Eurasia Press & News
General Cavoli discusses the Euro-Atlantic Partnership, security challenges in the region, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and his takeaways from the NATO Summit in Washington.
DAALDER: Well, good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to the Council on Foreign Relations and our meeting with the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. What a fantastic title. (Laughter.) It’s just the best title ever. General Chris Cavoli, it’s wonderful to have you here in New York. I’m Ivo Daalder. I run the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. And I am presiding today, which is a great honor. And want to thank the Council for allowing me to do that, to have an opportunity to spend some time with General Cavoli. You all have his bio, so I won’t go into detail on his background, other than say that he’s served the U.S. Army and our country for almost forty years now.
CAVOLI: Wow.
DAALDER: Which makes you very young. (Laughter.)
CAVOLI: Not very supreme. (Laughter.)
DAALDER: And that’s why you are now supreme, after that. And has been—had a distinguished Army career in Asia, and Europe, and in the Middle East. He’s a foreign affairs officer who speaks Russian, Italian, and French, and sometimes a little English. We’re going to hear that. So let’s start with you’ve been in the job for two years. Pretty boring, those two years?
CAVOLI: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, a lot of time off, Ivo.
DAALDER: (Laughs.) When you—when you got there, July 1, 2022, how did you see the situation in Ukraine at that moment? So this is about three years—three months or so into the war. Of course, you had seen that, as the U.S. commander of Army Europe. So you were there. You were focusing on it. But, you know, now were responsible for NATO as well as, of course, EUCOM. And how did you see the situation?
CAVOLI: Well, first of all, you’re right. I was there from the beginning of it, simply because I was the commander of Army Europe. And a lot of the structures that we ended up using as a country to help the Ukrainians were put together under U.S. Army Europe at the time, first on the back of the 82nd Airborne of the 18th Airborne Corps, and then we kind of grew it out from there. So I was very, very familiar with the situation by the time I got to my current job in July. And I had watched over the preceding years this back and forth in Ukraine, and the back and forth deployment and redeployment of Russian troops up to the border. I had been the commander of U.S. Army Europe for almost five years by the time I took this job.
So I had the chance to work with the Ukrainians a lot in a previous job as a one star. I was the guy responsible to put together the training mission that we had out in western Ukraine in a little town called Yavoriv. So this is really, you know, the culmination of some years of working with the Ukrainians, and being familiar with the situation, and then watching the sort of brinksmanship—deploy to the border, redeploy back—that Russia was doing in a menacing fashion throughout 2021. So by the time I got to this job after the invasion I pretty much understood where the U.S. was trying to go with this and where Ukraine was trying to go with this. And we were really in the middle of optimizing how we could help them practically, what advice we could give, how to ship equipment expeditiously to them, how to solicit allied contributions for the Ukrainians—which has been just a phenomenal piece of work by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in conjunction with a bunch of other people through the Ukraine Donors Coordination Group, the Ramstein process.
So all that was pretty much in my head. What I couldn’t see was all the wild turns that the conflict would take going forward. Those are always hard to predict. And I think it’s really important for me to admit at the outset, you know, this is war. And war is unpredictable. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be war. And so it’s a dangerous business to try to—to try to describe preordained outcomes. And it’s a very dangerous business to declare victory before it happens. But nevertheless, over the past couple of years it’s been absolutely remarkable what Ukraine has been able to do, with the assistance of maybe fifty different countries around the world who have come together voluntarily to help them in their fight.
DAALDER: So two years later, as of today, you have learned more. More has happened. What do you see are the major challenges confronting Ukraine and our ability to support them in that effort? And what has been the biggest surprise?
CAVOLI: Yeah. So the biggest challenges that Ukraine faces really comes down to size—numbers, population base, size of industry, and things like that. And Ukraine’s natural position was set back by the fact that it had been partially occupied for ten years already—almost eight years before the beginning of this war, and was set back again slightly by the first steps of the invasion. So, you know, the biggest challenges for Ukraine are sort of unmovable—their size, their population, demographics, et cetera. However, having said that, these are not insuperable problems. These are exactly the kind of things that spur a country toward innovation, especially under pressure. And I have to say that I’ve been astounded by some of the innovation that has come out of Ukraine under pressure—militarily, technically, tactically. I think we see some right now during the offensive that’s in the Kursk region. So there are certainly challenges, but Ukraine certainly has the ability to rise to them.
I’ve also been very, very gratified by the very quick and firm reaction of our allies, who have jumped to the cause, who have in many cases turned around decades of pacifistic tendency and realized that the world has changed under their feet, and have responded by helping Ukraine even as they rearm themselves. So funny things—funny things happen in big moments in history. And I think five years ago we wouldn’t have predicted a NATO like the one we see today.
DAALDER: I want to get back to NATO and sort of the change in that. Any other big surprises? What about the way the Russians have been fighting this war? Was what you saw from the Russians what you expected them to do, more or less? You know, you’re a student of the Russian military for a long time. You’ve looked at them for a long time.
