Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an Eagle one from Eagles
Speak at Sea or Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in
all things maritime. And good day everybody, and welcome a board. We're
really glad you've taken time to be with us today, and if you are
with the group that is with us live, I always like to give the
invitation. If you scroll down to the bottom of the show page, that
is where you will find the chat room. We've already got a handful of
folks in there. Welcome to willing to welcome your board if you want to
come over, and that's really the ideal place. If you have some observations
you want to share during the Coursier show, or if there are some questions
you'd like for us to address to our guests over the course of the next
hour, if you put that right in the chat room, we'll go ahead
and pick that up and fold that into the conversation. I also like to
remind everybody that if you've got to run off and take care of some other
business before the show is over, if you don't already, you can go
over to iTunes, Speaker, Spotify, whichever is your preferred podcast aggregator and
go ahead and subscribe the Midraps in that way. We will upload at a
time for your convenience and then you can catch everything. But now let's just
go ahead and jump into today's show. And when we look at the last
thirteen months, we've seen a scenario a few and NATO's uniform and civilian leadership
either predicted or if they did think it has happened, they didn't think it
would turn out the way that it looks here in the end of March of
twenty twenty three, and kind of using that as a kicking off point,
we want to look today at how the Alliance has reacted, grown, succeeded.
Are shown some cracks or perhaps some different views on what the alliance is
for amongst it's very different perspective holding members and to discuss that we have returning
for the full hour today a guest we've had on previously to talk about NATO,
and that is George Benitez, Associate professor of International Relations at the Marine
Command in South College in Quantico, Virginia. George, welcome back to Midrid.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me, hey,
and just to kick things off. Like I mentioned right at the intro,
let's let's roll it back a bit, and we all watched in February
of twenty twenty two as especially kind of the trigger point for me is when
the Far Eastern forces conducting exercises and Villa Russia didn't go home that things are
probably going to get interesting, and there was a accumulated conventional wisdom that all
the smart not all the smartest people, but the balance of the smartest people
in the room were convinced that this operation was going to go. And you
saw that manifested in a lot of the initial hesitancy from different nations and whether
on the military or the economic side, especially with the energy and fubbly take
for a second, let's roll back to February of twenty twenty two and talk
a little bit about the inventional wisdom inside the Alliance and as the initial acceptance
of the invasion took place, where most people were thinking it was heading and
what different schools of a thought inside the Alliance that you saw. Thank you.
So this begins back in October, where the United States and some other
intelligence services are starting to see some evidence that the Russians are planning something more
than just an exercise. And one of the differences is that the administration starts
to disclose some of this data. They send the CIA director to Moscow,
they start talking to the other allies and to say, hey, this mobilization,
this exercise that the Russians have been doing for the last few weeks,
it doesn't look like they're gonna stop. They're gonna keep some pressure on Ukraine,
and they might be trying to build up to do an actual attack,
and we need to let them know that we see what you're doing putin and
we want to to stop. But of course it didn't deter them enough.
We didn't try to stop them, and so you had the attack by Russia.
We looked at basically what was on paper for the Russian military, the
quantity and the advanced nature of some of their weapons system, and we thought
the Ukrainians couldn't match it, tank per tank fighter for fighter worship by worship,
and so we kind of focused too much on that, and so once
the invasion begins, you see a real manifestation of the pessimism of the West.
With the US offer to President Zelensky that we would evacuate him and his
family. And then of course you had the very famous response from Zelenski,
which is, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition, which which
is a great manifestation. It went viral around the world, and it's one
of the great examples of how the Ukrainian people, from the grassroots to their
top national leader. They knew they were assassination lists of people that the Russians
wanted to kill them, but they were willing to stay and fight for their
freedom. But for those first few days, the United States in the West
didn't think they could that enthusiasm, that patriotism wasn't going to be sufficient to
deter the Russians. We overestimated the skill of the Russians. We and the
Russians themselves overestimated how much of their equipment was actually working and how much they
could get it to work properly. We overestimated their logistics, their training,
their command and control of their communications, pretty much everything. And so it
didn't turn out as well as we had thought on paper. The Ukrainians were
actually much better at some of the things. They learned a lot of things.
Since twenty fourteen, they've gotten much better, much more united prepared for
these Remember they've been signing the Russians in their east part of the country for
over eight years, so they got some very experience, not just truth but
also leadership. And I think if we had sent provided more direct support at
the beginning, would it would have been much more helpful and that four more
Ukrainian lives could have been saved. But like I said, at the beginning,
we were pessimistic that the Ukrainian could survive. It has been leaked since
then that the Russians were talking about and planning for a two or three day
victory by which they thought they could seize Kiev the capitol, and knock out
the leadership in the first few days and then install their own puffer government after
that. But once that broke apart and things started to disassemble, you had
that forty mile convoy north of Kiev that was just the sitting duck, and
so the Ukrainians kind of bogged them down in a real conventional fight. That
basically, the Ukrainians have been able to be more skilled, even though they
have fewer personnel and and and much less equipment, They've been able to just
improve themselves and they bought themselves in those time to change the calculations of the
West. First they changed the calculations in Central Europe, in Poland and the
Baltic Republic adelsewhere that they started to see they were the most enthusiastic to begin
with to start sending help to the Ukrainians, and then slowly and even to
this day, you know, incrementally changing the US support and the US amount
of military aid that we are sending to the Ukrainian. Well, that's interesting
point because one of the things I've noticed is that the Baltic states and the
states that are have borders with the Russians or with Ukraine seem to be much
more vigorous in their support of the Ukrainian efforts in defense as compared to some
of the more eastern or more western in this case, and NATO nations,
can you kind of discuss the reluctancy of the Germans or the or the French
to provide as much aid as the Poles and the Baltic country. That's an
excellent point, and that's the only an issue. Even in the United States,
you're seeing a lot of headlines and articles being written of can we keep
helping the Ukrainians, can we keep sending so much support there because our own
spots piles are being dwindling. That you've seen a lot of the open source
figures on PGMs and the US normal production per year for javelins and such,
and how much how many were standing over there, and how much are arsenal
is decreasing. And I think what you said absolutely is right is that the
Central Europeans, the Poles, the balls that they have the right interpretation,
and their interpretation is it is better to fight and kill the Russian military.
