U.S. Offers Troops to NATO Force Tasked With Deterring Russian Aggression | News
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Carlos Barria/ReutersU.S. Defense Secretary Carter arrives to testify before a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 17, 2015.
MUENSTER, Germany — The United States has said it will contribute special operations forces, intelligence and other high-end military assets to a new NATO rapid response force that aims in part to deter any future actions by Russia.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement on Monday during a trip to Germany, where he delivered an address accusing Moscow of trying to re-create a Soviet-era sphere of influence.
"We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia. We do not seek to make Russia an enemy," Carter said in an address in Berlin. "But make no mistake: We will defend our allies, the rules-based international order, and the positive future it affords us all."
Russia's intervention over Ukraine has put NATO allies in eastern Europe on edge and triggered a series of military moves by the NATO alliance, including an acceleration of exercises and the creation of a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).
Moscow denies providing troops or arms to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. But neighboring NATO countries, especially the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, fear Russia could foment trouble on their territories.
Carter, who met European members of the VJTF in Muenster, Germany before flying to Estonia, said he was preparing to discuss planned U.S. contributions to the force with NATO defense chiefs later this week in Brussels.
The U.S. support would include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets — which can include drones or manned aircraft — as well as special operations forces, logistical expertise and high-end U.S. military assets.
Carter also said it would include airlift and precision joint fire capabilities, which could include anything from land-based artillery to air support or naval firepower.
"We're making this commitment to the VJTF because the United States is deeply committed to the collective defense of Europe," Carter said, speaking alongside his Dutch, German and Norwegian counterparts in Muenster.
Although many of the contributions announced on Monday could be drawn from within Europe, a defense official said the announcement could mean a temporary increase in U.S. forces in Europe in a crisis situation.
Still, U.S. defense officials stressed that the United States was mainly providing high-end support to enable European land forces that form the bulk of the VJTF.
Russian Reaction
During his trip this week, Carter will climb aboard a U.S. warship in Estonia fresh from Baltic Sea drills. He could offer more details in Europe this week on plans to pre-position heavy military equipment, officials say.
Moscow has decried the new steps by NATO and threatened to strengthen its own forces and to add more than 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year.
U.S. officials say Ukraine has illustrated the importance of being able to counter "hybrid warfare," the blend of unidentified troops, propaganda and economic pressure that the West says Russia has used there.
Moscow accuses the West of engineering the overthrow of a pro-Kremlin president last year in order to bring Kiev under its sway and try to isolate Russia.
NATO's historic focus had been the conventional threats of the Cold War, which effectively ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But Carter said NATO "will not rely on the Cold War playbook," citing instead a combination of military and non-military tools, including sanctions.
European Union foreign ministers extended economic sanctions on Russia until Jan. 31 on Monday, keeping up pressure on Moscow to help resolve the Ukraine conflict.
Carter encouraged Europe to keep up the sanctions — which he called the best tool — for as long as it takes to change Russia's calculations.
"The United States will not let Russia drag us back to the past," he said.
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A Russia-backed armoured personnel carrier makes its way near positions at the destroyed building of Donetsk Airport just outside Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, June 9 / AP
BY: Jack Caravelli
The United States will support a new NATO rapid response force with troops, intelligence, and equipment, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in Germany Monday.
NATO defense chiefs are meeting in Brussels this week. On the agenda is devising updated strategies to resist Russian aggression and an expanding Islamic State.
American support for the alliance’s so-called Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) is significant, as such assistance will antagonize Moscow while the Obama administration seeks its support in other international initiatives, especially support for a nuclear deal with Iran. The VJTF will be supported with high-end intelligence assets, possibly including drones, as well as special operations forces.
This is Carter’s first NATO summit as secretary of defense. Earlier this week, he discussed the changing European security environment with reporters.
“The new playbook is to respond to the new security situation in Europe, including the situation posed by Russia’s own behavior,” Carter said. “It’s not like it was in the old days. We are looking at a NATO response that is much more mobile and much more agile.”
Carter appeared to be referring in part to a pending White House decision to pre-position military equipment in some NATO countries near Russia, possibly including Poland and the Baltic nations.
Poland has been openly supportive of an expanded NATO equipment presence on its territory as a means to deter future Russian aggression.
Poland Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told Polish reporters that the pre-deployment of military equipment would be “another step toward building a greater U.S. presence in Poland.”
The alliance is expected to support pre-positioning equipment, but individual members, including Germany, remain wary of antagonizing Russia.