CAVOLI: Yeah. So there were some things about Russia’s invasion that were surprising. You know, by the time their—by the time their invasion actually took place they had complicated their plan tremendously—multiple different axes of advance converging, operate exclusively on what we call exterior lines where to reinforce from one axis to another you have to go all the way around a convex situation. Just some things that are basic parts of the operational art that you would expect them not to have messed up, that they messed up. But nevertheless, many of the things they did they did well, and many of the things they did poorly we knew they’d kind of do poorly.
The one thing that really got me that I did not understand fully, and I don’t think any of us did, was the impact of corruption on the readiness of the Russian Armed Forces. The impact of petty corruption in the sustainment of their equipment, which didn’t work the way it was supposed to, in the location and availability of supplies, in the—you know, the number of times the oil is changed in the tank while it’s sitting there waiting. Just simple things like that that were driven—that are not explainable, given the huge defense budgets they had been working on relative to their purchasing power parity. The only explanation for it really is that corruption.
And it showed up in the way you could see the Russians telling stories to each other up and down the chain of command, such that the fidelity of reporting got lost. The truth didn’t get to the top. The truth still doesn’t get to the top. And that’s something I think that we in the West are very good at. I think we have fidelity in our reporting. And I think our systems are relatively uncorrupted, in that sense. And I think that should give us all a great cause for optimism as we go forward.
DAALDER: Kursk, the big—the big issue of the day. Surprising. Don’t know if for you, but I think everybody in this room, and perhaps also for you, that all of a sudden they were able to mass a force and put it forward, and showed that they can do combined arms offensive in the way that you guys have been training them for quite a long time. How should we read the offensive, in terms of what it’s trying to achieve? Is it tactically or strategically guided, in your sense?
CAVOLI: Sure.
DAALDER: And, operationally, what can we learn from it?
CAVOLI: Yeah. I think the first thing to take away from the Kursk offensive relates to something we were talking about a moment ago, Ivo, right? So Ukraine objectively, in terms of size, is at a disadvantage toward Russia. But you can compensate for that in many ways. We talked about innovation. This is one of the things they can do to compensate for it. They found an area of weakness in the Russians position, and they exploited it quickly, and have exploited it very skillfully. They have done an awful lot of things that are sophisticated in terms of the employment of combined arms. And it’s yielded the sort of success that we’re looking at.
You know, I hope—I hope you all will be patient with me if I don’t talk too much about it in detail. You know, it’s ongoing operations and I think we should respect the role that that some level of secrecy will have in Ukraine’s eventual success in this operation. But suffice it to say that it appears to be going quite well. And they have been doing a very good job. They certainly achieved operational and tactical surprise. And this will put them in a good position to go whichever way they want with that afterwards.
DAALDER: The impact on—when you talk to your Ukrainian counterparts, sort of how do they look at this? Was this the kind of morale booster that they really needed, on the one hand?
CAVOLI: Well, clearly—
DAALDER: And also, regain the confidence that it seemed they were starting to lose a little bit? There was more debate over the last few months. And the same on the Russian side? I mean, the Russians were caught flat footed.
CAVOLI: So, you know, there are multiple reasons to do anything in a war, right? So there are plenty of different objectives that this offensive has. I think a morale boost is an important side effect of. And when I talk to my Ukrainian colleagues, they feel good about where it is. And you can see the mood in the country’s buoyed very quickly, whether through social media or any other means. So it has had a very good galvanizing effect on the population, I think, and on the military itself. I think it’s had a shocking effect on the Russians. That is, I think they’re shocked by it. And while that won’t persist forever, you know, they’ll gather themselves together and react accordingly, nevertheless it’s a good day for Ukraine. And it’s a good day for Ukraine because they have behaved in a militarily and operationally very clever and insightful fashion.
DAALDER: One more question on Ukraine, although we can spend hours on this, I know.
CAVOLI: I do. (Laughs.)
DAALDER: And you do. But I also want to talk about your other day job at NATO before we open it up to folks. We now have—the aid package has gone through. The mobilization has started. And by, I gather, the number of people who are starting to be trained is significantly increasing, on the Ukrainian side. When you look at the—let’s say, the next six to twelve months, what are you—given the capabilities coming, and the F-16s are starting to come in, the Crimea campaign is not yet culminating but it’s getting pretty darn close in terms of the capacity the Ukrainians have to deal with the Black Fleet—Black Sea Fleet, and others. Where do you think we—and then, of course, front line, right where things have been moving perhaps not in the right direction for a while.
CAVOLI: Yeah. Well, so clearly the Ukrainians have adopted an approach this year that allows them to preserve and defend in the east—to preserve what they’ve got. They’re clearly denying Russia the ability to use Crimea as a sanctuary. They’re protecting their critical national infrastructure, which is under grievous assault from the—from the Russians, with long-range fires daily. The other part that they need to do this year, and they are doing, is generating strategic-level forces. They’ve got to generate a strategic reserve to bring them forward into next year. And this is one of the things that we’re working on really hard with them. This is one of the things that NATO is going to work on with them, under the newly agreed training operation that we’re going to have for them.