It you brayed them to wait for it to get here. So at one
point you have say the Lithuanian Defense Ministry they sent half of their equipment who
to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians, not just half of the stuff that they
get every year, half of all the things they have, because again they
feel that if they help Ukraine win, if the if the Russian military is
defeated in Ukraine, that makes Mithiuayia, that makes all of the Baltics,
in Poland, all of NATO's eastern flankts Central Europe, it makes all of
them safer because again, defeating the Russians militarily in Ukraine makes it much less
likely that they'll be able to attack any of the NATO countries elsewhere. And
I do wish that that kind of logic brought on more in the United States
here in Washington, that we believe that and we're what and in the other
NATO capitals like Paris, like Berlin, that we would also send proportionally about
the same amount as the Central Europeans are doing to help Ukraine, because I
think that's one of the fundamental keys to this conflict. I think the Ukraine
conflict is going to be one of the two most influential conflicts in our lifetime,
the other one being Desert Storm. But however, the Ukrainian conflict ends
whether we make the right decisions and contigue to help the Ukrainians defend themselves and
win. This conflict is going to have a lot of influence and repercussions for
the next several decades of European security. It's important to have in to listen
to different points of view and things like that when it comes to issues like
this. But I found it interesting that you can almost trace a lot of
the attitude towards the Russians to their proximity of it the Baltic Republics and the
former members of the Warsaw Pack that are now in Nigers of NATO. They
know Russia better than anyone because they have the most recent data point to deal
with them, and they have a political structure such that their leadership that will
do that as opposed to what we see in some other nations. I thought,
what's also been interesting it has two other nations that in their history which
dates before World War Two, also have never really kept their eyes off of
the Russians except for small little periods and compromises. That's Finland and Sweden.
And I remember a Finnish army major that I served with in Afghanistan. We
used to talk about this all the time and this ISZ eight O nine,
and he'd always say, well, from the military point of view, you
know, we pretty much consider we're NATO but a name. We just need
to let our political ships and catch up. And I forget the name of
the president at the time, and he said, and a lot of it
people are quiet because of who the president is and his view on things.
So take for a second and talk for a bit about the move of NATO
and Sweden to take that final step they've been working on for a few years
and to join the Alliance, And did you did you see that as something
that would happen, And it's though that did happen as quickly as you thought
it would. Thank you. That's a great insight. And I agree with
you that generally the closer you are to the Russian border, the more your
threat perception increases and the more you're willing to do to defend yourself. And
I think the examples you gave Sweden in fending in particular that after the end
of the Cold War, after the end of the Warsaw Pack and so the
Union, all of stel all of the members, including the United States,
we cut our defense budgets. The US took out about three hundred thousand troops
from Europe and brought them back to Konas and everybody else strength and military.
But we forgot to pay attention because Finland did not Finlan. You know,
one of the standards, one of the metrics that NATO set up after twenty
fourteen was that every member should spend more than two percent of their GDP on
defense. And it's been a hard time trying to get all of the members
to do that. But Finland, which is not a member of NATO,
but it's right next door to Russia. Because it shared such a large border
with Russia, it didn't have to be told to do that. It did
that on its own. Even ever since the end of the Soviet Union,
they have still kept up their two percent, more than two percent of defense
spending. That's why now when they joined the Alliance, they're gonna have one
of the most capable and advanced military forces to join the alliance. They also
have a very robust civil defense, a villiant excuse the infrastructure. They're much
more willing to protect themselves and to fight for their freedom, partly because they
worked in an alliance and they knew they were kind of going to have to
be on their own, but also because, like you said, the closer
you get to the Russian border, the more you're concerned about the Russian threat,
the more you take it realistically, and the more the Fins and others
are willing to invent to keep their peat and to defend their freedom. It's
interesting particle the other day that the defens the Swedes, the Danish, and
the Norwegians have joined their air forces are going to make a combined air force
as a mini NATO. But that gives them two hundred and fifty aircraft,
which makes them I think the third or fourth artist air force. Uh,
certainly on the content, maybe right behind France and maybe maybe the US or
or anyway, they're going to be a very large air force. But it's
interesting because all those countries except Denmark, as you know, have borders with
Russians. We just said, and Denmark has that eury key position at the
end of the of the Baltic stracer to to defend. So what do you
think about that? I know that fairly recent announcement. That's an excellent announcement.
Um. They have always had a close integration, even before Sweden in
Finland decided to join the alliance, The Nordic kind of practice a lot of
air coordination together. Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland did things together,
uh, separate from NATO because two of the members were not in NATO.