Berfore this week’s summit, NATO members used Polish territory for BALTOPS, a large amphibious exercise designed to demonstrate the alliance’s commitment to defending its eastern European members.
Rapid reaction capabilities demonstrated in the exercise will be key to the alliance’s defense preparations in the future, not only because of the massing of Russian military personnel and equipment around Ukraine but also because U.S. troop deployments in Europe have fallen to about 65,000 from a Cold War high of almost 400,000, according to the Washington Post.
Carter acknowledged in an interview that NATO policy must be “strong but balanced,” a reference to the administration’s interest in securing Russia’s assistance with the Iran nuclear talks and broader Middle East security challenges.
Carter also lamented Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “backward looking” aggression.
Putin, for his part, claims that Kiev and not Moscow is responsible for the unsettled security environment in Ukraine. Sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia almost certainly will be extended into early next year.
Russia is not NATO’s only pressing security concern. The Obama administration’s reluctance to engage militarily in the region also is causing ripples in the alliance. The rise of the Islamic State is a major concern for most members, as is instability throughout the region.
For Italy, an important anchor on NATO’s southern flank, the growth of extremism in Libya after the death of Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi has resulted in thousands of undocumented refugees fleeing to Italy’s southern coast.
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Nuclear warhead / AP
America must change its policies regarding its nuclear weapons arsenal if it wishes to remain safe in the coming century, according to a new study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Clark Murdock, an expert in strategic planning and defense at CSIS, writes in the study, ‘Project Atom,’ that the effects of global nuclear proliferation will dominate American foreign policy between 2025-2050 if the United States does not revamp its policies today, including modernizing its nuclear weapons and seeking enhanced tactical nuclear capabilities.
“The value of nuclear weapons as a ‘trump card’ for negating U.S. conventional power was enhanced by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Murdock writes. “If the United States apparently believes that it can be deterred by an adversary’s nuclear weapons, why wouldn’t a nonnuclear ‘regional rogue’ want one?”
The root of global nuclear ambitions lies in American strength, according to Murdock. The clout of the U.S. military leads non-nuclear nation-states to seek nuclear capabilities.
As the United States plans its nuclear posture for the 2025-2050 timeframe, Murdock recommends that the American inferiority to Russian nonstrategic nuclear forces should be addressed. Murdock says that a variety of tactical nuclear weapons, including some small-scale missiles, should be developed to counter Russian capabilities.
“U.S. nuclear forces were designed for a global conflict involving the exchange of thousands of high-yield weapons, not limited exchanges of low-yield weapons,” she writes. “Since most U.S. nuclear response options are large, ‘dirty,’ and inflict significant collateral damage, the United States might be ‘self-deterred’ and not respond ‘in kind’ to discriminate nuclear attacks.”
Murdock’s recommendations were based on two assumptions regarding what could happen in 2025-2050 in the absence of effective American nuclear weapons planing. The first assumption was that the United States could lose its deterrence ability because of a failure to prevent further nuclear proliferation. The second assumption was that there may be more than 11 nuclear powers after the year 2030.
Barry Blechman and Russell Rumbaugh, contributing authors to the study, also point out that China will be a major threat in the future.
“Still, given its 20 years of investments in building a more modern military and continuing economic growth, China could plausibly threaten the United States’ ability to conduct specific military actions in regions near China’s coasts within the next several decades,” Blechman and Rumbaugh write. “If realized, such threats could jeopardize America’s ability to fulfill its commitments to defend certain allies.”
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Agencja Gazeta / ReutersUnits from NATO allied countries take part in the NATO Noble Jump 2015 exercises, part of testing and refinement of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) in Swietoszow, Poland.
BRUSSELS - Military spending by NATO countries is set to fall again this year in real terms despite increased tensions with Russia and a pledge by alliance leaders last year to halt falls in defense budgets, NATO figures released on Monday showed.
The figures showed defense spending by the 28 members of the alliance is set to fall by 1.5 percent in real terms this year after a 3.9 percent fall in 2014.
The fall comes at a time when tension between NATO and Russia is running high over the Ukraine conflict. Russia has sharply raised its defense spending over the past decade.
It also comes in spite of a pledge by NATO leaders, jolted by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, last September to stop cutting military spending and move towards the alliance's target of spending 2 percent of their economic output on defense within a decade.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said 18 allies were set to raise defense spending this year in real terms, but the total was lower, continuing a trend of declining military spending, especially by European NATO allies.
"So we need to redouble our efforts to reverse this trend. Because we are facing more challenges, and we cannot do more with less indefinitely," he told a news conference.