The ability to generate force is usually an institutional ability. It’s the result of having institutions that can generate force, that can train, that can mobilize, that can bring people in, that can move them to the front, that can replenish them, that can regenerate forces that were in combat. And Ukraine has quietly, not in the newspapers, has been putting together those institutions this year. I think that General Syrskyi is going to, in history, deserve a lot of credit—not just for the sort of leadership he displays at the front lines, but for the way he’s approached force generation. And he and Minister Umerov are actually making huge advances there. I talked to Minister Umerov for a while this morning about some of their force generation things, and I think they’ve made a lot of progress. I think their ability to generate force this year is going to be the strategically important thing that gets done.
DAALDER: We’ll leave for Q&A, because I’m sure somebody’s going to ask you, so what’s the impact on that for 2025. But I want to—I want to switch to NATO for just the next few minutes. Here in the U.S., when we talk NATO we always talk about dollars and cents. It seems to be the only way—the only discussion that we have.
CAVOLI: And they talk about euros. We’re never going to—(laughter)—
DAALDER: Euros, and pounds, and krona, too. And the Europeans have done a lot. Half a trillion dollars is what they spent—are spending this year on defense. But you don’t go to war with dollars, cents, euros, pounds, or—you go to war with men and—mostly men—troops and weapons. So where do you think NATO is today? What is—what is it that it has been able to generate as a result of the shock of Ukraine, and the spending that is coming? What are the capabilities that—where they are? And how would you compare that to, say, when you arrived at U.S.—in Europe, what, now seven years ago, I guess—when you took over command of U.S. Army Europe.
CAVOLI: So the change is almost impossible to overstate. The first thing that’s been generated—I don’t want to be clever or anything here—but the first thing that’s been generated is a level of political will and unity that we just didn’t see during the sweet old days when we were not under any pressure. There has been a real wake up. So to go to the money, in 2014 in the wake of the first invasion of Ukraine, NATO member nations resolved to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on their defense. At the time of that pledge, the Wales pledge, three allies did so. Three allies spent that much. This year, Jens Stoltenberg announced at the summit that twenty-three nations are meeting that. Thirteen of those nations in the past year. So it has been a sudden uptick in putting money where the mouth is after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The money’s there.
The second thing that happened was the political will that has been generated in the alliance has been converted into political instructions, specifically to me. So at Madrid in 2022 in June, the week before I took over, heads of state and government in NATO instructed SACEUR immediately to implement the strategic approach that we call deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area. A deterrence and collective defense-oriented strategic approach. So that became my job. And the specific thing that had to be done by me was to have my staff and my subordinate commands put together regional plans. And those regional plans describe—they’re classical operational plans. They describe how and where we’re going to defend the specific geography of the alliance. And, more important, how, before that, we will operate to deter and to prevent Russia from gaining advantage in specific pieces of geography, or in terms of readiness, or in terms of domain.
So that act, putting those plans together, was a political act by the alliance. So that’s political direction to plan for a war. And it makes all the difference. So the last general defense plan that we had for collective defense was reviewed and revised and signed in 1989. That’s the last one. Obviously, it became unnecessary after the Cold War, and so we had nothing. Without that, there was no objective requirement for forces, for readiness, for things like that. All we had to do was make sure that we produced forces when an operation called for them. Afghanistan needs a brigade, produce it. Completely different from where we are now. So the new force—the new regional plans have created a new force model that’s based not on cyclical force generation, but rather on standing readiness. So we have many more forces called to standing levels of readiness across the alliance.
The second thing it’s done is created a force structure requirement. These are the forces we need to execute these plans. That force structural requirement is now a guide for nations to build their militaries to, in order to be able to contribute to the plans. And so, in essence, it becomes the blueprint for burden sharing, right, across the—across the alliance. Finally, we can describe practically, not 2 percent but this is what I need your 2 percent to buy. It’s the shopping list for the 2 percent. That is a massive sea change. It’s being accepted, and even enthusiastically accepted by nations as they go about, you know, building up toward this. The enthusiasm wanes a little bit when we get to the realities of our defense production right now. It’s not a super secret that we’re not producing as much as fast as we would like to. And in fact, many nations have money burning a hole in their pocket but there’s not enough to buy right now.
So the alliance, as well as all the member nations of the alliance, are very, very focused on how to improve our defense industrial production and how to modernize our force structure at the same time. So this has been a massive shift in the way NATO operates. I mean, just a few years ago when you were at NATO if we had had a conversation like this, you know, we would be looking for the empty bottles on the floor. This is just a complete sea change. It’s also a sea change in terms of specific policy, right? Germany has agreed and asked for the station of long-range conventional weapons on their territory. I mean, think of the Pershing II debacle in the—in the 1980s. That was unthinkable in Germany just three years ago. So the policy changes and the practical consequences of those changes just can’t be overstated. It’s a very—it’s a very important and gratifying thing for us to recognize that when the alliance needs to be the alliance, it stands up and is the alliance.