But they always they're very close neighbors. They cooperate a lot, They have
a lot of consultation and cooperation on defense matters with each other. What you're
about to see is the revolution on NATO's eastern and northern flank. That would
the addition of Sweden and Finland because they they what we have now because of
the geography of NATO enlargement of the acquisition of new members. Norway was one
of the original members, Denmark was one of the original members, so they
were kind of the northern flank and the old Cold War scenario of you know,
the Soviet strike across the fold the gap. But since NATO has required
new members, the newer members were farther east. But they were also smaller.
So you had the Baltics, you had Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,
which you know, out of no fault of their own, they're just smaller
territories. They don't have strategic death they have smaller populations, smaller economies.
So the total military of Estonia, Laptey, and Lithuania combined is smaller than
the New York City Police Department. So they do as much as they can,
but they are limited by certain parameters. And but now with the addition
of Sweden and Finland, these are larger territories, larger populations, larger militaries,
more advanced militaries, and they have very capable in terms of training and
equipment and technology. They're really at the top end of the spectrum of our
just at the global standard of what they're contributing to NATO. So some people
have referred to that it's gonna make the Baltic and NATO lake geographically. There's
some realizing to that because Russia is only gonna have a very narrow strip of
coasts. I'm still accessible to that, but I think overall they're gonna build
up on this trend. Now what this is just one of the first announcement.
You're going to see a lot more of this type of thing of with
Sweden and send them Now being incorporated, You're you're not going to see this
is a good step toward it integrated air defense of the North. You're going
to see more of this with their navies, with their armies, and it's
just gonna make that eastern flank of NATO, particularly the northern part of it,
much stronger, much easier to defend, and much safer because by making
it stronger, the deterrence is gonna work. We've already seen part of that.
Russia has attacked two of its natives, Georgia and Ukraine. It has
never attacked a NATO country because it respects NATO's Article five and the Alliance collective
defense. But it threatens Sweden and Finland that if they tried to join NATO,
it would provide a military response, but we have seen no evidence of
that. In fact, we've seen the opposite. The Russia's war in Ukraine
is going so bad that it's pulled out troops near Finland and that were there
normally and refocus them, and we've deployed them to Ukraine because it's so they're
so desperate for troops. So whatever Putin says about the Natal threat, even
his action shows he doesn't take this seriously, because he's moved troops away from
both the Finnish border and from the Natal border and put them into Ukraine because
that's his real priority there. And I just want to get back to the
question that sal asked me earlier, which is did I see this, this
NATO membership question coming in for Sweden and Finland? And I wasn't a minority,
and I did see it coming. Seeing this for years, I've been
talking to the Swedes in the sin most of them didn't see it coming either,
because for so many years they have a very close partnership with NATO,
but both of their publics were kind of very difficult to want to take the
actual step of membership. But I had been seeing that slowly over the last
few years, especially since twenty fourteen, popular support for NATO membership had been
growing steadily in both of those cookies, it hadn't reach fifty percent yet.
But when Putin attacked Ukraine, when I started to see the footage of that
conflict, when they saw that this wasn't just little green men, it wasn't
a corporate opts, it wasn't a graze. It was a old school,
traditional conventional invasion of Russian tanks crossing a porter. I said on February twenty
fourth last year. This before the end of the year, Sweden and Finland
were asked for NATO membership because Putin and Russia had broken the tradition, broken
the path, and it was going to be too much of a threat now
for Sweden and Finland to want to sit out on their own. And against
this potential threat, that I put one in Ukraine that he they knew that
they would be next on his lips. So even though a lot of them
didn't feel that way, we began to see within the first few days a
change in the leadership of the President of Finland Ninisto, and of the political
parties in Sweden and Finland. Swedish political leadership moved a little bit faster,
but eventually, I mean finished political leadership moved a little bit faster in requesting
this. They sent their president to Washington to discuss it with Biden to see
if the US would support it, but more quickly than most of the people
around Europe or even in Sweden Finland believe they felt that the threat from Russia
after this twenty twenty two invasion was too great and that Sweden, in filand
had to change their historical decades long position of being nonaligned and staying outside of
the two paths. They felt they had to make a choice and that they
saw that if they wanted to be avoid another Russian attack, regardless importance threats,
that Russia does not attack NATO members, and the safest place is to
be within the Alliance and to have that connective defense. I think one of
the early Russian victories, it only becomes a stronger victory as time goes on.
And though unintentioned on their part and in previous visits, you've had to
interact, you've actually talked about this question. Is in certain segments of both
European and North American politics and commentary, people said, you know, why
does NATO still exist? Why are we still doing that? And well meeting
people could could have argued that, I don't think, as we stand here
in in the early spring of twenty twenty three, that's really a question well
meeting people can ask, because those who would try to explain NATO would always
say, you look to the east. It was impolite to say, and
you had to be careful how you phrased it because of efforts some people were
trying to make to bring Russia in. But I think it's pretty clear now
why NATO exists, and that's I think that helped the political situation in Finland
and Sweden, where they look at people who are making that argument about the
nature of post Soviet Russia, they just say, well, post Soviet Russia
is similar to pre Soviet Russia. Let's go join the club next door.
