA, incidents at sea,
which actually have expanded to incidents at sea, land, and air
in some of those conversations. We have mechanisms, but I
believe we need to be more aggressive about those conversations
so we do not stumble.
Senator King. Let me turn it just slightly. One of the
problems is that what we view as defensive, the other side can
view as provocative, and how you hit the right point--in other
words, stationing troops in Poland, moving equipment into
preposition in Eastern Europe. We view that as defensive. Is it
possible that that could lead to an escalation if the Russians
view that as an aggressive act? I am trying to think through
the scenarios here that could lead to a dangerous result.
Ambassador Burns, your thoughts.
Ambassador Burns. I think your question is a very important
one, Senator. I think there is a real risk in letting channels
of communication atrophy. They are not a favor to the Russians
to be able to communicate at all sorts of different levels,
whether it is military-to-military, as General Breedlove
described, or at diplomatic levels or at higher levels as well.
I think there is a cold-blooded self-interest in trying to
ensure that we understand one another clearly. It does not mean
that we are going to overcome Russian concerns about what they
might see to be the aggressive intent of some of our
deployments. But at least I think we will have a little bit
clearer understanding and we will be able to avoid some of what
could be inadvertent collisions, whether physical or political.
Senator King. Let me talk a bit about what I call the cheap
war, the war that has been waged over the last several years,
the last election here, now in France, now in Germany. I did a
quick calculation. For the price of one F-35, the Russians can
deploy 4,000 hackers and trolls, and they have been remarkably
successful at a very low price.
Ambassador Vershbow, your thoughts about what I consider
really a new form of warfare that is unfolding in front of our
eyes.
Ambassador Vershbow. I absolutely agree. I call it
political aggression rather than military aggression against
our societies, and it is a lot cheaper than waging war. They
probably could buy more than 4,000 hackers with the price of an
F-35. So we cannot sort of count on the Russians depleting
their resources through their aggressive behavior the way they
did in the Cold War.
Senator King. The arms race economics does not work in this
situation.
Ambassador Vershbow. No. We need, first of all, to make
sure that we can deny them the ability to do it as effectively
as they did during our election in terms of hardening our
systems, being more vigilant about fake news, taking down the
false stories quickly before they go viral.
Senator King. But all of those are defensive. I am running
out of time, but we need a cyber doctrine in connection with
our Western allies that involves an offensive capability as
well, do we not?
Ambassador Vershbow. Well, we may not want to do an exact
tit for tat in this field, but it would be more aggressive than
pushing our values, pushing our narrative because Putin is
worried about a democratic alternative gaining ground again in
Russia. I do not think we should give up on our support for
civil society, for independent media, supporting emigre media
sites that try to push objective information into Russia, this
new current time channel that the Broadcasting Board of
Governors is launching to affect the opinions of Russian
speakers both in Russia and on the borderlands. All these
things are very important to show that we are not going to fail
to compete in this political battle.
Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses for your testimony.
Beginning in 2015, General Dunford, as the head of the
Joint Chiefs, in appearances before this committee started to
say and he said on multiple occasions now that among nation-
states in the world, Russia is our biggest--he has used the
phrase ``adversary,'' ``headache,'' ``what keeps him up at
night,'' ``threat'' in terms of its military, both capacity and
intent to use its power.
Did any of you disagree with that conclusion?
General Breedlove. I certainly do not, and it has been my
testimony in front of this committee before.
Ambassador Burns. No. I think Russia has demonstrated since
2015 it is a pretty big headache. I mean, we have got no
shortage of other headaches in the world, but it has lived up
to that form.
Senator Kaine. Ambassador?
Ambassador Vershbow. I agree as well. Its ability to kind
of overturn the whole international order puts it in a class by
itself in terms of the nature of the threat.
Senator Kaine. Are any of you aware in the world right now
of a nation-state that is doing more to destabilize and
interfere with other nations' internal political affairs than
Russia? No?
Given Russian physical presence in Georgia and the Ukraine,
are you aware of any other nation in the world right now that
has been more willing to incur into the physical sovereignty of
another nation? Is there a bigger violator of incursions into
physical sovereignty in the world right now than Russia? No.
With respect to the election issue, I was in Europe
recently and was asked a series of kind of challenging
questions along this line, and I would like your thoughts on
it. If the U.S. will not act to defend itself from an election
cyber attack, we know you will not act to defend us. There was
a great deal of skepticism about what the U.S. would do to help
any other nation under a similar threat because of a perception
that we did not act in real time to stop a cyber attack of our
election. As of yet, there has been no particular consequence
of it. Do you think that would be a reasonable concern that
others would have if they do not see us acting to protect
ourselves, that they would be deeply skeptical that we would
act to protect them?
Ambassador Burns. I do, Senator. I mean, in the face of
what has been a truly serious assault on our democratic system,
I think it is absolutely essential that we not only recognize
the severity of the problem but respond to it with the fullest
possible investigation and then work with our allies, having
demonstrated our own realization of the concern, to help them
strengthen their defenses as well.