DAALDER: I mean, just to underscore how much of a sea change this is, my second day as ambassador in 2009 I had a meeting with the Baltic ambassadors, the Czechs and the Poles. I wanted to meet with them before I met with our Quad friends, which we usually do—the Brits, the French and the Germans. And the first thing the Lithuanian ambassador told me, he says: It’s great you’re here, but there’s one—there’s one request I have. I said, what is that? He said, we are members of NATO. We’ve been members of NATO for five years. And there is no contingency plan to protect us. None. Zero. There’s no plan. We had plans for Poland, but we didn’t have plans for them. So could we have one, please? And we got—
CAVOLI: Yes, you have one now. (Laughs.)
DAALDER: And we did get one. But now you have a real one.
CAVOLI: Yeah.
DAALDER: And the contingency plan versus a defense plan that you have now was a—is a fundamentally different—
CAVOLI: You know, maybe more importantly, now we have a plan but we also have the command and control structures moving into place necessary to execute that plan. So instead of having headquarters that are just sort of generically focused on tasks that are going to rotate out to do some out of area operation, we’re turning our headquarters into geographically focused headquarters that have the responsibility to defend this area in just a classical, operationally focused sense. That’s going to have a huge—make a huge difference. And it gives member nations, like Lithuania, it gives them a headquarters to work with so that their national defense plans can be harmonized with the NATO collective defense plan for the area, and command and control structures can be—can be worked out, and command and control procedures can be worked out.
Of course, to go from a sovereign nation’s defense of its territory suddenly to a collective defense of that sovereign territory is a tricky thing. And so that requires standing understandings, standing agreements, standing procedures. And those are the sorts of things we’re able to work out now. And we do it through an exercise program that’s driven by the plans. Which we didn’t have before either, right? We sort of exercised generically. Let’s do a parachute jump. Now we exercise in order to be—to be able to be competent at the critical functional parts of our plans.
DAALDER: So there are two consequences of what you have said, other than enhancing deterrence and hopefully through that improving defense. One is you mentioned burden sharing, which is this allows you to actually start thinking about, OK, what is it that the United States needs to produce? But if we happen to be somewhere else, who’s going to fill it in? And really define burden sharing not in the 2 percent but in the capabilities and the execution of the plans. So can you talk a little bit about how the—how are we thinking about—duplication is the wrong word—the ability of the Europeans to backfill, to not rely as much as they have in the past on our critical enablers—whether it’s refueling or intelligence, surveillance, or reconnaissance, the drone technology, et cetera. How are we thinking about burden sharing as a positive inducement for change, and get the Europeans to do that?
CAVOLI: Yeah. You know, so I think one of the important realizations I’ve come to over the last couple of years, Ivo, is that we’ve wanted burden sharing for so long, but we couldn’t describe it. We couldn’t say practically what we meant. Now that we have plans, we’re able to do that. OK, I need you to do this part of it because it’s too hard for me to get that over there at that time. And everything becomes clearer. And people start to sign up for more. The U.S. contribution to the NATO plans is the most we’ve offered since the end of the Cold War. So our commitment is clear. But although the actual fractions are classified, we are not the lion’s share of the force. When you lay it out with a real set of plans, you see that the Europeans are doing far more for the defense of the continent than we sometimes give credit for.
Our fraction of the total force is not overwhelming. It is very important, though. It’s important in a few ways. Some capabilities only we really provide. And several capabilities only we provide at scale. So we are an important part, no matter what the fractions are, because of some of the things that we’re able to provide rather than the scale we’re able to provide. And the second thing that’s really, I believe, absolutely vital from the United States for the success of the alliance is leadership. The alliance wants us there. And the alliance, for the first time in thirty-five years, is nearly unanimously spending and working in a very directed fashion toward its own collective defense, our collective defense of the NATO area. And so in many ways this is exactly the moment we have been waiting for, our country has been—this is finally the alliance we were saying we want. And so this is exactly the time when U.S. participation, U.S. investment will have the biggest payoff for the United States and for the alliance at large.
DAALDER: So that raises the final question, which is—whether in Washington, or New York, or even in Chicago—when we talk about global security threats there is a European issue, and NATO has taken hold of that, but we have all these other challenges that we but also our allies have abroad. And there’s been loose talk, I would say—not a lot of other talk—about NATO taking on greater responsibilities, not just out of area as we did after the Cold War, but in the Indo-Pacific. And starting to think about it. How—one, is NATO thinking about that? They are mentioning the China threat. And that is—that’s part of the way NATO is describing the threat. But, two, if the way you describe the deterrence and defense concept, it’s very much based on the territory of the Euro-Atlantic area as opposed to the Indo-Pacific area.
