Differences between America and Europe, as well as American undermining of the ceasefire, have come into the open with this article from Germany's Spiegel
Breedlove's
Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine
US
President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a
diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington
seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top
commander in Europe hasn't been helping either
AP
Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.
7
March, 2015
It
was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another
quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles
between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had
largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk
cease-fire wasn't holding perfectly, but it was holding.
On
that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in
Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the
59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in
eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles,
Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense,
battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What
is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not
getting better. It is getting worse every day."
German
leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove
was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the
German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency,
did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe
(SACEUR).
The
pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been
commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of
troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged
columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers
have been significantly higher than those in the possession of
America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into
the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.
The
German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart
European efforts
at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel?
Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as
"dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's
comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.
The
'Super Hawk'
But
Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have
also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a
diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among
them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State
Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms
to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as
many powerful Democrats.
Indeed,
US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his
support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he
has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase
tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in
Washington say that Breedlove's bellicose comments are first cleared
with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the
role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing
the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.
Getty
Images - German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama after a Feb. 9
meeting in Washington: Increasing pressure on America's more reserved
trans-Atlantic partners.
A
mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is
necessary. But for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake
their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public
with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. To
be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence
analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists.
The BND even has proof of such support.
But
it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy.
False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official
during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by
extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credщbility.
There
are plenty of examples. Just over three weeks ago, during the
cease-fire talks in Minsk, the Ukrainian military warned that the
Russians -- even as the diplomatic marathon was ongoing -- had moved
50 tanks and dozens of rockets across the border into Luhansk. Just
one day earlier, US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges had announced
"direct Russian military intervention."
Senior
officials in Berlin immediately asked the BND for an assessment, but
the intelligence agency's satellite images showed just a few armored
vehicles. Even those American intelligence officials who supply the
BND with daily situation reports were much more reserved about the
incident than Hodges was in his public statements. One intelligence
agent says it "remains a riddle until today" how the
general reached his conclusions.
Much
More Cautious
"The
German intelligence services generally appraise the threat level much
more cautiously than the Americans do," an international
military expert in Kiev confirmed.
At
the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the
Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and
warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The
situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning." But
intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded
the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the
composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an
imminent invasion.
The
experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There
weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there
were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000.
Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to
the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior
to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence
of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field
headquarters.
Breedlove,
though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out
inaccurate statements. On Nov. 18, 2014, he told the German
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there
were "regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine." One
day later, he told the website of the German newsmagazine Stern that
they weren't fighting units, but "mostly trainers and advisors."
He
initially said there were "between 250 and 300" of them,
and then "between 300 and 500." For a time, NATO was even
saying there were 1,000 of them.
The
fact that NATO has no intelligence agency of its own plays into
Breedlove's hands. The alliance relies on intelligence gathered by
agents from the US, Britain, Germany and other member states. As
such, SACEUR has a wide range of information to choose from.
Influencing
Breedlove
On
Nov. 12, during a visit to Sofia, Bulgaria, Breedlove reported that
"we have seen columns of Russian equipment -- primarily Russian
tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian
combat troops -- entering into Ukraine." It was, he noted, "the
same thing that OSCE is reporting." But the OSCE had only
observed military convoys within eastern Ukraine. OSCE observers had
said nothing about troops marching in from Russia.
Breedlove
sees no reason to revise his approach. "I stand by all the
public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis," he
wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied
by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be
expected that assessments of NATO's intelligence center, which
receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to
partner states, doesn't always match assessments made by individual
nations. "It is normal that not everyone agrees with the
assessments that I provide," he wrote.
He
says that NATO's strategy is to "release clear, accurate and
timely information regarding ongoing events." He also wrote
that: "As an alliance based on the fundamental values of freedom
and democracy, our response to propaganda cannot be more propaganda.
It can only be the truth."
The
German government, meanwhile, is doing what it can to influence
Breedlove. Sources in Berlin say that conversations to this end have
taken place in recent weeks. But there are many at NATO headquarters
in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements.
On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an
official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly
lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and
expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements.
The
government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's statements could
harm the West's credibility. The West can't counter Russian
propaganda with its own propaganda, "rather it must use
arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state." Berlin
sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's
controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has
been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political
resolution. Berlin sources say that
Germany should be able to depend
on its allies to support its efforts at peace.
Pressure
on Obama
German
foreign policy experts are united in their view of Breedlove as a
hawk. "I would prefer that Breedlove's comments on political
questions be intelligent and reserved," says Social Democrat
parliamentarian Niels Annen, for example.
"Instead, NATO in the
past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our
point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." Annen,
who has long specialized in foreign policy, has also been frequently
dissatisfied with the information provided by NATO headquarters. "We
parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged
troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had,"
he says.
The
pressure on Obama from the Republicans, but also from his own
political camp, is intense. Should the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine
not hold, it will likely be difficult to continue refusing Kiev's
requests for shipments of so-called "defensive weapons."
And that would represent a dramatic escalation of the crisis. Moscow
has already begun issuing threats in anticipation of such deliveries.
"Any weapons deliveries to Kiev will escalate the tensions and
would unhinge European security," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary
of Russia's national security council, told the Russian
newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday.
Although
President Obama has decided for the time being to give European
diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing
what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can
fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically,"
Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the
sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of
February.
US
diplomat Victoria Nuland: Paving the way for weapons deliveries.
In
reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported
that Nuland referred to the chancellor's early February trip to
Moscow for talks with Putin as "Merkel's Moscow stuff." No
wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that
important power brokers in Washington are working against the
Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of
American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials
are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military's
ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. "We then have to
laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of
negotiations," said one Berlin official.
Nuland
Diplomacy
Nuland,
who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans
win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an
important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia. She has
never sought to hide her emotional bond to Russia, even saying "I
love Russia." Her grandparents immigrated to the US from
Bessarabia, which belonged to the Russian empire at the time. Nuland
speaks Russian fluently.
She
is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has
been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been
wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically
blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev
during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters
or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also,
he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against
both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland
said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan
Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out
of the country would be made public.
Nuland
has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for
European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU"
during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014.
Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the
originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans,
unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on
military power, are from Venus.
When
it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and
Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security
Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to
discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming
Ukraine.
On
the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of
Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the
Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is
putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the
Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It
is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."
Training
Troops?
Breedlove
complemented that with the military details, saying that moderate
weapons aid was inevitable -- otherwise neither sanctions nor
diplomatic pressure would have any effect. "If we can increase
the cost for Russia on the battlefield, the other tools will become
more effective," he said. "That's what we should do here."
In
Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position
vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace
efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but
the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of
whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military
action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing
goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to
stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks
within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's
influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the
dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.
A
massive troop training range is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine
near the Polish border. During Soviet times, it served as the
westernmost military district in the Soviet Union. Since 1998,
though, it has been used for joint exercises by Ukrainian forces
together with the United States and NATO. Yavoriv is also the site
where US soldiers want to train members of the Ukrainian National
Guard for their future battle against the separatists. According to
the Pentagon's plans, American officers would train the Ukrainians on
how to use American artillery-locating radar devices. At least that's
what US Army in Europe commander Lt. Gen. Hodges announced in
January.
The
training was actually supposed to start at the beginning of March.
Before it began, however, President Obama temporarily put it on hold
in order to give the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk a chance.
Still, the hawks remain confident that they will soon come a step
closer to their goal. On Tuesday, Hodges said during an appearance in
Berlin that he expects the training will still begin at some point
this month.
By
Matthias Gebauer, Christiane Hoffmann, Marc Hujer, Gordon Repinski,
Matthias Schepp, Christoph Schult, Holger Stark and Klaus Wiegrefe
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