EXPERT INTERVIEW — In the week since Donald Trump’s election victory, the world has been speculating and preparing – in some cases with high anxiety – for what may be in store over the next four years. As we have reported, an almost unprecedented array of global challenges will land in the president-elect’s inbox, from Russia’s war in Ukraine (and now North Korea’s involvement on the battlefield) to a multi-front war in the Middle East; a U.S.-China competition playing out in economic and geopolitical spheres; and a U.S. military and defense apparatus that is showing signs of strain.
As part of our ongoing coverage of the aftermath of the election, The Cipher Brief turned to General Philip Breedlove, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, for his insights and thoughts about the coming years. Gen. Breedlove is focused intensely on the need to support Ukraine and the future of NATO – along with ways in which the U.S. military and defense industry can improve to meet the range of challenges.
“I think that what is clear is the world is not going to be a kinder, gentler place into the future,” Breedlove said. “The world is watching what we do… Our policies are all being written right now in Ukraine.”
Gen. Breedlove spoke with Cipher Brief CEO Suzanne Kelly.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kelly: The top question on everyone's mind is what's going to happen in Ukraine. What do you see as the scenarios?
Breedlove: Before I answer more specifically, I'd like to remind people about his first time as president. During his [2016] campaign there were a lot of tough words, tough love for NATO, and he was pretty tough on NATO when he got started. He started holding people accountable to promises that they had made. I was fairly open in my thoughts about his tactics, his techniques, and his procedures.
But no one can argue with the results of what he did. He was the first president in four decades that got NATO members to increase their spending. And look at them now. 23 or 24 of the nations are meeting their goals. And during his time, our troop presence in Europe increased, our investment in European infrastructure increased, and our participation in large-scale exercises increased. So for all the tough language, during his first presidency, NATO benefited.
As we approach your question – What about now? – President-elect Trump has been very open and vocal about ending wars. And we all agree that's a noble concept. I support that concept. But the manner in which you end a war is important. His words are, I'm going to end that [war in Ukraine] in a day. I think he does have a purpose to end it quickly, but “end it” is the key phrase. What does that mean?
Right now, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin desperately needs a pause. He desperately needs a ceasefire. His army has been mauled. He's losing people – the high numbers now are approaching a million men, and the reputable figures are a minimum of 650,000 casualties, maybe 220,000 dead, and the rest so severely injured they'll never fight again. So Mr. Putin needs a pause. That's not going to be a concession for Mr. Putin – he's going to act like it is, but he desperately needs to refit and refurbish his army. Russia is in such a bad manpower place that he is getting North Koreans to liberate Russian territory.
And so when we begin this negotiation for what might happen next, I think we need to keep focused on what Ukraine sees as their path ahead and how we best get them to that path. And if we are going to capitulate and give Mr. Putin everything he wants, all the land he owns now [in Ukraine], a ceasefire so that he can get his broken army fixed, that's not going to be good.
In 2008, Russia amassed its army, marched across the international border, invaded and occupied portions of Georgia. They still occupy 20 percent of Georgia. The West rewarded Putin's bad behavior by allowing him to do that. In 2014, Mr. Putin amassed his army, went across an internationally recognized border and occupied Crimea and portions of the Donbas. The West's response was inadequate again, and we rewarded Mr. Putin's bad behavior by allowing him to hold 12-13 percent of the most important commercial land in Ukraine. Now here we are in 2024. What I do not believe we can afford to do is once again reward Mr. Putin's bad behavior.
What I have learned in my life is [if] you reward bad behavior, you are not going to get good behavior next. I think we need to end the talk of “ending” this war in Ukraine. We have to make Mr. Putin pay a price. If we give him everything he asks for, we're just setting him up for the next episode.
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Kelly: The Cipher Brief was in Kyiv twice this year and both times there were whispers of Ukraine potentially giving up some of the land as a way to end this war. So it's not the first time that they've been thinking about this. One of the things they've been very insistent on is NATO membership. But that also seems to be a red line for Mr. Putin. What kind of security guarantees or assurances would Ukraine need in order for this not to be a complete win for Mr. Putin?
