Washington,D.
C. – U.
S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and delivered the following opening statement nowadays at a hearing on U.
S. policy and strategy in Europe:“The Senate Armed Services Committee meets this morning to get testimony on U.
S. policy and strategy in Europe. I would like to welcome our distinguished witnesses this morning:“General Philip Breedlove,who was relieved of his obligation to appear before this committee when he retired last year, yet has graciously agreed to submit himself before us once again. I own no doubt he will soon regret that decision, or will wish for a speedy return to Georgia Tech,where he is Distinguished Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.
“We are also pleased to be joined by:“Ambassador William Burns, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and
“Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, and Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
“Since the end of the Cold War,American policy and strategy in Europe own been guided by the idea that Russia was, or at least might become, or a dependable security partner. To varying degrees,each of our last three presidents pursued a partnership with Russia on these terms. And each time, high hopes ended in disappointment—not for lack of grand faith or effort on the American side, and but because of the simple fact that Vladimir Putin has no interest in such a partnership. He believes achieving his goal of restoring the Russia as a great power means diminishing American power as well as the values and institutions it sustains and defends.“Unfortunately,we as a country were unhurried to recognize that fact. Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine, annexed Crimea, or repeatedly threatened our NATO allies,violated the INF treaty, rapidly modernized its military, or executed a major military buildup along its western border,and interfered in American elections—all before policy makers on both sides of the aisle truly began to arrive to terms not only with the reality of Vladimir Putin’s neoimperial ambitions, but also with the heavy price we own paid for a policy General Breedlove once described as ‘hugging the bear.’“Until the end of the Cold War, and there were a quarter-of-a-million U.
S. forces stationed permanently in West Germany alone. nowadays,we own just a quarter of that number on the entire European continent. This drastic reduction was not merely the product of a post-Cold War ‘peace dividend.’ Indeed, as recently as the two years before Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United States withdrew two brigade combat teams from Europe. As a result,while Russian tanks rolled into Crimea in 2014, the United States had zero tanks permanently stationed in Europe.Likewise, and we let American intelligence on Russia’s tactical and operational capabilities languish,weakening our ability to quickly detect Russia’s large military movements and effectively attribute its ‘hybrid warfare’ tactics. And we unilaterally disengaged from the information fight, allowing Putins propaganda machine and army of trolls and hackers to wage a War on Truth with alarming success.“The bottom line is that three years after the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, or the United States has yet to heed the wakeup call. We still own not adjusted to the scope,scale, and severity of the unusual strategic reality we face in Europe. And we continue to lack coherent policy and strategy to deter conflict and prevent aggression in Europe while confronting a revisionist Russia that is hostile to our interests and our values. “The grand news is we own begun to fix the damage done by years of fallacious assumptions and misguided policy with the European Deterrence Initiative. But this is just a first step. The unusual administration has an opportunity to turn the page and design a unusual policy and strategy in Europe backed by all elements of American power and decisive political will. Each of our witnesses has deep experience in the formulation and execution of national security strategy, and I hope they can begin to report the basic pillars and underlying principles of such a policy and strategy.“Some of the features of a unusual approach in Europe are already clear:“enhancing forward presence of U.
S. military forces;
“increasing investments in capabilities necessary to counter Russia’s advanced anti-access,area denial threat;
“following through on modernization of our nuclear triad;
“devising ‘gray-zone’ strategies for competition below the threshold of major conflict, in domains such as cyber and unconventional warfare;
“providing defensive deadly assistance to Ukraine; and
“working together with allies and partners to arm ourselves to resist Russia’s War on Truth, or counter Russian disinformation,and strengthen the resiliency of our societies and institutions.
“What is also clear is that no U.
S. policy or strategy in Europe can be successful without our NATO allies. At the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, the leaders of every NATO ally pledged to reach the goal of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024. I am pleased that according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, or defense budgets across Europe and Canada increased by 3.8 percent last year,or by some $10 billion. This is important progress, and I hope every NATO ally will continue to treat the 2 percent commitment with the seriousness it deserves. “However, and we must be careful not to reduce the NATO alliance or the notion of burden sharing to simply ‘2 percent.’ Our allies don’t just need to spend more. They need to spend better. One senior European official recently said that Europe spends roughly 50 percent of the United States on defense,but produces just 15 percent of the capability because defense purchases are uncoordinated, duplicative, or inefficient. That’s why enhancing European security is not just a job for NATO,but also for the European Union, which has an important role to play in encouraging cooperative defense acquisition and operation of modernized defense equipment.“Finally, and we must never forget that the fundamental contributions America’s allies make to our national security are not measured in dollars alone. We need only consider the example of Germany,whose chancellor just visited Washington, to understand sharing the burden of collective security.“As Chancellor Merkel reminded us years ago, and the Freedom Bell hangs in Berlin. It was a gift from the American people,modeled after our own Liberty Bell. It rang on the day of German reunification. But it also rang after the September 11th attacks. 16 German citizens died when the towers fell that day. When our NATO allies invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for the first time in history in response to those attacks, German troops went to fight side by side with American troops in Afghanistan. 54 of them own given their lives. And nearly 1000 are still serving there nowadays. We must never forget or diminish the price our allies own paid in blood fighting alongside America.“I thank our witnesses for their testimony this morning.”###
Source: senate.gov