Transcripts For CSPAN2 Atlantic Council Forum Examines Impac

CSPAN2 Atlantic Council Forum Examines Impact Of ZAPAD 17 Military Exercises On... July 12, 2017

That we may see being played out into the overall Russian Strategic thinking some of it is not just about abstract readiness. But the exercise is certainly testing thert of transatlantic community, testing the russian ability to pursue with the community ouralso the ability to keep deterrence posture credible. And thirdly, which is be our sort of reaction . Say three words here. Vigilantot to be calm, and flexible. It we have to do certainly intend this to be the case. In ae also have to do it way as an alliance, and as countries in the region. Particularly considering the bad habit of bad things happening in august and september time frame. As people mentioned. Sour,ularly if things go that is the thing we have to get behind. In a wider sense, we have to continue adjusting the alliances, the structure, the theern flank to reflect existing complexity and join us of the challenges we currently face and what we face in the foreseeable future. These are my first remarks. I will be happy to elaborate. E great, thanks. We will just pass it down, general. Thank you very much, thank you for inviting norway to this event as well and im representing norway. I will try to put on minor un norwegian lenses. I think one has to understand what is happening north of norway on a daily basis as well. S use a few minutes to send some brief remarks about what the siorth of norway. What we have seen the last couple of years is an increased activity when it comes to see power. Sea particularly increasing. Go russian doctrine is to west. Thather with this, we know weve also seen a russian modernization when it comes to submarines that are more silent than before. We have also seen weapons on board these summaries the heavy longerrange than before. This combination makes it so much more important today to have Situational Awareness of what is going on in the north atlantic. That is why were also trying to work with other allies to do this. When it comes to the air forces, we have actually seen a reduced activity from the russian side in the north. A few years ago, we saw different type of formations. It has been reduced lately. We have not seen much of the a few years aggressiveness that has been seen in the baltic sea. There is definitely a difference between the russian behavior in the baltic as compared to north of norway. Because of the sanctions and what have you, the interactions between the norwegian military and Russian Military has been reduced to almost nothing. On a daily basis, were still cooperating slightly on the border guard between russia and norway. We are cooperating on searchandrescue issues and incidents at sea. Be aware we also have still a line ine halt northern norway between the headquarters in the Northern Fleet headquarters. We do tests every week. Lately, it has not been used much. But is there for commanders to speak to commanders just in case we have something coming up and we need to get any misunderstandings out of the way. So when it comes to this exercise itself, we are interested in seeing how the exercises linked to other exercises in the north. We know that late summer, early fall is an active time, where there are a number of other exercises. How these are linked will be interesting. ,e also know that during fall maybe this time already, we see an annual deployment from the going further east and the northeast passage. We understand that most of the exercise activity is going to be on the western border of russia and probably facing toward estonia and let fear and lots atvia. From the norwegian perspective, we would like more transparency, as we all would like. If i could inform nato, or maybe against using the the and a document channel to inform about the exercise, that would be something that would be very welcoming from our point of view. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will move to evelyn. Thank you. Thank you again to the Atlantic Council, the estonian government, all the code participants coparticipants. I think i was asked to speak as someone working in the government in 2013 when the last exercise occurred. Sitting in the pentagon at the time, we watched a new defense minister come into office. He has only increased his power and stature within the russian government and russian society. He was already unknown figure two russians because of his 20 year lead of the internal russians, the equivalent of fema. When he came into office, one of the biggest and most immediate changes we saw was an uptick in the russian exercise regimen. This was not just oriented toward the very predictable cycle, which is one of the peace, because there are other regional exercises occurring. Really put a lot of force behind this subsequently. In addition to those normally scheduled exercises, which as we heard earlier, go back to the soviet days, he also initiated what he called snap exercises. They were basically inspections, exercises to demonstrate civilian and military leadership, the state of readiness of the russian forces. Hadatched in 2000 13, they for snap exercises, and they have gone up significantly. They doubled in 2014, there were eight snap exercises, 20 in 2015. They went back down to 11 in 2016, which i suspect is linked to the fact that operationally, especially with their incursion into syria commitment they did not have to do these exercises to test their readiness. They were at a pretty high state of readiness because of ukraine and syria. But the discipline to put that context in place for all of you, all of a sudden we saw this new minister of defense and these new smaller exercises, and then we had the larger exercise. There were about 70,000 committee 100,000 troops involved unofficially. We have the contrast that with the fact that thats in your, the largest nato exercise at the time had about 6000 forces, and was called steadfast jazz. It was not a very strong and determined name. At the time, we do not understand that russia regarded , that thi adversary was a serious matter. Of course, in the department of defense, the military intelligence community, we were looking very closely at all of these exercises and becoming increasingly alarmed. The