Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
General Hans-Werner Wiermann
General Hans-Werner Wiermann is NATO's former Director General of Military Staff sharing lessons from recent tumultuous years and threats the West will likely face over the next decade.
Episode Summary
NATO's former Director General of Military Staff, General Hans-Werner Wiermann sits down on this bonus episode for a look back on the tumultuous times he and the Alliance have endured over the last several years. From the American withdrawal from Afghanistan to China's increasingly aggressive posture, the General shares some of the lessons he learned and the threats the West will likely face over the next decade. He also delves into Russia's strategy in Ukraine and what it will take to push Putin's forces back to their side of the border.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: I'm Julia McFarlane, and you're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that have shaped the world. This week, we have a special episode for you. One Decision's Brett Bruen talks to Lieutenant General Hans-Werner Wiermann, the outgoing director general of NATO's international military staff.
INTERVIEW
Bruen: What I was interested for the outset of our conversation to understand, you have sat atop the NATO military command now for several years, and these years have been critical. You've spoke about a year and a half, bringing the war in Afghanistan to a close, witnessing the outset of war in Ukraine. But maybe we can start with NATO as an institution. How has it changed in those years that you have worked as the military commander?
Wiermann: When NATO was founded, the mission was very clear. It was collective defense. Nobody doubted it. It was dangerous, but it was militarily a very clear mission. This period ended factually in 1989 with the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the demise of Russia or the Soviet Union. Then we entered into the phase of crisis management without necessarily knowing it. So 1989, we entered the era of crisis management. Again, it was a one dimensional mission because collective defense was not on the agenda anymore. Russia was gone. And you know later on the concepts, ideas, potential strategic partners, collective defense was not on the agenda. Crisis management was a one dimensional mission. And in 2014, again, something happened, probably without everybody recognizing it, that we entered a new era for NATO. And this new era for NATO is two dimensional. We have, on the one hand, to continue with crisis management. We are still in Kosovo. We are still in Iraq. At the same time, we have to relearn collective defense. That is basically the era NATO entered in 2014, and I was part of it since 2015 when I became the German military representative to NATO. With the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, basically, we entered this new era. The Wales Defense Investment Pledge showed that NATO was aware something significant had changed. So the Defense Investment Pledge requiring nations to spend up to 2% of their national product on defense till 2024 was a decision taken in 2014. Many things happened then. We started to deploy forces forward, like enhanced forward presence battle group. The idea was there is now a risk from Russia, and put yourselves in the shoes of the people in the Baltic countries. It looks pretty similar like the people in Crimea. The ones looking from the North, the others are looking from the South. So it was clear why they felt threatened, and NATO reacted to it at that time already. And in 2019, we in the military committees said it's not good enough to have regional plans anymore because regional plans deal with regional problems. But we have a strategic problem, and that problem is called Russia. So we need to have a strategy how to deter Russia across the whole breadth of the alliance and how, if deterrence fails, to defend the alliance. So that's the reason why we started the Military Committee in 2019 to draft the first military strategy since the late sixties. So for fifty years, we didn't review NATO's military strategy. Flowing from that, a lot of concepts have now matured over time. I think that was the reason why we were reasonably well prepared for what happened with the Russian attack on Ukraine, not with events in Ukraine. That came as a surprise to everybody, but we were prepared to shield our partners, our allies. And with the toolbox we developed as a consequence of the military strategy, the Supreme Allied Commander was able to enhance the posture and to successfully, so far, shield all allies. So that's the NATO. I joined basically in 2015 and since 2019 I have the responsibility for, well, getting the approval of all my 30 commanders in chief, which are the 30 chiefs of defense of 30 allies, approval to the concepts that are developed by the strategic commands.
Bruen: You've brought up an interesting point. How to deter Russia? What have you learned in your time at NATO? What works to deter Russia? What does Putin listen to?