CAVOLI: Yeah. So, Article Six of the Washington Treaty delineates the area of NATO. And it is a regional alliance. It does have a geographical delimitation. It has done things outside of that area before, right? I mean, Afghanistan certainly wasn’t it. So we can take the decision to do things external, but I think really NATO is a regional alliance and it tends, for the foreseeable future, to focus on the region of the Euro-Atlantic area.
However, it’s obvious that many member nations have interests in Africa, have interests in the Indo-Pacific, and will need to secure those interests. And it’s also increasingly obvious that there is no such thing as a regional problem. We may be a regional alliance, but there’s not a regional problem anymore. The problems that we face are increasingly interlinked. The NATO names two adversaries—the Russian Federation and terror groups. And those certainly aren’t in exactly the same location or inside NATO’s area of responsibility. We see Russia, China, and other countries increasingly coordinating their approaches and their policies. And that’s going to create global problems that NATO will be a part of solving.
So I think an important realization in NATO right now is that you can’t have a splendid island. It’s part of a bigger globe. And we’re going to have to come to grips with that somehow. It may not mean that the alliance, as the alliance, ends up operating all over the world. I don’t see that. But it certainly means that the security of other parts of the world is going to be an important part of the policy making of the thirty-two nations.
DAALDER: Great. I’m going to open up the conversation. And there’s no one—luckily, nobody wants to ask a question. (Laughter.) Just a reminder that this is on the record, so your question is on the record as well. And we’ll give you a microphone. State your name and do ask a question. We’ll start here, the lady in the middle of the room right there, purple dress.
Q: Thank you. And congratulations, sir, on the new force model that you did in record time and with great success.
I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what Article Five of NATO actually provides for. During the negotiation of the Washington Treaty, as I understand it, the European countries wanted there to be an automatic response from allies, certainly including the U.S., in the event of an armed attack on their territory. And the U.S. said no. And so Article Five, instead of having an automatic response, provides that each ally can take such action as it deems necessary. My question to you is, what authority, if any, do you have to, for example, activate your new reaction force? And what happens if a country—I’ll pick randomly, Hungary or Turkey—decides, well, we won’t be part of that consensus and we won’t give you a constructive abstention. What, if anything, can NATO do as a collective whole under the auspices of NATO?
CAVOLI: Right. So the shortest possible answer, ma’am, is member nations of the alliance always retain their full sovereignty. And they make their decisions. And they can make those decisions at any time. So it is entirely conceivable, or theoretically conceivable, that Article Four could be invoked, discussions could be held, and nations could decide to declare that an Article Five situation has happened, and then a nation might decide, but what I think is necessary is for me to do nothing. That’s certainly possible.
You know, in my view, it’s not very likely. What I’ve seen in NATO is that it’s very hard to get to consensus, but once you get to consensus it’s really hard to back out of it. I mean, once you get to consensus, you’ve got a very firm thing. So the consensus of invoking Article Five I think pretty much drags everybody along with it. It’s hard to—hard to see, you know, a nation just folding its arms and sitting it out. But it’s theoretically possible. And that’s the way that—that’s the way, you know, an alliance composed of thirty-two sovereign nations is always going to be.
To your direct question about what authorities do I have as the supreme allied commander in Europe, this is a very interesting question. During the period after the Cold War, when we were involved principally in what we called out of area operations, boy, everything was on our side. Time was on our side. The time to deliberate, to argue about fine details, that was on—all on our side. And, reasonably enough, member nations pulled political control over most things up very, very tightly. And so SACEUR had very few authorities that were not affirmatively granted at a time of need by consensus after great deliberation. And, you know, that’s the kind of NATO that most of us are used to, because that’s the last thirty-five years.
That is not the NATO of the Cold War. And that is not the NATO of a collective defense period, which we’re moving into. So one of the most remarkable features of these new plans and everything is the amount of authority that has been turned around and given back to SACEUR to stage forces, and to move forces, to declare various levels of alert based on my understanding, and informing the Council. So I have quite a few authorities. I can—at the alert state of yellow. I can do a number of things. I can’t talk too much about them in public, obviously, but I am certainly permitted to do—most of my predecessors over the last thirty years would have cried to have the sort of authorities that that the North Atlantic Council has had the faith in SACEUR to grant.
DAALDER: Mike Froman.
Q: Thanks very much. And I’m going to abuse my position as president to make a comment and then ask a question.
The comment is that most people know that between being general and being president, Eisenhower was president of Columbia University. What they don’t know is at the same time he was running a study group here at the Council after the announcement of the Marshall Plan on what else the U.S. should do to support Europe. In the history of Council study groups, it was an abject failure. The group rarely met. They could not reach consensus. He was a terrible leader of the study group, as it turns out. (Laughter.) But the one recommendation that came out of it was to create a military alliance that became NATO. And in 1950, Truman appointed him the first supreme allied commander of Europe. That’s a long way of saying, General Cavoli, that you owe your job to a failed Council on Foreign Relations study group. (Laughter.) So welcome.