Good points, good question. I think one of the reasons why you ask
me back on is because I'm not as diplomatic or as polite about how I
answer that question. I answered that question the end of my first regards in
that the European Command only consumes about five percent of the Department of Defense budget,
So for five percent of the DEOD budget, we NATO and YU can
prevent a great power conflict in the European continence. The twentieth century was defined
by two great World wars in the first half of the twentieth century and by
peace in Europe in the second half. And the reason for the peace in
Europe in the second half was strength to deterrence, strength through collected defense,
strength through the NATO Treaties signed in nineteen forty nine, that despite the threats
and the covert actions done by the Soviets, they respected the alliance, sticking
together. And the key strength of NATO is that it is made up of
democracy democracies that protect themselves against this external threat that they couldn't defeat on their
own. And even after the Cold War, when I would do briefings at
the Pentagon or the state officials, I would throw a chart, which is
to say, look at the size of the Russian army. It is smaller
than the Soviet army, but the Russian army is still the largest one on
the European continent. The only way that the other powers in Europe can can
deter that or even match it is if they joined together, and the main
way they joined together is then so only by the European armies working together can
they deter the numerically superior Russian army. And now we see in Ukraine that
the numbers aren't as big, and that their their their military prowess is not
as skilled. But the threat from from Russia, which was clear even from
the beginning, even in the in the glory days of Gorbachoff, and we
thought it was going to be the end of history and there was going to
be peace with the Russians. Even during the gorbachof stage, we saw that
there was a military coup, and we saw that the generals and the KGB
kidnapped Gorbachoff and held them hostage for a few days, and the world held
its breath. So, even in the best case scenarios, if there was
a democratic Russia, which we haven't really seen since the days of Yelton,
that Rasca was really just the cool away from the old days. And when
we began to see more and more evidence of from Putin going as far back
as the two thousand and seven Russian cyber attacked against Estonia, which was the
first documented case of a state sponsored cyber attack, and then in two thousand
and eight the attack against Georgia, and then in two any fourteen the attack
against Ukraine. For for years when when people have raised this question of why
do we still need NATO? And in my answer would be Russia has attacked
two of its neighbors militarily. How many more European countries does Russia have to
attack before we take the threat seriously? And we improved the turn. That
is the role of NATO, And that's why the Russians don't attack it because
NATO, if it is strong enough, keeps the peace and prevents foreign powers
from attacking the Western democracies. One aspect of Russia is that they are bullets.
So talk about bit about Russia's move of nicker weapons to Belarus and what
that what that is it held? I guess it's an active intimidation. What
what is this is just part of Russian imperialism. But talk a little bit
about that, you know that is that just fully stuff or is put and
dumb enough to to really use nicktar Weponsson, I think it's a couple of
things, one of which is that even before this conflict, even before his
invasion of Ukrainian twenty four put changed Russia's nuclear doctor in the In the Soviet
days, the Russian had numerical security over NATO. And if you go back
and you look at all the war game plans and exercise it, it was
it was really a question of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact had just so much
more. It was a question of time. Could the West, with the
forward deployed forces, And this is the reason, while we had almost passive
million US troops in Europe, could we slow them down long enough before the
reinforcements from Great Britain and the United States reached the front, or could they
push through and seize the channel ports and prevent the reinforcement is Back in those
days, the Soviets were so sure of their conventional superiority, of their numbers
that they only used nuclear weapons and nuclear deterns to say, we will never
have a first strike. We will only use nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union
is threatened. We will only do it for the survival of the Rodin Now
of the motherland of the Soviet Union. But Putin changed it because he saw
that the Russian military that he had was much smaller than the Soviet military,
and that over time, if natal fully mobilized, they would have the numerical
advantage. So what Putin said did is he changed the nuclear doctrines, not
to defensively to use nuclear weapons in case there's an attack against Russia or you
know, or or or a missile attack. But he said, I am
using, we will use nuclear weapons to protect Russia, our borders and our
military activity. So now he's talking about using it offensively to defend his conventional
forces attacking some of his neighbors. And that's what you're seeing now is more
recent iterations of that. Before was just a docrin. Now he's made specific
threats. Since he started losing the war in Ukraine, he's made more and
more nuclear threats. And that's how I kind of picture these new threats he's
made about Belarus. Belarus is not happy to have nuclear weapons, but they
become pretty dependent on Russian troops as a result of this conflict. But I
hesitate to think I think he's more willing to take the risk. He wants
to make the threat and see if he can get a cheap victory if he
just mentions the word nuclear. There are voices inside Europe and inside the United
States that want us to give in and to compromise just because he makes the
threat. But I think we have to realistically look at the threat and to
say, is he really going to do something about this? Now he's broken
some of the treaties. He's acquired some intermediate nuclear capabilities that were that were
illegal that we're banned before. But the United States has has kept an eye
on that and we've said how we would respond to those violations, and we've
acquired our own capabilities at that level, so we have some options if the
President feels the need to max thing. But another distinction is what the administration
response has been is one, he makes a threat, but he has done
nothing to move his actual nuclear forces, so there's there's no real action behind
it. It is mostly just a bluff, just a threat so far.
And second, if he does start moving his nuclear forces, the United States
has responded. I think we will respond, but we may not do it
in kind. We have enough lethality and precision in our conventional forces that if
he used a tactical nuclear weapon. We could respond and inflict a proportional response
without nuclear weapon, but with using just conventional explosives and are long range fired.
You're talking about the threat in the spending and what NATO is doing.