first thing you learn in the defense business is the threat is the combination of intent and capability. Youre seeing capability changing and increasing in terms of quality an quantity. The intent was a big question mark. Our Political Leadership at the time, not just the United States, but the transatlantic community, the intent was we still regarded it as not necessarily a threat. There was a lot of discussion about that. I think with the crimea invasion ukraine, theof ongoing operations, the situation was clarified. Although of course, there are still those who try to muddy the overall strategic landscape and how we should perceive it. I wanted to set that out there so people understand the reason we are talking about 2013 and not much before that is because there was a change with Vladimir Putin coming back into power, with this new minister of defense. That is an important point to note. Here,back to my notes this idea that they were s. Ercising against terrorist you can expect the russians to all skate again in option bfuscate again in 2017. The other thing i would add is the real degradation of his curtains 2013 that all mentioned and others talked about in terms of transparency. This is where it is most alarming. This is why theres so much train why theres so much tension now is the russians are in violation of the vienna documents, they are really trying to declare what theyre doing. Those documents, theyre basically transparency measures in order to decrease the risk of miscalculation, decreased tensions when militaries in europe are conducting normal exercises for readiness. When a bit untenable russia is in fact the adversary, like it or not. We did not want to be in an adversarial situation, but we are. Ignoringthat they are these transparency measures, which were put into place with the idea we would not really be targeting one another, or would try not to, has created a real problem. , that ii would just say dont talk too long and we can open it up for discussion, there are a couple of things i would like us to watch coming out of this. Obviously some of the things thingslked about ill talked about before, a number of troops, where they go, the disposition of troops eared there is some concern about whether Russian Troops will remain in belarus after the exercises over. I think that concern is probably shared by the belarusian government. I think we should watch carefully what is being said in belarus. 2014, theyy come in have always tried to do what the previous Ukrainian Government debt, have a way to communicate with the west, and hedge against the kremlin being overly dominant. I think they have become increasingly concerned over time , even in the last year or so. We need watch closely what happens in belarus. We also need watch for closely held a exercise, if we see any other wmd,clear, chemical, biological. The Cyber Component is very important. Coming out of exercise, but would like some concrete things. There are many things we could talk about we would like to see, but i would like to see, first of all, obviously continuation of our strong deterrent posture. I would like to see it less rotational and more permanent. That may be unrealistic in the near term, but certainly we need we are sure that exercising, that nato is exercising, that nato is ready, that we shall resolve that we show resolve on the conventional front. On the cyber front, i think its very important for us to think about cyber ops. And whether nato can build not just an early warning, and i know it was working on intelligence for early warning, and we have the cyber center in we need an operational capability. Its time for nato to really take much more seriously the cyber threat because the reality is, we are already saw that the nato strategic concept identifies cybersecurity as something that requires an article 4 consultation but i would argue that given how given the potential ramifications, impact of a cyber operation, you could get very quickly to article 5 and nato cant be sitting there ringing its hands within the military committee certainly. And i think we need to think about a couple of things that are less less tactical, ifan you will. I mentioned earlier the transparency. I think the best thing we could do on the transparency front is actually to broaden the discussion and bring it out of the transalantic and talk to the chinese and the indians. What the russians are doing have implications for them as well. I think about the imf treaty, excuse my phone, it was all the twitter feed getting it excited. [laughter] unless it have a cyber op. Tyn kind of silent now our government and nato itself and the europeans in particular about the russian ongoing violation of the inf treaty. It may be because smarter minds are thinking, this has implications for the chinese because, what the russians have done, it is a mobile capability, it can be directed towards others. Why dont we bring in the chinese, the indians, other countries that have a stake in increased transparency, lowering the risk of actual military kinetic contact and increasing confidence, or Building Confidence . And then i would say, again, that thats probably the most important thing we could do at the higher level. And i would agree completely with the under secretary. We need to be calm, vigilant and flexible. Great. Thank you all for your opening remarks. Think we set off a broad and varied understanding of this. One subject we all touched on was obviously the transparency aspect or the lack thereof. So i think that is one of the things that id like to hear , particularly from you, under secretary, about how the lack of it is impacting preparations and the calculations that the baltics and your country are making, and broaden it out how its impacted the Nato Alliance and the wests preparations for this activity. Starting with you, if you would like. Things. The transparency is something that we seen, there is than some backsliding in transparency for the last 10 years, since putins famous or infamous speech. The transparency has been a constant victim. With regards to this exercise, it is interesting. I would put this into the context of turkey relationship between russia. It is interesting to see how i would put this into the broader context between the tricky relationship of