He said he would raise the issue with NATO defense ministers who meet in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.
NATO expects five NATO allies to meet the 2 percent spending goal in 2015, up from four in 2014.
Poland, which has embarked on a major military modernization program, is set to join the United States, Britain, Estonia and Greece as the only NATO allies meeting the target.
The United States frequently criticizes its European allies for not spending enough on defense.
U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno urged Britain in a newspaper interview in March to maintain defense spending at the NATO target level of 2 percent of national output.
But the British government has declined to commit to meeting the target beyond the current financial year, saying it will depend on the outcome of a defense spending review.
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US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, center, talks to the media framed by the minsters of defense of Germany, Ursula von der Leyen , left, and Norway, Ine Eriksen Soreide right, at a news conference during their visit to the I. German-Dutch Brigade in Muenster, Germany, Monday, June 22, 2015. The troops are part of NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) (Martin Meissner/AP)
TALLINN, Estonia —In a move likely to increase tensions with Russia, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter confirmed Tuesday that the United States would place heavy military equipment in nations stretching from the Baltics to the Balkans.
The decision to bolster Washington’s NATO allies — including tanks and other firepower — has been anticipated for more than a month, but coincide with deepening rifts between Moscow and the West over the conflict Ukraine.
“American rotational forces need to more quickly and easily participate in training and exercises in Europe,” Carter said in reference to the equipment — which includes about 250 tanks, howitzers and infantry fighting vehicles to support training and other exercises.
The countries, all NATO members, are Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
Although Washington has said the shipments are not permanent deployments, Russia has sharply opposed the build-up on its border and pledged to counter with increased deployments of its own.
"If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," said Russian defense ministry official, Gen. Yuri Yakubov, last week, according to the Interfax news agency.
The U.S. decision comes after Carter announced Monday that Washington would also pledge forces, including special operations units and surveillance aircraft, to a new NATO rapid-reaction task force.
“We do so because the United States is deeply committed to the collective defense of Europe, as we have been for decades and always will be,” Carter said during Monday’s press conference in Muenster, Germany.
Monday also marked the European Union’s renewal of Russian economic sanctions for Russia’s destabilizing role in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow rebels have battled forces of the Western-allied government in Kiev.
A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that the economic restrictions, which are now extended to Jan. 31 2016, are “illegal” and accused the European Union of being led by “Russophobic” views.
Meanwhile, sporadic clashes in Ukraine threaten efforts to maintain a cease-fire and work toward peace efforts. The United Nations estimates at least 6,500 people have been killed since the conflict in Ukraine started last year.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Washington Post contributor and a former U.S. infantry Marine.
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CAMP ADAZI, Latvia — After years of facing threats far beyond its borders, NATO is now reinvigorating plans to confront a much larger and more aggressive threat from its past: Moscow.
This seismic shift has been apparent in military training exercises in this former Soviet republic, which is now a NATO member and on the alliance’s eastern flank, bordering Russia.
On a recent day, Latvian soldiers conducted a simulated attack on dug-in enemy positions in a pine forest here as two United States A-10 attack planes roared overhead and opened fire with 30-millimeter cannons.
Two days before, a B-52 dropped nine dummy bombs radioed in by the Latvians on the ground — all just 180 miles from the Russian border.
The symbolism of the B-52s, stalwarts of the Cold War arsenal, was lost on no one. The bombers’ main mission was once was to deliver a nuclear knockout punch to Soviet forces, but they were put to use for the first time over this former Soviet republic to show resolve on the new front between NATO and Russia, the heir of the Soviet war machine.
“If the Russians sense a window of opportunity, they will use it to their advantage,” said Estonia’s chief of defense, Lt. Gen. Riho Terras, who recently mobilized 13,000 soldiers across his tiny country in a separate exercise. “We must make sure there’s no room for miscalculation.”
The military drills that unfolded here, part of a series of exercises planned over coming months to demonstrate the alliance’s readiness and resolve, emphasize the seismic shift that has strained an alliance that for a quarter of a century turned its attention to threats much farther afield.
This week, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter travels through several NATO capitals before sitting down on Wednesday and Thursday with other defense ministers in Brussels to debate how to counter a resurgent Russia.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea — and its role in the war in eastern Ukraine — has already resulted in what NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, recently called “the biggest reinforcement of NATO forces since the end of the Cold War.”