During the Trump administration, there was that big push, the very very public
push, a push that have been around for a while, but a very
public push to have everybody meet the two percent of GDP standard. And that
GDP two percent standard it predated Trump goes back to I believe the Obama administration
or maybe even maybe the Bush forty three administration, but have been a long
standing for a while. People just ignored it. So that two percent,
relative compromise and relatively modest, was based upon a worldview and assumptions that predated
the Russia Ukrainian War and overall. NATO dot MT for those that like to
go to their official website, NATO actually puts the numbers out there, and
back in twenty fifteen, when you look at that two percent, only three
nations spent more than two percent of their GP on defense. That was Greece,
the United States, in the UK, and as of twenty twenty two,
they don't have the twenty twenty three estimates out yet that number rose to
ten Us, Greece, Poland, all three of the Baltic republics, uk
Croatia, Slovakia, And because I like Romania, I gave them a point
zero one sort two nine nine we'll call it. I mean one nine nine,
we'll call let's go ahead to two percent. And there have been some
calls that we need to look at that again if that number does not reflect
what we are seeing, what modern warfare actually requires for you to do,
if you're even a medium sized conflict, which is what you have going on
in Ukraine right now relatively speaking. And some have said that the new lower
level needs we two and a half percent. And if you look at that,
that's only the Greek, only the Greeks, the Americans in the polls
as of twenty twenty two, we're spending more than two and a half percent.
Are you seeing any movement in NATO? I know a lot of those
nations, the other two thirds of the Alliance, there aren't about two percent.
I think by the end of twenty twenty three we'll see a lot more
of them. It will reach that standard. So we need to set a
new standard for those members of the Alliance of what they need to invest relative
to their GDP in our collective attens. That's that's a good point. It's
it's as you said, it's a long standing debate both within the Alliance,
within official circles and in the public. A couple of things. So one
thing is you referred people to the NATAL website. That's great. I think
what you're looking at is the Secretary General's report. Every year he put out
a report. He just put up the most recent one with the twenty twenty
two numbers. He just put it up in the last two weeks. So
that's a good one for the most recent data about the Alliance. And as
you said, if you look at the numbers, and they've got some good
charts there, it pretty graphically and visually tells you some good truths, part
of which is what you said, which is ten of the countries have now
moved up to the two percent range. And if I could point out something
else is almost all of the NATO members, like over ninety percent of them
have all increased defense spending because of what Russia's been doing. And if you
look back like you said to twenty fifteen, while they didn't all meet two
percent. Again, the majority of NATO countries increase defense spending in twenty fifteen.
So what that tells US is did they do it because of Trump as
president when he becomes president in twenty sixty, Well, no, they it
started the year before, and it started because of what happened in twenty fourteen,
which was the Russian invasion in Ukraine. And that is what drove the
numbers then, and what is driving the numbers now. It's amaking. It's
the Russians who are making NATO countries spend more on defense. Not so much.
The Americans tell everybody it would be a good idea, and we're seeing
this in the current numbers and in the future numbers. So, as you
said, there are only a few that are meeting two and a half,
but there are several countries like Estonia and others. The president of Estonia has
says that they want to increase defense spending to three percent, and the Polish
government is thinking that they want to increase defense spending at least to three percent,
perhaps even two more. And that's why there's news. And again they're
doing it not because the Americans say we didn't need to spend more. But
because of the threat from Russia is clearer to everybody that and so what there's
a lot of talk about national leaders inside the Alliance is that two percent needs
to be looked at as the floor, not the ceiling. That two percent
should be the minimum, but that many allies, like you said before,
especially the one's closest to the Russian border, the one's more in danger and
close to the threat, they need to spend even more than two percent,
and they're already starting to do. You this though, we're seeing planned increases
in the defense budget this year, next year, the year after that to
make it significantly, like I said, above two percent, above three percent
even and we're seeing from major purchases of new equipment, a lot more tanks
are going to Poland, a lot more fighters are being purchased inside the Alliance,
a lot more air defense. But you hit on one of the key
things, which is do we have the price the right militaries to defend and
to fight against Russia. And what we're seeing, like we talked about earlier,
which is even when the subject comes to precision guided munitions, the PGF
precision guide immunitions, he's advanced targeting missile systems that don't that have far less
collateral manage damage and are much more lethal and precise. We haven't build the
right stockpile of them. Most of the Alliance doesn't have them insufficient numbers because
for the years before February of last year, everybody was building their military on
their peace time assumption. They weren't really, so they was more being driven
by accountants and the finance ministry than they were by the actual ministries of defense.
So even with among the US military, it this perceived shortage of munitions,
of advanced munitions, of precision guide immunitions that we're sending to help Ukraine
to fight Russia. As you said, we don't seem in have enough for
a medium conflict like Ukraine, is not something for a direct great power conflict.
But there are some of us who've been saying this for a long time,
because this shortage isn't you We've been We've been We've not been spending enough
on our munitions, on our equipment, on what we needed to stockpile.
As far back as when we were fighting ISIS Interia, we started to run
out of PGMs against ISIS exterial and ISIS wasn't shooting back. ISIS didn't have
it in force, but yet we had such a we had such a small
number of our estimate of what we needed, that we didn't have enough.
And then later when when NATO moved in Tripoli and started to drop precision got
in missions there, even the small air forces multinational air forces that were used
in Libya, they started to run out of national munitions against that, and
we had and many of them had to buy them from the United States or
from from Germany, which was an involved in directly. But it showed that
even against these smaller threats, we didn't have enough fly of the weapons and
ammunition and equipment we need it. So, of course, when you're when
you're sending help to Ukraine fighting a significant military like the two hundred thousands that
they attack Ukraine with in twenty twenty two, you're gonna not have sufficient numbers.
And and so one of the things one of the top priorities for the
Secretary Defense and the US Department is to negotiate better deals with our defense contractors.