russia and belarusian. For the russians, see more utility in transparency and have been more forthcoming in fulfilling some of the actual arrangement criteria. This may also reflect their own assurance over the possible russian agenda. As far as the future is concerned, i think the estonia n instinct is to see whether the existing regiment can be used before getting to something new , whereas Different Countries may have different interests and different concerns as far as the different concerns as far as the arms control and transparencies concerned. Someout of europe, to overarching, overwhelming agreement with countries as far as india and china, will certainly not be an easy thing. And so as long as we do have the current existing regimes, we should do our utmost to press on fulfilling the criteria that are stated on our behalf, on naders behalf, on natos the have, we are more than willing to follow the different procedures. In the vienna document, for example, to make sure that the exercises are and stay russiansnt so that the and other interested parties can get the sense of whats happening there. I stop with that. Sure. I think that transparency issue on the military side is basically one thing. Thats not to create misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is a prerequisite for increased tension, and increased tension, youll create episodes and youll get incidents and things like that. So thats why this transparency thing is so important. You can talk to that on a tactical side as well as on the strategic side. What do we think the what do we think of the deliberate information and the deliberate obfuscation . What is the intent behind the lack of transparency . From a political perspective, first of all, obviously there is a military exercise, but there is a political component of this. First of all, obviously directed towards nato, a message towards nato. Were ready, you know, dont try anything, a very strong message. The results of a message to the russian to mystic population the russian domestic population that nato is an adversary, the west is the adversary, were ready, were a great nation so that the patriotic element is there as well. We still have a lot of questions about russias significance, whether russia is indeed in an adversarial posture with us, whether russia is a declining power so therefore this doesnt matter. These questions are still out there being discussed , unfortunately in the political arenas. So russia will take advantage. They always like this kind of ambiguity anyway. With a wink. They want us to know theyre capable and powerful and look what they did with their cyber intrusion in the u. S. Elections. But they dont really want to take full accountability because they want those for whom its convenient to align with them or at least not oppose them to be able to do so. Building off that kind of, the level of concern and relations to the russian side, you said you dont view it as a direct threat, but thats kind of always an underlying concern in the back of peoples minds. I was talking about the little when he and minister last month lit the whiny and minister lithuanian Prime Minister mentioned there has been some media and rhetoric surrounding two provinces in the west in lithuania talking on various russian sites about how they were gifted to them by stalin years ago. Weve seen this kind of rhetoric before. If the direct military intervention is not the primary concern, its still in the back of our minds. What are some of the other concerns beyond the accidental intrusions . How likely do we think an intrusion or engagement that doesnt quite rise to the level of an article five violation . Thats for the entire pill. , the example that you note, the lithuanian example, is exactly the reason why we strongly feel that paying attention to the exercise is only military thinkers should do. Because one way or another, we expect to see the exercise in the news as a deliberate attempt by the russians. Considering the examples of there willercises, be full range of tools in their National Position being used from information to cyber to nuclear, etc. Meaning that we should not be passive in this sort of strategic communication. Except the elements i would personally be concerned about the accidental nature with serious serious consequences as well as some possible possible locations and this is where its fair to say that that whoever attempts to exercise this should show sort of professional, professional professionalism and particularly the light of the near misses or close to accidents that we have seen on the baltic sea or across over the baltic sea and in aerospace, we dont want to be in a situation where something goes terribly wrong in that kind of situations. Well, i think my comments will echo much of that when it comes to to incidents. I think that what i would be concerned about is the con guested air space, sea space, et cetera, in the baltic region. Region. That is where the most activity is going on and if something is going to happen, that is where it will most likely be. We might see incidents. Hopefully we will not see that. Aside from that, i will say i am kind of looking forward to after to exercise when we are able analyze the whole of government approach to the joint of this and how it is linked together. That will be very interesting to analyze. To come back to the Atlantic Council to talk about. Thank you. I would agree. Seeing how they mobilize. In the last time, they were only in the beginning of thinking of the complete mobilization and i think seeing how much further they may have come since then, plus there are a lot of internal Security Forces that have been created by president putin to protect him but also with new internal reorganization occurring and so i think it will be interesting to see what role they play. Is there going to be some kind of Color Revolution scenario of the little green men . Again, some kind of fomented or ofiterrorist some sort fabricated clash . How will they respond to that within the context of their scenario . So i think there are a lot of Little Things we will learn from this inasmuch as they will increase their readiness, hopefully we will also increase our readiness. Et is a great point th

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