SUBSCRIBER+ INTERVIEWS — As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) marks its 75th anniversary, it is also marking what is arguably the most important moment in its history. At its 40-year mark, in 1989, the alliance had a seminal moment as the nations of the Soviet Bloc erupted in revolution, and then again two years later, when NATO’s sworn enemy, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. But the end of the Cold War was the culmination of a decades-long struggle, won in the end without an actual war; today the alliance is facing more immediate and almost daily tests in the heart of Europe.
NATO surprised many observers, inside and outside the alliance, with its spirited and unified opposition to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Now, in the war's third year, profound questions have surfaced about Ukraine’s fate and the possibility that Vladimir Putin might not stop his aggression in Ukraine. That latter fear has prompted other questions for NATO: Would the armies and citizenry of the U.S. and Western Europe go to battle for the so-called frontline states of NATO today – Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and others?
This week, a consortium of think tanks convened a gathering of former NATO commanders, including Cipher Brief expert General Philip Breedlove, for a conversation about NATO at 75, with a particular focus on the war in Ukraine.
The Hudson Institute, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund, and GLOBSEC brought together four “SACEURS” – Supreme Allied Commanders Europe”: Generals Breedlove, Wes Clark, Curtis Scaparrotti and Tod Wolters.
They offered thoughts on core lessons of the war – assessments of NATO as well as the Russian military, the risks of a NATO-Russia conflagration, and more.
Peter Rough, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia, moderated the discussion.
THE INTERVIEWS
The following excerpt of this event has been ledited for length and clarity
Lessons from the war in Ukraine
Gen. Clark: If you look at what’s going on in Ukraine today, a couple of things are obvious. Number one, we have to really understand electronic warfare. We’ve talked about it for a long time.
Second thing is the pace of innovation. I didn’t see much innovation in the 1990s. We did bring the M1A1 tank in, and we used air power in a unique way for the first 40 days in the (1991) Gulf War. When we went into Kosovo (1999), it was with the same air-power approach. We wanted to take the lights out in downtown Belgrade. We didn’t quite get to that because of the political constraints, but we used air power effectively and we kept the ground forces in planning stage on that.
But as you look at where we are today, software modifications are rolling out very, very quickly, and we’ve got to be able to match the pace of innovation that the Ukrainians have shown if we want to stay ahead on the battlefield.
Gen. Breedlove: Wes hit it on the head. Electronic warfare has become a massive part of this war, and I would offer to you: Our military in America is not ready for this level of electronic-warfare fight. We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got to figure this out.
Gen. Walters: The points I’ll make have to do with integration and innovation. A 21st-century conflict is air, land, sea, space and cyber, to include the information domain, to include the nuclear arena. And a battlefield commander, regardless of which component they’re in charge of, has to have high situational awareness on what is taking place in each one of those domains all of the time, to include a whole-of-government approach to assisting in the campaign. In NATO today…(that means) being effective in the battle space to make sure that you can accurately assess what is taking place and then be able to innovate in a very, very short time frame, knowing that the enemy could possess an ability to innovate as well. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen in Ukraine.
The good news is, I like the odds with NATO. We’re not where we need to be in NATO, but we know where we need to go. And this all-domain approach…to include a very keen emphasis on being willing to innovate in the middle of a conflict is something that makes this one unique.
Air-land integration has proven time and time again: if you’re not ready for it, you’re probably not going to be effective. This was just a classic case where Russia made a mistake with respect to their ability to apply ready forces at the right time at the right place, and they got caught in a conundrum. And it’s had an impact all the way to this very moment.
Gen. Breedlove: I want to make some remarks on air power in this war. The fact that the Ukrainian Air Force was so small – and let’s give them immense credit for how well they did with limited assets – given some good intelligence, they have husbanded and used their force very well, but unable to do many of the missions that Western forces have grown to expect from air power.
I just think that we need to be careful that we don’t try to take lessons from a war where the failure of air power has resulted in a World War I, static attritional fight.
Gen. Scaparrotti: One advantage that we have with respect to lessons learned is in the United States in particular, we’ve got subordinates all the way down that study this, that’s a part of their professional education, that have that kind of experience. And with the ability to decentralize and mission-focus, as we call it, we can basically inculcate these, begin to train them and begin to bring them into our force as time goes on in a way that I think the Russians have a difficult time doing.