This is a top priority. This is a key critical threat all across
the Alliance and even natal as a whole has been having multinational meeting and coming
up with ways to approach European arms manufacturers because all of the Alliance need to
have more access to these stockpiles. The headlines even this week of the greater
the need to have more factories to have greater output because they're just going through
so many of them so rapidly. In Ukraine, we're seeing things like up
to five thousand artillery shells just one day from the Russian being shot out.
Both sides are going through them so fat It's another reason of the logitical ward
which the Russians they're losing. You saw some headlines today that they're they're bringing
out tanks from the Korean War and even if far back in World War Two,
bringing them out of off ball because they're just running out of new equipment.
Yeah. One or the other situations we see is a lot of disinformation
or the part of the Russians, which people in the West seemed to buy
that the Ukraine is not an independent state, and they went through a whole
demonization of the Ukrainian people. And I noticed on the data website that they
have begun to respond back to the Russian disinformation campaigns and Unfortunately, unless the
leaders of some of the countries themselves speak out, that doesn't seem to get
much notice. But top a little bit about to fight against the folks who
single adopted the idea that this is Russian sphere of influence and NATO pushed Russia
to do this because we expanded to the to the east and let Poland and
other countries in. Uh. You know, is any event justify and is
there a disinformation campaign anti disinformation campaign that NATO can mount and be more successful
with. That's a great topic. It's a pretty much one. We could
spend a whole hour on that alone. I'll try to hit some just key
point on it. Um. Unfortunately, that narrative that that disinformation misinformation campaign
work on. Two American presidents, both Barack Obama and President Trump, believe
that Ukraine was in Russi's sphere of influence and that it wasn't a high enough
priority for the United States. It was a big deal for them, and
that Russia was willing to pay the cost to keep Ukraine on its side and
it wasn't worth the United States in. And I think that was false.
We should never have believed that, we should never have a band did the
largest democracy in Europe to Russian invasions. We shouldn't have let that may then
become so vulnerable. We should have provided more aids, certainly when they tried
to seek NATAL membership at the Bucharest summit in two thousand and eight, and
certainly after the Russians invaded in twenty fourteen. But what you've seen now and
and and I'm going to get to some of the the US and an Alliance
counter at campaigns against it. But we have to give credit first and foremost
through the Lensy and his government and the Ukrainian people. They have done a
masterful job again because they had the enthusiasm, because they had the will,
because they had the patriotism that they were willing to fight for their freedom not
just in the trenches but also in the airways, also inside the internet.
And some of the more decisive victories in this uh Information Worker have been won
by the Ukrainian even though they don't have the resources of Russia's multiple intelligence agencies
um. But they they really made a key thing. And one of the
examples of that, like I said, the sheer bravery and symbolism of Zelensky
staying and fighting with his people and staying in Kiev and taking the threat of
his direct appeals, these these these teleconference, these virtual conferences, his speech
to the to both chambers of Congress, first digitally and then in person.
But he has given these major speeches to the to the national parliaments and almost
every natal capital. He has spoken to them directly, and he changes his
speech, he tailors it to the national security communities of those countries. And
he's been very PERSUADEI And then we've seen all the visitors that have come to
him and see him in his you know, his military uniform, his private
uniform in green, and he's out there walking with the foreign officials and among
the troops. And then you contract that by Putin, who has isolated himself,
and then these these almost comical pictures of him sitting by these huge tables
with his own people far away from him, that he doesn't even trust them
to get close to them. It's just they've lost the narrative on that.
And in addition that the Ukrainian people have really been working in partnership, they've
used the internet. A lot of the military victories that Ukrainians have won were
one because of intelligence victory because they knew where the Russian forces were. And
part of the reason why they knew where Russian forces are because the Ukrainians are
out there taking pictures and communicating information back, integrating with the Ukrainian military in
ways that none of the Western forces have. And also the cyber campaigns that
the Russians have weighed against them, the Ukrainians have been fighting on that.
So part of that is the success of the Ukrainians in encountering this cis information
campaign and that they've they've invested more in their people. This is something that
even the NATO countries, even the United States, is now considering. In
the last couple of weeks, you've seen some headlines about the US government reconsidering
how could we better use the private sector? Are private citizens to fight these
counterinformation campaigns? Other NATO countries, excuse me, are more advanced than US.
A lot of the Balls use their private citizens. So you have the
trolls coming out of the Saint Petersburg roll factory and elsewhere in Russia putting up
a lot of lives on the Internet and in social media, and what the
Balls have are what they call l which is private citizens countering this information,
countering these lives with actual data, with actual proof, and there working in
coordination with their government forces. We haven't done that yet, but the United
States that others are starting to think of that. You've also got a Center
of Excellence for Strategic Communication by NATO inside Latvia that is doing a lot of
good work of putting the narrative and of identifying some of the lies and this
information campaigns that the Russians are running. You also hid a center of hybrid
activities in Finland. It's not a NATO center, put Finland as a partner
and both NATO and EU countries are part of that, and they're doing another
good job of countering this. So there's a lot more success as being done
by the West, and I think it's one of the things that we're doing
slightly better than we used to before. Again going back to pre February,
where the President was actually willing to use classified data and disclose some of it
to tell the world that and to tell specifically in the Ukrainians and Europeans the
Russians are planning something bad. We're trying to sign the flat flight on it
so they will stop, and and and actually take the risk of actually disclosing,
making them a little bit more risky use of classified information to get the
tooth out and to try to use it not after the war, but to
prevent the war from taking places as a whole. Yeah, I agree to
a large extent the Ukrainians in the Baltic Republics really has held almost really pre
war, but especially on day one, a master class on infoofs and styops.