The question is the following: NATO, in some ways, has been a victim of its own success. Such a successful deterrence alliance, so much so that Ukraine insists on becoming a member. How do you convince the Ukrainians that anything short of full membership in NATO is sufficient to protect their security on the borders of Russia?
CAVOLI: Yeah. Well, obviously that’s a—that’s a tough question, and one that I have to be—I have to be a little bit deferential of our policymakers’ space in answering, right? So this is something that, as you can see, the alliance is working out with Ukraine, even as we speak. I think in the meantime, while that’s being worked out, though, I think Ukraine can take a great deal of comfort from the amount of support they are receiving from the nations of NATO, as well as many other nations around the world. I think that it’s extraordinarily important, and from a Ukrainian perspective it should be very, very important, that NATO has taken the decision to take over a major coordinating role for the provision of material aid as well as the provision of training for Ukraine.
This was something that NATO had not agreed to do for the last two years. NATO as an alliance was standing back. But now NATO as an alliance is taking on the role to make the bridge to Ukraine, to start to develop not just the forces of today for Ukraine to use in its current fight, but to start to build the forces of the future that Ukraine will require to deter and to maintain the peace that emerges at the end of this conflict. So I think that that move alone, the development of the NATO security assistance and training for Ukraine—which came out of the summit here in Washington last month—I think that’s extremely important as not a symbol, but as a practical step to give Ukraine access to the alliance and what the alliance has to offer.
DAALDER: Gentleman with the yellow/gold tie.
Q: Thank you for this excellent presentation.
You’ve given a quite upbeat description of NATO’s rising readiness to meet the challenge of Russia. I’m curious how you would characterize Russia’s own remilitarization, its restoration of its military production. You suggested that military production on our side was not perhaps keeping up with demand. And whether at this point Russia is outpacing us in terms of its ability to face this conflict.
CAVOLI: Thanks. That’s a great question. It’s a great question not just on the face of it, but also because of what you’re implying. Military growth rates, rearmament, that sort of thing is a competitive venture. There’s not an absolute measure of what we need. It’s always relative to what we anticipate the threat will be. And so the question of what is Russia doing is extremely important. They’re rearming as quickly as they can. There are some big problems with their rearmament, but in many things, they’ve been able to move out very quickly. The production of ammunition they’ve been able to increase by multiples. Their production and refurbishment of tanks is moving along quite well. Some things they’re having a little bit harder trouble doing because they’ve got to get around international sanctions on the acquisition of high-end components and everything. They do find ways around it usually, but it’s usually quite inefficient.
Disturbingly, they’ve made up for some of this force generation shortfall by reaching out to other countries that have willingly provided them with things—whether it’s munitions, or technology, or dual-use technologies. And I think that’s something we, as a world, are going to have to deal with. But in short, Russia has ramped up. Russia has adopted—some people describe it as a wartime footing. I describe it as sort of a halfway position. It’s clear that they’re trying to avoid the costs that you impose on society when you go to full mobilization. But on the other hand, it’s also clear that they’re taking extraordinary steps to step up their production.
We can beat that. We can beat that. We just—we just have to get off this—out of the starting blocks and do it. I mean, the great advantage of the alliance is that the economies of the West dwarf the Russian economy and our production capacity and capability dwarfs that of Russia. And so we should have—I’m upbeat because we should have a great deal of confidence. We know where we need to go and we just got to get there and move out. So thank you, sir, for the question.
DAALDER: Right here in the front.
Q: Thank you. My name is Tara Hariharan. I’m from a hedge fund called NWI. General Cavoli, thank you so much for your service.
You mentioned China. I have a specific question about China as a decisive enabler of Russia in Ukraine. What are you specifically seeing China doing? Because we are hearing about them supplying dual use and possibly military equipment. And from the NATO perspective, what can you do to counter? Or is this something that has to rely entirely on economic policy making and sanctions to deter China? Thank you.
CAVOLI: Yeah. Thanks. So what specifically is China doing? Clearly, they’ve provided an outlet in the market for petroleum products from Russia. That has given Russia the revenues necessary to do the sort of production that we were talking about a moment ago. Clearly, they’re involved in some dual-use technology transfer, which sometimes looks very benign but other times is pretty easy to see through. Clearly, they’re doing some things that we’re aware of in the classified space that I can’t talk about. But I think it’s important to note that Russia’s relationship with China, in which I think it’s fair to say Russia is increasingly playing the minor role as partner, that’s happening for a reason. They’re assuming that position for a reason.
NATO doesn’t principally, as an alliance, work on things like sanctions. But, you know, you have these overlapping ovals, right? Most of the nations, or many of the nations in in NATO are members of the EU, or other such blocs, or other such arrangements. All are members of the United Nations, for instance. And it’s usually through those arms or through multilateral and bilateral arrangements among member nations that we do things. Ivo mentioned the Quad a couple of minutes ago—France, Germany, the U.S., U.K. Those nations don’t act for NATO, but when they get together and make a policy comment among the four of them it has a big impact across NATO.