Wiermann: Well, obviously, doesn't listen to pure conventional forces because otherwise, he would not have dared to attack Ukraine. So what has been neglected in the era of crisis management for very good reasons, because it was not an issue, was the whole philosophy of deterrence, which includes, of course, several elements of escalation. You may wish to be able to at least pose the option that you can escalate horizontally. So if Russia decides to do harm in one area, you may try to face Russia with strategic dilemmas. The next thing is, you can think about vertical escalation, which traditionally is looked at as what we called in the good old times of the sixties flexible response. And there you have this debate about the connecting elements between Continental US and Europe. We had the debate about the Pershing in response to the SS-20 on the Russian side or Soviet side at that time. We had the ballistic missiles. So I think what really scares Russia is conflict with a nuclear alliance. The nuclear alliance is in fact and we will remain nuclear as long as nuclear weapons exist. Of course, we would prefer to live in a world without nuclear weapons, but as long as they exist, they are a key guarantor of deterrence.
Bruen: So if I'm hearing you correctly, you see where we sit today at the NATO summit in 2022, the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation with Russia as fairly still low.
Wiermann: I would say the reality that great powers possess nuclear weapons has actually guaranteed that there was no war between these big nations or big powerhouses. So I still believe that the nuclear option is successfully deterring the other side. So therefore, I feel quite comfortable that Russia will not attack an ally because the nuclear element needs to be taken into the equation, and that was what made nuclear deterrence at the end of the day so successful. Having said that, you clearly have to be able to show that you are capable to defend yourself conventionally. If you don't have that capability, your nuclear arsenal is a kind of hollow instrument. You have to be able to deter conventionally, to succeed, to win. However, if your existence is threatened, deadly threatened, you have to have ability to use the nuclear deterrent as well. And you see the same rhetoric, by the way, by the Russians in a much more aggressive way, but to a certain degree you see the understanding of the Russian strategists of nuclear deterrence in the very same way.
Bruen: So at this stage, what is Putin's endgame? Is he going to be satisfied with retaking Luhansk, Donetsk, he has Crimea, is that where he stops?
Wiermann: The conclusion is it's not about land grab, it's about system change in Ukraine. So therefore, he cannot be satisfied with just grabbing Luhansk and Donetsk. So we need to be aware that there is more in his strategic mindset what he wants to achieve. And then, I mean, the question you are pointing to as well is the question: What if he succeeds quickly? Will he stop there? Well, that's a psychological issue. I mean, we have heard very strange things about Putin in the past, about his closeness to Peter the Great, to the Russian philosophers, and he had a kind of feeling he has to reestablish the Russian empire. And if that's true, I mean, there are some elements which are called former Soviet Republics, which might be on his menu card. So therefore, I would say he must not win in Ukraine. If he does, I think then the situation has a potential to even decrease in the future.
Bruen: To that point though, will it stop there? Are we looking at the likelihood of Putin setting his sights on Moldova with Transnistria, on Georgia with South Ossetia, Abkhazia, where he already has a similar dynamic to what existed in Ukraine?
Wiermann: I would not say this is the strategical or first category for Putin. However, we discussed already that Putin is an opportunist. And if he can do harm to the alliance by grabbing Moldova or Georgia, this might be an interesting option for him. I think it's not necessarily about Georgia. It's not about Moldova because he has already in both countries military presence, which I think is already costly enough. However, if you can harm NATO, that's a different ballgame.
Bruen: Other option and perhaps one that is preferable given what Putin learned from his Ukraine invasion is the asymmetric one where, you know, for a long time, he has perfected the art of asymmetric warfare. What does that look like today, both in terms of Russia's near abroad where, as we were discussing, he continues to seek control to manipulate and meddle in the process, but even within the alliance, within NATO member countries, what does an asymmetric attack look like?
Wiermann: Well, traditionally, we have discussed over the last years about hybrid competition, hybrid warfare, which from my point of view describes a situation where we have a competition below the level of conventional warfare. And there are a lot of reasons why Russia preferred that. If you compare the strategic arsenal and the arsenal of Russia as a whole in comparison to NATO, we are talking about 1,000,000,000 people towards a 170,000,000 people. And you can go on and go on and go on. So a strategic competition with NATO actually is no option for Putin. So therefore, to go for the hybrid warfare is a rational choice because our democracies are more open. They are more vulnerable to fake news, to support of populist and extreme parties, which then play their games in internal politics, so they contribute to destabilize nations and democracies. That's a viable rational strategy, I would say, if you look your own resources. I think that's the reason why we were so surprised that he used brute force towards Ukraine. Clearly, Ukraine is not a NATO partner, not an ally, so he didn't use this brute force towards NATO. But to use this brute force was difficult to comprehend if you start from the assumption that Putin is a rational actor.