Especially consider the limited resources they have, which I think drove a lot
of their innovation in driving decisions down to individual citizens who may or may not
be getting a paycheck out of it. That's one of the big lessons I
hope the larger powers will take from that. You know, we can learn
a lot fromations of one point three million or five point five millions on things
that can really make a difference on the battlefield. And I think one of
the other big both scot Into touched on before a previous question is, lack
of a better phrase, the industrial policy, the weapons construction. We kind
of ran off the fumes and inertia and really stockpiles of the Cold War area
and have lost a lot of the ability to produce weapons at the amount that
we're being shown is going to be required. During the age of transformationalism,
people kind of forgot how the artillery can be from a numbers point of view.
And I think it also is having the alliance and look we really close
at where it's giving a lot of this weapons. I think the classic example
we all saw at the beginning of the war where there was old Soviet equipment
that the Estodian attached from old howitzers of one hundred two millimeters that they wanted
to transfer to the Ukrainian. That took weeks and weeks so that the Germans,
who its former eastern the stock to give them this proof. But even
more than that is the reliance on Swiss weapons manufacturers, where the Swiss they
know you can't transfer it, so that both in the ability and where the
eye openers now people should light a candle to some some people that are probably
no longer with us, but you can almost see the world larger blocks and
their ammunition specifications. And when NATO was first formed, the US had its
own calibers of weapons. The French had THEIRS, the British had THEIRS,
the Germans were still using their World War two era the Italians had their own
and the NATO mile standard became not just a standard for the Alliance. But
one of the reasons Finland and Suite have been be able to transition into the
Alliance so easily is they converted over to NATO mile standard as well and take
that really successful program that is also given to the Ukrainians a challenge. But
do you see that being something other nations outside the Alliance, most of which
are NATO mill standard, that they need to reevaluate how they're going to be
able If they can't do it nationally, who are their friends that have the
production ability that can get on what they need when they need it, Because
you can't make one hundred and fifty five millimeter shall come out of one hundred
and fifty two millimeters? Beryl, very good points. I especially appreciate you
you're calling the credit to some of the former NATO leaders who made such a
big emphasis on this, because it is not easy to have similar equipment or
equipment and ammunition that works for everybody, because everybody likes to have their own
national weapons production, but on the battlefield, you need everybody to be able
to share them and use them together. And it's never been easy for These
are called statagg standardization agreements were there are so many, hundreds and thousands of
them written over the decade, but their main point was always to improve this
key term, this key concept, which is interoperability for the NATO armies to
all be able to use each other's stuff as needed once they're in the front
line. And if it's a logistical nightmare if you don't have kind of that
interoperability. And that's why so it's we benefit from the decades of experience of
doing this. Um, we haven't done it as well so much with some
of the new technologies. Everybody kind of wants to be very protective about the
most super secret US technologies. But every year NATO gets closer and closer to
that standard. And it's one of the advantages it has over its great power
competitors, which is this this interoperability not just within one of the great powers
different military forces, but among all the military forces of the alliance. And
it adds power and weight to the to the to the to the natal model
which is stronger together. Um. And it's basically we're living in an interconnected
world. And and and Russia. One of the things that's different about it
in the Soviet Union is the Soviet Union had its own ecosystem, its own
logistical system, its own defense acquisition system that was isolated and kept apart from
the West. But now Russia doesn't have that, and as a result of
that, they are depending even our competitors. Like Putin, his military is
more dependent on the trade with the rest of the world that even he realized
so very early into this conflict. Last year we saw that, excuse me,
the two largest tank factories in Russia, and in fact, the first
one, the largest tank tank factory in Russia, is the largest tank factory
in the world. They had to shut down because they had most of the
material there, but they lacked some of the key components. And one of
those key components is for modern battle tanks, you need microchips. And even
this large tank factory for RuSHA was dependent on foreign sources for these microchips.
And this is something that they wanted to keep building tanks because of what they
were losing on the battlefield, but they just couldn't keep up the factories open.
I think this was a wake up call all around the world that that
what everybody thinks, even though you're the majority of your subcontractors. You only
need one key component to be internationally based, and you might be deprived of
that component for your key system. So one of the ways that some of
the Natal countries are doing about it, President Biden has just gotten the Chip
Act side and it's trying to bring back more semiconductor productive here to the United
States. I think there needs to be more sharing and joint development and a
network among the democracies for key technological components like semiconductors, that we that we
should be dependent on each other, not on the Chinese, which have almost
a monopoly on this. So we need to be more dependent, share more
independent production among the Europeans, among the Asian democracies, among the Pacific democracies,
and a certainly of course with us in Canada, that we should be
dependent on each other as a democratic system and not on some of these mineral
resources, these rare earth that we need for for semiconductors that China is just
going around the world kind of monopolize. One other way of a Natal country
going around it is the case of Poland. Poland tried to buy as many
M one tanks as it can from the United states it did, it bought
a couple of hundreds of them before. It has requested and gotten approval for
another batch of M one. But in addition to that, they're they're still
getting ready for the next war for trying to prevent it. That they've bought
a significant number of tanks from South Korea. This is the first time you
see a major weapon system being purchased by a European power from an Asian power,
and if because they're trying to diversify your supply and you're trying to get
access to more of this equipment that they need. And I think you're going
to see more of this, not less as other European countries, as there's
a shortage of the high end systems and not everybody can produce them enough for
their own national needs, let alone for the for the Alliance needs. I
think you're going to see more European countries looking at other democracies, at other
acquisitions system and and and and really diversifying the type of equipment that you're going
to be seeing on NATO's armies in the future. Well, one of those
countries that it's interesting as Switzerland. I see that Switzerland's defense head has met
with the NATO people, and there seems to be they got a little chastise
because or maybe they were incurred to provide some of the stuff they the ammunition
and stuff for the equipment that has maidenced by the Swiss UH And you know,
is this a chance for the Swiss to reapproach NATO and become good good
guys? And I also wonder about Turkey, which has a fairly substantial defense
industry, you know, and can we rely on Turkey to help counter the
help that Russia is getting from Iran and UH and China or is this UH
is our southern flank a little exposure by by the current regime in Turkey.