So those are the sorts of things that are happening. I do think this question of enforcement of sanctions is a very important one. And I’m happy when I see international cooperation, especially in the legal sphere, to get after sanctions busting innovation.
DAALDER: Michael Gordon.
Q: Hi, General. Michael Gordon, Wall Street Journal.
You’re an expert on Russia. I have two Russia-related questions for you. Why did it take so long for the Russian military, in your estimation, and for the Russian political authorities to respond to the Kursk offensive? Does it have something to do with the phenomenon you mentioned earlier about not passing bad news up to higher levels of command, in this instance? And it’s a matter of public record that Russia has diverted some forces from Ukraine to sustain its defensive efforts in Kursk. Is this a significant amount of forces? Is this infantry only? Are they pulling them from key regions? Where are they coming from? And my real question here is, is this diversion noteworthy enough that it is likely to dampen—have a dampening effect on Russia’s offensive operations in the east? Or is it really not that important? And is it still going on? Are they continuing to divert these forces? Thank you.
CAVOLI: Yeah. So there’s some levels of specificity in there that I’m going to have to—have to avoid. But Russia is still pulling together its reaction to this incursion by Ukraine. There has been a fairly slow and scattered reaction to it. Part of that is because it wouldn’t exactly be clear who’s in charge. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of fighting inside Ukraine, but not in charge of fights inside Russia yet, right? I mean, that’s for the Ministry of the Interior, for the Federal Security Service, and other domestic entities. So there’s a certain sorting out of which forces are we going to use, who’s in charge of them, that I think takes a little bit of time. Just as we find geographical seams, and just as we find seams between units in a military formation, sometimes we find institutional seams inside the interagency of a country. And I think that’s a little bit of what we see here.
Second thing is, Russia doesn’t have a lot of forces available to throw against that. The scale of the commitment—or, the fraction of the Russian ground force that’s committed inside Ukraine is very significant. And the units available left inside Russia to throw against a problem like this tend to be conscript troops, who are theoretically and legally not permitted to fight in in Ukraine. And so those are not exactly the units that you would expect to put up the most rapid reaction. So I think the Russians are still working their way through this. They have diverted a lot of air power to the area. That’s an easy thing to move, right? But it remains to be seen how much ground force they’re able to put against this, and what the effect will be.
You’re right. Some units have come from eastern Ukraine up there to fight. But clearly their preference will be to bring units from elsewhere. I think they’re going to have to make some decisions on the Russian side about time and availability of troops. And I’m sorry, Michael. If I could—if I could leave it at that, that would probably be best, from my perspective. (Laughs.)
DAALDER: Yeah. Right here. Yeah.
Q: Lyndsay Howard from Bloomberg.
General Cavoli, thank you for your specificity and articulate comments to this audience. I wondered if we could talk a little bit about maritime strategy. The threat level at sea has increased surround sound for NATO. Certainly, in the Black Sea, where we face a different reality—though one both the Russians and the Turks long predicted, among others. But there are also underwater sea cables, key infrastructure, incidents around Norway. And then there are issues like immigration and refugees. NATO has limited assets in the maritime area. I know these have been increasing, but could you speak a little bit to the maritime strategy for the NATO alliance? Thank you.
CAVOLI: Sure. And all my admiral friends out there, forgive me for what I’m about to do. (Laughter.)
DAALDER: That’s all right. They run armies too—(laughter)—so you can—you can run some navies now.
CAVOLI: Yeah, so let me scatter shot a little bit, if I could, ma’am. First of all, I think we’ve seen some big developments technologically in terms of future warfare. For Ukraine, a country with—basically without a manned Navy, for them to use unmanned vehicles, uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles, to push the Black Sea Fleet all the way to the far side of the Black Sea, it’s pretty remarkable. And I think there’s a lot in there for all nations to study.
There are some—you know, there’s a lot of buzz about unmanned aerial vehicles. But those seem to have some limitations in terms of, you know, how much payload can they carry. Can they carry bombs big enough to really destroy, you know, a modern tank? Those limitations don’t seem to—don’t seem to be as strict for maritime vessels. They can carry big explosives and things like that. And so there have been leaps and leaps made by the Ukrainians in terms of employing cleverly and developing new technologies in the uncrewed surface vehicle arena. I think that’s a very important part of the maritime thing.
Underwater critical infrastructure. So we had a couple of—a couple of episodes, right, up in the Baltic and in the North Sea. And last year, a year and a half ago—I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly—I was instructed to stand up an underwater critical infrastructure protection program. And we do that underneath our Maritime Command, NATO MARCOM, which is led by Vice Admiral Mike Utley, in southern England is their headquarters.
And they put together what effectively is an information clearinghouse for underwater infrastructure and for incidents, as well as for maritime domain awareness. That is, where ships are in the world at any given time. It’s a tough problem because some of the infrastructure is government owned, some of it’s private. Some of it’s on land, some of it’s underwater—even though they’re connected. Some of it’s in national territory, some of it’s in international spaces. Some of it’s—some nations give jurisdiction over this question to law enforcement agencies, some give it to military agencies. I run a military organization.
