By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, September 30, 2015 — The situations in Ukraine
and Syria and the need for the United States and European nations to engage
with top officials in Russia highlighted remarks here Sept. 28 by NATO’s
supreme allied commander for Europe.
Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who also serves as
commander of U.S. European Command, spoke at the German Marshall Fund of the
United States, a group whose aim is to strengthen trans-Atlantic cooperation on
regional, national and global challenges and opportunities.
Moderator Helene Cooper of the New York Times spoke with him
about the next NATO summit, scheduled to be held in July in Warsaw, Poland, and
the two discussed Russia’s involvement in Ukraine and in the fight in Syria
against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
NATO Summit
At the last NATO summit in Wales in September 2014,
Breedlove said, the alliance’s 28 nations agreed to “make probably the most
substantive changes to our alliance in the history of the alliance.”
The changes, some of which are completed, include changes in
the readiness and responsiveness of elements of the NATO Very High Readiness
Joint Task Force, or VJTF -- a spearhead force within the NATO Response Force
-- and changes to parts of the command-and-control structure to address issues
related to a revanchist Russia, Breedlove said.
Also, the general said, NATO force integration units have
stood up. Multinational Corps Northeast was given the mission of being ready
every day, all day, for an Article 5 contingency, and the interim VJTF has been
tested and has begun to exercise. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states
that an attack on one NATO ally constitutes an attack on all.
“It is just Step 1 of several steps to get to the final
adaptation of our force structure, but it’s good to see that on the tasks the
leaders of our nations gave us in the military at Wales, we have made great
progress,” Breedlove said.
The general said he sees next year’s Warsaw summit as “the
next set of agreed-to adaptations that we have to make to continue to prepare
ourselves and better position ourselves for the challenges we see.”
The road to Warsaw and beyond “is about looking at the
readiness and responsiveness of the entire NATO force structure,” he added.
Stabilizing Ukraine
Breedlove said, Russian President Vladimir Putin -- with
troops on the ground and arms and combat equipment moving nearby -- is allowing
the conflict to simmer in southeastern Ukraine.
The Russian president has demonstrated that he can
destabilize and maintain that instability in the southeast, Breedlove said,
discouraging foreign investment, keeping Ukrainian forces in the field, and
showing the people of greater Ukraine that their government can't retain
control of the area.
What is important, he added, “is that the nations of the
West -- more than NATO, the European Union and others -- continue to see what
is happening in eastern Ukraine.”
Breedlove said Russia has moved more than 1,500 armored
vehicles into eastern Ukraine, along with air defenses, Russian
command-and-control structures and immense stockpiles of equipment to support
its forces in the east.
“Getting all that out to re-establish the sovereign border
of Ukraine will take months and months,” the general said. “What about a good
show of faith [from Russia] -- begin the retrograde and show that we have a
responsible way forward?”
Russia and ISIL
On Russia’s role in the ISIL fight in Syria, Breedlove --
emphasizing that he was speaking for himself as the military commander of NATO
-- said Russia very much wants to be seen as a great power on the world stage.
“I think Russia very much wants to take the world's eyes off
what they continue to do in Ukraine … and [that it] wants to maintain
warm-water ports and airfield capabilities in the eastern Mediterranean, and
they saw that possibly being challenged by progress on the ground of those
opposing the [Bashar al-]Assad regime,” the general said.
Russia wants to enable and prolong the Assad regime “because
that is their legitimate door to their ports and airfields in Syria,” Breedlove
added.
“I think that Russia wants to be able to slow the advance of
the opposition to Mr. Assad in Syria, and then after all of that, I think they
will do some counter-ISIL work in order to legitimize their approach to Syria,”
he said.
Breedlove said what concerns him about Russia fighting ISIL
in Syria is that some sophisticated Russian air defenses and aircraft are going
into Syrian airfields.
“I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require …
sophisticated air-to-air capabilities,” the general said. “So I look at the
capabilities being created and determine from that what might be their intent.
These sophisticated air-defense capabilities are not about ISIL.” High on
Putin’s list in Syria is preserving the Assad regime against those who put
pressure on it, he added.
Engaging Russia
Breedlove said President Barack Obama’s 95-minute meeting
with Putin yesterday -- their first face-to-face meeting since 2013 -- was
critically important.
And today, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook announced
that following on the Obama-Putin meeting, Defense Secretary Ash Carter
directed his staff to open lines of communication with Russia on de-conflicting
Russian and ongoing coalition airstrikes in the fight against ISIL in Syria.
“We have said, and
many nations have said, that we need to have a dialogue -- we need to be able
to communicate with and engage with Russia,” Breedlove said.
If Europe is to be whole, free, at peace and prosperous,
Breedlove added, it will need to engage Russia, a nation with vast energy
reserves, a vast energy infrastructure, and substantial rail and road
capability.
“Any way that we can begin to have a conversation is a step
toward where we need to be,” the general said. “I think that if truly Russia
wants to rejoin the world of norms and reason in Syria, a great first step
would be to begin in Ukraine, showing that they are ready to rejoin the world
of norms and Western values in Ukraine.”
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