A good question. The standards should be different because Switzerland is a nine A
line country, it is not a NATO member UM it does spend significant amount,
it's close to the two percent because it wants to protect its independence versus
Turkey, which is a NATO compete but even always consisted with natal polity.
And one of the key things we see here that I think is with con
between Cicierland and Turkey and others, is inside their government and even inside our
own government, you have what are called economic leaders, and they are making
economic arguments, So why you want to settle things as quickly and as quietly
with Russia as possible so that they can make economic profits off of more trade
with Russia versus you have. It was the Swiss defense minister that went to
MEATO headquarters this past week versus the national security experts in Turkey that they are
much more aware of Russia as a threat. And it wasn't not too long
ago, just a few years ago, that the Turkish Air Force itself shot
down a Russian fighter plane that had violated their their border and was inter active
inside Turkish airslate. So if you have some civilian and economic leaders that want
to view they just want to see the working glasses have full. Let's just
have trade, lestonom economics. There's a lot of money to be made here.
And then I think you have the more sober. The ones we should
be listing to are the national security experts, the defense ministries that say,
hey, hold on a minute, this isn't just about trade, this isn't
just about economics. It's also about security. Can we trust these people?
Should we be investing in their economies when they could be when they're going to
be using that money to fund the military and use that military against others and
possibly against ourselves. And I frame it in this way because I think we've
started to be a similar shift with our attitude towards China. For many years
after the post Cold War world the leaders of our China policy were, Hey,
the trade is good for everybody that's invest in China. That's a market
of a billion people. We've got to be able to sell for that large
market, and it makes it doesn't make economic sense for them to compete against
us, to try to harm us, because they would be you know,
cutting off their economic notes to fite their faith. That made economic sense.
But what we've seen which China is it didn't make realistic sense. It didn't
make political sense because time and time again China has made decisions not just with
COVID, but with other things, with Taiwan and with the South China.
See, it makes political decisions that hurt its trade and it hurts it's involvement
with the rest of the world. But that's the cost that the Chinese Communist
Party is willing to pay um and in order to promote its agenda, in
order to promote it's aggressive expansion of China inside the Indo Paycalm region. I
think that's one of the unfurling events that we're going to see from this,
this conflict that people are finally for a lot of people have gotten religion on
the fact that the liance security often expands well passed strictly war. Gaining this
piece of equipment against that piece of equipment, you got to tie in the
your economics factors as well. And I'll tell you Georgia, Now that's a
great point. Yeah, sorry, oh please, a great point. And
before we close, I just wanted to build up that you just saw a
great visual representation of that. You had you had she the President of China
visiting Moscow and supporting Russia. But you also had for the first time ever,
the Prime Minister of Japan visiting Kia because they see that it's not just
about Russia versus Ukraine. It's about whether the international community will stand up to
aggressor today and maybe Russia, but to the Japanese they know tomorrow and maybe
China. So at the same time, you had two Asian leaders of powerful
nation, each picking aside because they knew that the war that is going on
in Ukraine. Now if we don't do it right, could lead to worst
conflicts in Asia in the future. Yeah, that was that was a great
visual and at that level of deflomacy, timing doesn't happen by accident. So
that was a very strong point by Japan and hey, before we before we
closed things up here for the listeners that they'd like to keep track of you,
where's a good place for them to look out for your writing and you
haven't you planned down the road that we should definitely keep an eye on.
Thank you appreciate that. You can best follow me on Twitter at NATO Source,
where I provide regular and almost daily updates on what's going on the key
NATO news and around the world. So if you want to, if you're
interested in what's going on with the Alliance and how things are going with Russia,
that's a good source of information. It's followed by a lot of senior
leaders both here and in the US and in Europe. And also I'm working
on a piece now about sort of the significance of NATO's Article five and the
one time it was invoked. It was never invoked during the Cold War.
It was invoked the day after nine to eleven, the Alliance invoked the collective
defense to protect the US, not protect not to protect the Europeans. So
I'm kind of look into that and though some of the missions miss assumptions about
that and some of the misinformation about that, and how what the what the
real truth of what happened that day? How I can carry over to the
next time Article five is discussed in natal headquarters. Perfect well, we look
forward to that. And thank you again for coming to visit a singer today.
Yeah, Jory's been a very fast hour. Thank you, Thank you
very much, my pleasure. Thank you for your excellent questions, and thank
you everybody for joining us for another edition in mid Rats and until next time,
I hope you have a great day to day. Cheers to marry me.
I'm blames, You're the team. It's a long way to dippery It's
a long way to go. It's a long way to Dippernanny, to the
greenest gy I know. Don't buy a Condell well, listen, Swell.
It's a long long way to dipper It. But my life like the