[SNN] NATO General Breedlove's Comments considered "Dangerous Propaganda"

['ANTIC.org-SNN' antic.miros...@gmail.com [SerbianNewsNetwork]]

 






 

 
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 Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine

By SPIEGEL Staff

March 06, 2015 – 07:47 PM

 

Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with 
his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.

 

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.

 

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being withdrawn.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.

 

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 credibility.

 

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." (Read 
Breedlove's full statement here.)

 

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 "F..* 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.

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By Matthias Gebauer, Christiane Hoffmann, Marc Hujer, Gordon Repinski, Matthias 
Schepp, Christoph Schult, Holger Stark and Klaus Wiegrefe