Breedlove: Sadly, we have a poor track record here. Let's remember the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, when Ukraine agreed to de-arm itself, specifically of nuclear weapons, but take other military actions as well. And in that memorandum, four countries entered into an agreement that assured Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Those nations were Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
We assured Ukraine of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. You be the professor – grade our paper. How have we performed on our promises, our assurances? F minus at the very best. I think that based on the history of how we have failed to perform or failed to live up to our promises, we're going to have to do something much more demonstrative, declarative, making an open statement of what our intentions would be and putting them in a treaty with approval by the Senate, which then would cause us to live up to our promises. That would be an option.
The other option is just bring them into NATO in a sort of West Germany-East Germany model like we had during the Cold War, where Russia was occupying part of Germany, and the West was occupying the other part of Germany. We could do that.
Kelly: What happens to all of this incredible military innovation and entrepreneurship in Ukraine? There have been conversations about Ukraine becoming the next leading innovator of battlefield technology in the world.
Breedlove: I don't think they're “the next.” They are it. I have good friends in this industry, and I'm associated with Georgia Tech and GTRI, the Research Institute, where some of our very best electronic warfare work is being done. And I challenge them all the time: who is leading in drone and small drone technology in the world? It's not the United States. It's Ukraine. And possibly right behind them, it's Russia. And then right behind them, maybe Israel. But the bottom line is, we're probably not in the top three. Who's leading in electronic warfare, jamming, and other intrusive methods to defeat these kinds of things? It's not the U.S.
Occasionally, the U.S. research institutes challenge me, saying You're wrong, General Breedlove, we actually have the best technology and the best research in the world, but we are not fielding it. In Ukraine and Russia, they have the immediacy of the battle, it's ongoing, and they are moving technology to the battlefield far faster than we do in the West. Our acquisition programs are horribly slow. We do it, shoot ourselves in the feet with how we get technology to the battlefield, and they're doing it way better. Maybe we do have the best technology and the best research, but let me assure you, we do not get it to the battlefield at the speed that Ukraine and Russia, Israel and other people do.
Kelly: NATO has a new secretary general. They're going to have, for the first time in 10 years, new leadership, new thinking at the top. What do you see changing for NATO and Europe in light of the results of the election?
Breedlove: My prediction is, steady as she goes. Remember that in Europe we have a war going on. Whether people want to agree with it or not, the enemy gets a vote, and there's a war going on because Russia is invading Europe. And now we have an Asian nation aiding in the war, entering in the war against Europe. We have North Korean forces fighting in Europe against Ukraine. So, we have a war widening now, to a more global aspect.
I think that NATO is going to keep focused first and foremost on their own backyard. I do believe that NATO will take more and more interest in Asia, that’s not new. My fourth day on the job at NATO as the SACEUR, I signed a paper that acknowledged and tacitly approved [of] eight NATO countries that were sailing forces in RIMPAC, the largest naval exercise in the Asia Pacific region. It used to happen on an every-two-year basis. It happens more frequently now. RIMPAC is a massive exercise of all of the Pacific rim nations. And why is that? Trading nations, great maritime nations, which we still have an awful lot of in NATO, they need free and open passage of the South China Sea. It is key that they can sail there for free commerce and trade.
There’s this revelation that all of sudden NATO is interested in the Pacific. No, they've been interested in the Pacific for a long time.
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Kelly: There was a bipartisan report released a couple of months ago in the United States that basically said the U.S. is not currently postured to fight multiple fronts in today's global environment. Do you agree?
Breedlove: I don't think we're ready. Part of it is that Putin has his economy on a wartime footing, and we in America do not. We are on a peacetime basis in America. North Korea has been permanently on a wartime basis and is now supporting Russia with that wartime production. And we know – not so openly, but we understand – that there are things happening where China is supporting the [Russian] effort, with some important technology and other things. So right now there are multiple entities, from Iran all the way through to China, that are very much approaching this in a wartime way, and their production has geared up. In America, we're not there. And it will take change from the top down to get us there.