Bruen: So if we could look at the various scenarios in which there could be a Russian attack on a NATO member nation, one I'm sure you've studied. One, you know, obviously could just be an errant missile that lands in Poland or another nation. But how does NATO respond? And there's been a lot of debate. We were having it with some other officials today over whether a cyber attack against critical infrastructure, does that constitute an activation of Article five? What is the appropriate response in those various scenarios I'm sure you've looked at?
Wiermann: I can't tell you how the council will decide in such a given situation, but my impression is that they will take a very wise approach politically to deal with this situation, because an escalation, because of such a kind of spillover between NATO and Russia is clearly in nobody's interest, not in our interest, not in Putin's interest. The other thing is different. Because we have been dealing with a cyber threat for many, many years, we believe this is part of the hybrid toolbox of Putin. We have seen that with the development of the Internet, the Internet of Things, not only the computer nerds get vulnerable, but our hardware gets vulnerable, from hospitals to administrations to critical infrastructure to traffic lights to electricity. So obviously you can do a lot of harm with cyber attacks. You can even kill people if you switch out electricity for the emergency ambulances or the emergency rooms in hospitals. And NATO has stated already a few years ago that depending on the size and the consequences of such an attack this can constitute an Article five situation. So therefore, yes, this can constitute an Article five situation that has been stated by NATO already long ago and is not related to the current situation in Ukraine. It has been a deliberation when we looked at Putin's hybrid strategy. I explained to you why I think this is a rational strategy or was a rational strategy, and in this context we took this decision.
Bruen: What does Ukraine need in terms of military aid, not just to slow or stymie the advance of Russian troops as we've seen, I think, a fair assessment up until now of what they've been able to achieve, but in order to start pushing Russian forces back from territory they've captured, and are the members of the NATO alliance ready to step up for that kind of aid?
Wiermann: First of all, I think the most important asset they need to succeed at the end of the day, they already have, which is their motivation. It's their mindset. They fight for their own country. We have seen, I think, incredible performance of soldiers which were inferior to the Russian machinery, and nevertheless they succeeded. So they have already a very important ingredient for success with them. That does not compensate for traditional military superiority of Russia in certain regions in Ukraine, not at all. So, of course, it is important to get after the Russian artillery, no question, because they have a lot of old stuff and it kills a lot of people, so that has to stop. So that's why you see the high demand on modern artillery systems, which are now slowly, slowly deployed to Ukraine. One has to see how this will have an impact on Russia to muster so much artillery support to its forces. The next thing is how to get them out. That will not be so easy. You need more mobile elements to actually push them out. This will require probably tanks and armoured personnel carriers. And there is, I think, a growing understanding that Ukraine must not lose. What the nations are actually prepared to give is subject to a broad discussion inside the nations, because there is not a common sense inside NATO we do this or that, you know that for very good reasons and very deliberately NATO does not play a role in supporting Ukraine as an organization. Allies do. Allies act within their political environment and there are different political environments if you compare the countries. So it's difficult to predict who will actually deliver these system. Will they be delivered? Yes, they will be delivered. By all? Probably not. But that would be, I think, the framework in which we have to look at the situation currently unfolding.
Bruen: We had Admiral James Stavridis on the podcast just a few weeks ago, and his view was that NATO should not look towards the development of an Asia strategy, that it was stretching the alliance too far. Is NATO able to confront an unprecedented aggression from Russia? And at the same time, what should its role in the Indo-Pacific region and vis-à-vis China be?
Wiermann: I think it's not about NATO necessarily, it's also about America first and foremost. Obama already declared the pivot to Asia. And this clearly is high on the agenda right now because of the Chinese trajectory of developments, including, by the way, a significant ballistic missile arsenal. So what does it all mean for NATO? It means probably for NATO that the Europeans have to invest in defense and be able to put up a significant conventional force not to rely on America alone, because there might be a situation when America might be engaged on the other side of the globe and maybe Putin sees this as a good opportunity. So I think the key lesson, it's not China, the key lesson is we Europeans have to do more to defend ourselves, if necessary, with less. I'm not saying with no, I'm saying deliberately with less American capacities in Europe. I think that's the significant military conclusion.