State of the Russian military
Gen Clark: We’ve got to be really careful about not underestimating the Russian military. It’s easy to do. The media from the beginning was really making fun of the Russian military. I did the first U.S.-Russian military staff talks in the period (from) 1994 through ‘98. I got to know a lot of the Russian generals. They’re smart, they’re educated. It’s just an entirely different system. We give commands and our subordinates analyze the command and come back and tell us the tricks of implementation. And if we’re overly optimistic or wrong, somebody down there is going to speak up and say, “Sir, you can’t do that. Let’s change the boundary. I can’t go across this river at this point, I need a little bit more air power.” Or “Sir, I need another artillery unit here because I just don’t have enough fires.”
In the Soviet lexicon, and carried into the Russian forces, such questioning of a superior is tantamount to treason. You’re trying to disrupt the plan that you’ve been ordered to execute. Your job is to execute that plan. And so when we look at them blundering around on the battlefield, it’s easy to misunderstand what’s really happening out there. The Russian character, the Russian force, is structured around grinding forward, grinding forward regardless of losses, grinding forward through bad command decisions above them. Taking losses.
And somehow in Russia, thus far at least, it’s worked. Worked in World War II, working now, at least to some extent. So let’s don’t underestimate them. Technically they’re pretty smart. They’ve got China behind them, got Iran and sanctions-busting behind them.
And they’ve got someone in charge who is an intelligence operative. Mr. Putin is playing a very sophisticated game with us. He’s using nuclear threats, he’s using reflexive control against political leaders in the West. He knows what they’re afraid of, he dangles it out and uses it against them. And so we have to be very careful to understand that this war is not simply a clash of armies and combined forces on a battlefield — it’s a much broader conflict.
Gen. Breedlove: On the Russian side, we had this magnificent, big air force that had some extremely new kit, but it’s very clear that the kit was not matched by trained pilots or mission-ready formations. And so Russia was absolutely unable to do suppression of enemy air defenses against a relatively small and less capable target. And Russia was unable to bring air power to the support of ground forces until very late in this conflict. And so we saw a Russian Air Force that everyone feared was unable to do some of its most basic missions.
Almost all their strikes are counter-value against civilians, civilian infrastructure, fixed targets. Russia has yet to truly bring its air forces to the support of the ground effort. There is a lot of potential left in the Russians, and that potential is maybe not of the type that we would seek in our militaries, but their ability to slog this out and grind is still there. And I think that’s what Mr. Putin is counting on. I think he fully expects that the West, and maybe even the United States, will change their approach and have new thinking, and all he has to do is survive to get there and keep the pressure on.
The numbers (the Russians) are losing…upwards of 1,000 a day now, that to us is horrendous. But to Mr. Putin, it is not horrendous. He is unconcerned by that. If we could get an information campaign that truly began to get to the Russian people what is happening out there, I think that would be an incredibly effective tool.
Gen. Scaparrotti: It’s quite remarkable, if you look at the position that Russia is in, and yet Putin is planning for the future against NATO. He’s restructured his regional commands and changed so that he could confront the addition (to NATO) of Sweden and Finland. They’ve been able to ramp up the production of their armored vehicles now almost six-fold in the midst of this, because they’re on a wartime economy. He’s put out a new modernization plan. So he clearly has a plan to not only finish this fight, but to continue with a force that’s there and can confront NATO beyond that. So they’re here to stay and we need to take them seriously.
Russian hybrid warfare
Gen. Clark: Yesterday I got a note from a leader in North Macedonia who said that his party, the majority Albanian party, had been forced out because the government wants to align itself against Bulgaria, against the EU, against NATO. Now, this isn’t a bunch of ordinary citizens who are farmers and people in Macedonia saying, “Gee, I think the EU is a bad idea.” It is evidence of the Russian fingers that go throughout Europe at the political level.