So what we settled on was an information clearinghouse. Remarkable how much you can pull together when you take that approach, however. And we’ve had a couple of incidents where we’ve been able to bring together information, hand it to a nation or hand it to a group of nations extremely quickly, give them complete access to it, and then start moving NATO vessels to the point of impact, if they’re desired. So we are able to do—to do some things like that. But there’s a great deal that needs to be done nationally as well as multi-nationally in that space.
The last thing I’d say on maritime strategy, you know, sometimes we see the challenges that come up. Oh, the Black Sea is—there’s problems in—with the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance, the military balance and the military geography in the Baltic Sea has changed completely. Almost every kilometer of the coastline of that sea—the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea—is now NATO coastline, to include the key choke points such as the Skagerrak and the Straits of Denmark. It’s hard to overstate the importance of that from a military perspective. And so there has been—there’s been tremendous advances in the maritime domain. We could go on for hours, but I’d run out of expertise very quickly.
DAALDER: (Laughs.) The lady over in the back there. Yeah.
Q: Thank you. Kate Aitken, new term member.
My question is about AI. We’ve seen a great divergence between the U.S. and the EU in terms of the approach to innovation, in terms of regulation, and in terms of military applications. What do you see as the implications of that, if that divergence spreads over to all the members of NATO? And I’m wondering if there’s any particular areas or use cases where you see less divergence or more agreement about where to use AI?
CAVOLI: Yeah, the second question first. Among militaries in NATO, there’s no dispute that using AI to enhance our ability to analyze large bodies of data, especially collected by our intelligence sensors, is absolutely imperative. That there’s no way you get into the future without having some sort of machine assistance for analysis, as well as some decision-making tools. That’s just, I think, common across militaries worldwide, have seen—have seen the potential and the importance for that.
In terms of the way we get that technology—(laughs)—I think, you know, the European Union and the United States have very different approaches. I’m American. And I think, you know, most of the electronics I use came out of California or someplace like that. And I think there’s a lot of benefit in the way we do it. I do think—at the risk of straying too far outside of my own field of expertise—I do think that American capital markets are a really important part—(laughs)—of our ability to lead in this regard. And the relatively weaker capital markets that you find in Europe are going to be part of their solution to being able to lead in AI and other high technology in the future. Every bit as much so as regulation and deregulation of things that are probably uppermost in your mind.
DAALDER: Time for one final question. Gentlemen, here in the middle.
Q: Hi. I’m Hall (sp). I’m also a term member.
General, thank you for your insights about the industrial situation. Just to follow up, you know, with Ukraine we see new tech like drones and good old 155s. And just thinking about the industrial base, what do you view as NATO’s role in creating alignment between the NATO members in terms of just distribution vis-à-vis the threat environment? And what do you—what do you view as, like, some of the more impactful things that you could do? And also, I always like to remind myself, NATO members obviously involves the United States and Europe, but it also involves Canada as well.
CAVOLI: That’s right. That’s a great point. You know, frequently Americans will say—we’ll say, our European allies, and forget that there’s another one on our continent. (Laughs.) Which is—thanks for the important point. Yeah. There are a number of fora that that NATO has put together for—regarding industrial production. We have a Defense Industrial Production Pledge. We have a couple of other things like that. There’s a lot of information sharing going on. It is important to remember that NATO does not build almost any part of our military structure. Thirty-two nations build their militaries and contribute them to NATO allied command operations so that I can employ them.
There are a couple of things we do kind of own. Some of—the headquarters and things like that. We actually own unmanned aerial vehicles, a high-altitude ISR collection capability. We own our AWACS in Geilenkirchen, Germany. But for the most part, what really we need is for national armaments directors to come together and to agree on the way they’re going to stimulate industry and work with industry multi-nationally in order to bring this forward. I very much applaud the efforts of our Under Secretary Bill LaPlante, for acquisition, who has been sort of peer leading a group that’s very successful. He goes over to Europe, it seems, like every other week, and gathers together national armaments directors to try to lay down production goals and things like that.
There are a variety of other arrangements like that across the alliance. The Czech-led 155 production and acquisition initiative that you read about, 800,000 rounds this year, very important. But these operate side by side with the European Union’s efforts to do it, which are much more directive, right, and regulatory in nature. They’re able to say, this is what member nations are going to do. And we work very hard between those two different locations in Brussels to make sure we’re working towards similar goals or the same goals. I think it’s fairly successful, so far. But again, I do think that one of our strategic challenges is to have that sort of nimble and expansible production capability so that we can meet threats without overdoing it.
DAALDER: General, I think I speak for everyone to say that we are all better off and safer by having you in Brussels, actually in Mons, as our supreme allied commander. I want to thank all of you for joining us. And please, thank General Cavoli. (Applause.) If you’d—please stay seated as General Cavoli leaves. And you will be able to see a transcript and the video again of this conversation back on the website. Thank you.