Industry is not going to all of a sudden on their own nickel take huge risks with their shareholders' money, and start doing things that there is no indication that our government is going to support. There’s going to have to be some emphasis or policy change in the U.S. system for America to truly begin a wartime support effort.
Now, we're not at war. I hear people say all the time, “We are fighting.” The personal pronouns are not correct. “We” are not fighting. Some of our naval and air force assets have done some great work helping to defend Israel. But we haven't taken the field. We have struck Iranian targets — I call them Iranian targets because we all understand that these proxies are tied to Iran. On the fringes we have done some defending of Israel and some defending of our own people, but we're not fighting, and I think we need to understand that. It'll take some policy decision to change that to get us into a state where we're prepared to supply.
Do we have enough to [respond to multiple conflicts]? Yes and no. Most people will tell you that in a conventional sense, at the level of effort right now, we have enough of the basic kind of force structure to do what we need to do. What we do not have is what we used to call low-density, high-demand assets – the AWACS, the carrier battle groups, the bombers, these exquisite forces that bring amazing capability to the battlefield, but are limited in number. For the larger, forces, we probably are OK. Maybe not in the future, because our forces are dwindling. The Air Force is smaller and older than it's ever been in its history, including the day it was born. I think it's the same about the Navy.
But the bottom line is, what we don't have is those exquisite enablers and capabilities that we would need in every theater where a fight goes. We do not have enough AWACS. We do not have enough ISR – intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. We don't have some of these types of assets to go around.
One place where we are critically short is precise munitions. The world has changed. We can't go carpet-bomb places. Yes, Iran's doing that, and Russia's doing that. But the West is not going to allow itself to start carpet bombing like Russia did in Mariupol or Bucha. We've got to strike with precision. And we have very much diminished our precision supply, our warehouse of weapons that would be needed to go out and fight these fights.
Kelly: Do you see a change with new leadership in the White House?
Breedlove: I would hate to predict. We have a president-elect who has campaigned on an idea that he believes in peace through strength. In order to have peace through strength, you need two things. You need capabilities and you need credibility. Right now, we're hurting on the credibility.
We have backed up and backed up. As I said, in 2008 (with Georgia), we backed up. In 2014 (with Crimea), we backed up. Now it looks like in 2024 with Ukraine, we're going to back up again. So we're struggling on the credibility piece.
The capability piece, as I described, we have work to do. In selected areas where we have given a lot to Ukraine, we are gearing up to replace that. That's part of the dynamic. People think we're giving Ukraine money. We really aren't. What we're doing is giving U.S. companies money to build things that replace things that we give to Ukraine. My favorite example of that is the first 120-plus ATACMs [long-range missiles] we gave to Ukraine were ATACMs that we were about to pay a lot of money to demilitarize, because they had reached their service line. We avoided having to pay for that because we gave them all to Ukraine and they shot them to great effect on the battlefield. And now we are replacing those older ATACMs that we were going to get rid of anyway with newer ones. And so we have selected areas where we are investing now in precise weapons. But I would offer to you: we are not anywhere near a wartime production.
I think that what is clear is that the world is not going to be a kinder, gentler place in the future. People ask me all the time: What's our policy about Taiwan? What's our policy about North Korea? What's our policy about Iran? We do have those policies. You can go Google them. And they're relatively straightforward.
But what my mother told me when I was young – people aren't going to pay an awful lot of attention to what you say. They're going to pay a lot of attention to what you do. So when people ask me, what's our policy on Taiwan? I say, it's being written in Ukraine right now. What's our policy on North Korea? It's being written in Ukraine right now. The world is watching what we do.
Are we a reliable ally or partner? And are we going to stand for something? Our policies are all being written right now in Ukraine. And I think that we have to approach the world understanding that just like mom said, people don't care what you say. They really care about what you do.
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