And so hybrid warfare starts for us in the military with cyber, we’re worried about space, but it ultimately ends up in the lap of the politicians. It’s out there, but it’s worse than that. It’s reflexive control. So if you know what your political leader’s afraid of or what you want him to do, you just trot out the little indicator. He says, “Oh my God, we can’t do this.”
The American political system is a domain of conflict right now, and that’s simply a fact — about whether the United States will continue to support Ukraine, about whether the American system of justice is effective, about whether democracy works, all of this is old play for the Soviets and their successors in Russia.
Today with social media, it’s on our doorstep. It’s in our movies. The attack space has enlarged for hybrid warfare.
Gen. Scaparrotti: In the United States, I think one of our problems is…we just culturally don’t like dealing within the information domain. We’re very restrictive in our ability to do that, and I think it does hurt us a great deal in terms of our agility there.
Gen. Breedlove: I was in an incredibly good conversation just yesterday about the extent of Russian hybrid operations, and it appears that the West is really not paying attention to the fact that we need to address these things. Talking with a very close Georgian colleague, the hybrid fight going on in Georgia is palpable and measurable, and he believes that they are losing that fight in his country. I was with the Interior Minister of Moldova the other day. She is brilliant. She can walk you through basically very minor kinetic things that are passing in a hybrid manner inside her country.
I believe that we are so focused on the kinetic fight in Ukraine that we are unaware at a level of decision that we’re also going to have to start taking on this hybrid business.
Risks of confrontation with Russia
Gen. Breedlove: I would observe that in my government and many European governments, we are stepping all over ourselves to avoid conflict with Russia. We are not in…any way confronting Russia on their actions.
When Russia shot down a U.S. drone in the Black Sea, what did we do? We retreated. We gave Russia more international airspace and sea space. We backed away from them so that we would lessen the possibility of a conflict. We know about these things happening in our countries, but we do not have a policy now that says we’re going to take them on, because we are trying to avoid conflict.
Gen. Clark: (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev once told an American president, “We know you better than you know yourselves.” And the record of democracies is that democracies are always slow to act. But one thing that when I was SACEUR, (Serbian leader) Slobodan Milosevic had to learn the hard way. He thought that he would win in Kosovo because he wanted it more than NATO did. But what he didn’t understand is that an alliance of democracies, once it sets its goal and its policies, it doesn’t back off. And Mr. Putin needs to understand this. NATO and our Democratic nations may be slow to anger. We may be slow to recognize that we’re in a confrontation, whether we want to say it or not. Once we recognize it, it’s over for Mr. Putin. He will lose that confrontation.
The future of NATO Militaries
Gen. Breedlove: Where I don’t feel optimistic is the speed of our adaptation. We recognize we need to do drones, and now we’ve got these big acquisition programs working on drones. Everything in American acquisition circles moves glacially compared to what we see – certainly the Ukrainians doing, and to some degree what the Russians are doing. We have great thinkers who are doing great work, but our system of bringing that work to the battlefield is not to the speed that we need.
A lot of countries can match America now, or nearly match America, in building and fielding (forces) and capability, but I believe in my heart of hearts that what has set American militaries apart forever is the American military fighting man and woman. And the way that we train, educate, and bring on leaders, train, educate, and bring on NCOs, and train and educate those young people who actually do the mission, I believe is what really sets America apart. And we need to keep focused on getting the right kind of people and numbers so that we can maintain that.
Gen. Clark: I think we’re going to have to take another look at the volunteer force, the incentives, how it’s structured, how we organize it. It’s 50 years really since we did it…and we did it by offering incentives, and the purpose was to enable expeditionary forces without the kind of demonstrations that we saw during the Vietnam War caused by the draft. We’ve got to re-look at this, because many of the incentives that we used and the relationships that we relied on have changed.
The parental and cultural support for public service has declined. So we need to reconsider this. America needs a strong armed forces, and it needs a citizenry willing to serve.
Gen. Scaparrotti: One thing I would point out is in the West and in the United States in particular, we’ve got a very small percentage of those who serve today and have served over the past 20 years or so. And so the military is not as well integrated or understood across our society as it once was coming out of World War II, Korea, et cetera. All my uncles and all of them served. My grandfather served. That’s not the case anymore in our society, and it’s not the case in Europe. So that’s a factor here.
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