Senator Kaine. Finally, here is a question that I want to
ask you that is really about sort of the psychology of dealing
with Russia because I have a much higher confidence in my own
opinions about our actions in other parts of the world, the
Middle East and Arab North Africa, Latin America, and not so
much about Russia.
There are currently some discussions about possibly
engaging in greater oil diplomacy with Russia. So the sanctions
after Ukraine, for example, have limited joint ventures between
American companies and Russia on oil issues. But there are some
questions about whether we should potentially do that in the
Arctic or elsewhere, should we not allow joint ventures and
cooperation with Russia that we are not currently doing.
If we were to do that, tell me what your opinion would be.
Would that make Russia like the United States better, or would
they simply use any additional assets that they get from that
to continue on the path they are on, including the common path
of companies that are resource-rich? Those resources often
deepen corruption, deepen oligarchy rather than really help
domestic economic satisfaction.
Ambassador Burns. I will start, Senator. No. I think in my
experience, the Russians unsentimental about issues like this.
So it is not necessarily going to make the current Russia
regime like the United States more. I think it is really
important, as Ambassador Vershbow said before, to sustain the
sanctions which restrict a lot of those activities until we see
full implementation of the Minsk Agreement because I do think
movement on Ukraine is really crucial here.
Ambassador Vershbow. I agree with that. The Russians will
still pursue their interests very aggressively and using energy
as a leverage. But those are among the most important sanctions
imposed after the aggression against Ukraine. So they should be
kept in place until we see real change on the ground. But then
when conditions are met, we should lift them, but there is a
long way to go before the Russians convince me that they are
going to restore sovereignty in Ukraine.
Senator Kaine. General Breedlove?
General Breedlove. Real change needs to be evident.
Reestablishing trust--we have none now. I think those are key.
Senator Kaine. Thank you,
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. I thank the witnesses for their testimony
today.
Oh, Senator Shaheen, I apologize.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one
more question, and this is probably for all of you or whoever
would like to answer.
Everyone I think has alluded to Russia's propaganda
efforts, the amount of money they are spending on RT [Russia
Today], on Sputnik, on other media outlets. It is something
that I have been concerned about and actually filed legislation
that would change the way FARA [Foreign Agents Registration
Act] operates to look at whether they are trying to circumvent
our legislation and not registering. I think probably I hit a
nerve because there has been an interesting response in Russia
to that legislation.
But can you talk about how much we should be concerned
about this propaganda arm? I was interested, Ambassador
Vershbow, in your suggestion that NATO ought to be looking at
responding to some of the Russian propaganda in a different
way. So how much of a piece of what Russia is trying to do is
this, and what should we be doing in response to it?
General Breedlove. I will start with just a short remark. I
think it was surprising to me how little the Western world
talked about what quietly happened here about ten days ago
where Russia established an information warfare division of
their military and beginning to funnel an even more military
approach to how they do this. While it is a cheap war--we used
those words earlier--they are putting a lot of money into this.
Senator, I think this is something we need to be very attentive
to.
I agree with something that was said earlier. We cannot go
tit for tat. Right after the MH-17 shoot-down, they put four
stories out on the street within two news cycle that it took us
two years to debunk. We cannot respond tit for tat. What we
need to do is get our troops, our values, and our lines out
there in an aggressive way so that the world can see the other
side of the story.
I am sorry for taking your time.
Senator Shaheen. No. Thank you.
Ambassador Burns, do you have anything to add to that?
Ambassador Burns. No. I absolutely agree, and I think
working with our NATO and EU partners is absolutely essential.
We have a much stronger voice when we are part of a chorus on
these issues than when we are doing it solo.
Senator Shaheen. Ambassador Vershbow?
Ambassador Vershbow. I agree with my colleagues. I think we
should not overestimate the audience that RT really has, but I
am more worried about the ability to manipulate social media
with trolls, with bots, and getting these fake stories into
millions of people's inboxes before we even know what is going
on. At the same time, we have to stay consistent with our own
values about free speech and diversity of opinion in the media,
but call them out on shoddy journalistic standards,
manipulation of truth into fake news. If there are legal
issues, I am not competent to evaluate whether they are
skirting the Foreign Agent Registration Act, but we should look
closely at that because it is, as we all know, an arm of the
Russian Government de facto if not de jure.
But the allies and our European Union partners are in some
ways more vulnerable to all this with Russian minorities in
many countries, traditional sympathies towards Russia,
inclining people to look to Russian media rather than to the
BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] or other sources. So it
is a collective challenge, and I think working with our allies
and partners, we can better meet that challenge.
Senator Shaheen. I certainly agree. It is something I have
heard everywhere I have been in Eastern Europe, concern about
that kind of propaganda. So thank you all very much.
Chairman McCain. I thank the witnesses for their testimony
today and for their years of outstanding service to our Nation.
Senator Reed?
Senator Reed. Just a brief comment. We have talked about
the doctrine of escalate to deescalate. It seems to me to be
not only irrational but insane. You typically escalate in
response to your opponent to defeat them, though escalate not
to deescalate but escalate to defeat might be the real reality.
I just wanted to make that point. I see heads nodding. I do not
need a response, but I think there is agreement.
Chairman McCain. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[all]