THE ONE DECISION
Bruen: The name of the podcast is One Decision. So I'd like to ask you in my last couple of questions. What was a decision that now looking back you made or were involved with that perhaps you would do differently?
Wiermann: It was not my decision at the end of the day. I think the decision of NATO or which NATO was at the end of the day forced to make, was the rapid, uncontrolled, chaotic drawdown in Afghanistan. We have spent, and now I talk as a soldier, so much in blood, money, and we have seen no return on this investment. So I regret that we have been in a situation where we had to take the decision to abruptly end the mission in Afghanistan. I think that's the decision which in my conscience raises most of the questions when I look back at my last three years.
Bruen: And was it inevitable? Did we have to make that decision or could we have done it differently?
Wiermann: There was no easy way out. So at the end of the day it's all about Afghanistan and ownership. So what we observed over twenty years, I think, that we very often supported leaders, the government, warlords, however you call it, which were not supported by their own people. And if you support that, you will not be supported by the majority of the people in that country. I think that's the main lesson. Because there was no political way back, I think there was a need to take the decision to end the Afghanistan mission. So I'm not believing that with a small footprint, what some said when we ended Afghanistan, it would have been possible to stay in Afghanistan. We stayed with a small footprint because the Taliban adhered more or less to the promises they made in the Doha process, which they did. But then, stopping the Doha process would have meant that we would have had to increase our forces again. There was neither political appetite nor would have solved the strategic problem I discussed first, which is ownership by a government that is supported by the own people.
Bruen: Do you think the Americans there were overly optimistic as to how things would go? Did they dismiss some of the concerns?
Wiermann: I mean, the problem is to understand, and I'm not the one who understands it actually, the Afghan mentality. The Afghan mentality is based on a tribal structure, which works very well in a tribal environment. We had the belief in the beginning, I think, take away the Taliban and every Afghan would automatically become a democrat. I think that was a misperception. And many, many, not only the Americans, the Europeans as well, because you can also ask was Petersberg, the conference, right in the conclusions, because the conclusions were only viable under the assumption I just described, that take the Taliban away and Afghanistan would become a democracy. That's not the case. That's not the case in such a tribal structure. So, yes, there was underestimation of the problems we were facing. And honestly, the Afghans have survived many occupiers and they have their own methodology and strategy. And what they are very good is, is to live from the money of third parties not being Afghans. And that's what they have done over centuries and they have done it in the last twenty years of our presence as well.
Bruen: Last question. You've seen a lot over your career. Could you leave an audio note for your successor, for the next generation of military leaders in the alliance? What do they need to know?
Wiermann: Well, I think it's important to believe in the fact that we still need the military. We had the discussion at the end of the Cold War, do we need the military anymore? Then we had the violence on the Balkans. So I think we should not close our eyes to the fact that people tend to kill each other for very understandable, non understandable reasons. And if we want to protect our values, we have to stop that. That's one mission which will remain. The other mission is: we have to defend our societies and therefore we need the military instrument of power. Yes, we are open and vulnerable to hybrid conflict, but that's not necessarily something for the military. But we in the military have to make sure that a hybrid conflict remains a hybrid conflict. And that is by preparing our forces in the times of conflict, by being ready in the times of conflict and thereby achieve deterrence and thereby maintain and keep the peace. So in short, we need the military in the future, we have to have a broad aperture, we need to think in two dimensions, we have to think crisis management, where people kill each other with very ancient weapon systems, where drones and cyber and satellites will not help us. But at the same time, we face military confrontation, where we really have to master modern technology and we have to foremost deal with the mental situation of our soldiers. It's one to be in a stabilization operation where you have to implement your mission but to protect yourself. In high intensity warfare you have to have an effect, you don't care about your life. And these two very different mindsets will require a lot of leadership effort in the future for the leaders but also for the soldiers, how to deal with this situation of this two dimensional leader.
Bruen: General, thank you. Thank you for your time.
Mcfarlane: That's all for this episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Don't forget to subscribe so you never have to miss an episode. From me and the team, thanks for listening, and see you next time.