It has involved a marked increase in training rotations on territory of the newer NATO allies in the east, and stepped up patrols of the air and seas from the Baltic to the Black Sea intended to counter an increase of patrols by Russian forces around NATO’s periphery.
Most of those are temporary deployments. But in February, NATO announced that it would set up six new command units within the Eastern allies and create a 5,000-strong rapid reaction “spearhead” force.
And the Pentagon now plans to preposition heavy American tanks and other weaponry in Eastern Europe for the first time, prompting unease in some quarters ahead of the NATO defense ministers’ meetings, and strong protests from Moscow that coincided with an announcement by President Vladimir V. Putin that he was bolstering Russia’s arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons.
With the leaders of NATO’s 28 members scheduled to gather in Warsaw for an important summit meeting next year, the alliance is now considering what other measures are needed to adjust its forces, to increase spending that had plummeted as part of a “peace dividend,” and to revisit NATO’s military strategy and planning.
“During the Cold War we had everything there in the neighborhood we needed to respond,” saidJulianne Smith, a former defense and White House official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “It’s all atrophied. We haven’t gone through the muscle movements of a conventional attack in Europe for decades.”
NATO’s steps, and its deliberations over future ones, have exposed internal tensions within the alliance over the extent of the threat Putin’s Russia poses. That in turn has colored the debate over how vigorously the allies should prepare.
Some view the threat as imminent, while others view Russia as less a threat than the instability, the flood of migrants and the rise of extremism emanating from North Africa. A recent poll suggested that residents in some member nations were far from committed to the notion of going to war to protect the other NATO allies — let alone Ukraine.
NATO’s response to the events in Ukraine has required a shift in strategic thinking as profound as the one that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the alliance’s main adversary suddenly no longer existed. For years, the Russia that emerged from the Soviet ruins seemed destined to be a partner if not an ally, something Mr. Putin himself did not rule out when he first came to office in 2000.
“I don’t think we’re in the Cold War again — yet,” said James G. Stavridis, the retired admiral and NATO military commander, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, who served on a destroyer as a “thorough seagoing cold warrior” when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
He added, however: “I can kind of see it from here.”
While some do not rule out a conventional confrontation — something Mr. Putin himself rejected as “insane” — others point to the potential threats shrouded in subterfuge and subversion, much like Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its continuing support for ethnic-Russians in the war in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 6,000 lives.
Britain’s defense secretary, Michael Fallon, warned in February that there was a “real and present danger” of Russia moving to destabilize the Baltic States: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
A confidential assessment of that risk is expected to be presented at the coming NATO meetings in Brussels. But the potential for such an attack has implicitly been the focus of much of the training and planning going on in places like this.
In private and in public, some officials and commanders argue that much more is needed to reverse two decades of policy, particularly to shore up an eastern flank that to many, especially here in the Baltics, feels gravely exposed to a Russian attack.
Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, said that NATO had to undertake a “strategic adaptation” that accounted for the fact that Russia’s hostility toward the alliance was “a change in climate and not a summer storm.” It is time, he said, to consider significant deployments of heavy weapons in Eastern Europe, brushing aside the worry that such a move would provoke Russia.
“I think the caution expressed by some of our European allies is excessive,” Mr. Siemoniak said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in May.
Some believe that stoking divisions among the allies is simply another of the tactics that Mr. Putin has employed.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of United States Army forces in Europe, said in an interview, “I am sure they want to create doubts in the minds of some members of the alliance that the other 27 members won’t be there for them.”
The rising tensions between NATO and Russia come at a time of sharp decline in the United States military presence in Europe, to 64,000 troops now, including just 27,000 soldiers, from more than 400,000 at the height of the Cold War. Other nations’ militaries have shrunk, too. Britain now has a smaller army than during the Crimean War in the mid-19th century.
The notion of a more robust NATO has encountered inertia that has built over the last two decades. The “peace dividend” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union could prove hard to reverse, saidDavid Ochmanek, a former senior Pentagon official who is a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation.
NATO’s militaries drew down so precipitously that it has become a regular challenge for members to maintain military spending at 2 percent of gross domestic product, a level considered minimal for effective defense. “The assumption was that this was pretty much cost free because there was no plausible threat to the security of members,” Mr. Ochmanek said. “Putin has changed that.”
At the same time, few of the NATO allies are looking to increase military spending significantly. “Nobody in any military establishment is looking for more bills to pay right now,” Mr. Ochmanek said.
Even before the annexation of Crimea, NATO had watched Russia warily.
“NATO has reduced defense spending over a long period of time, especially European NATO allies,” Mr. Stoltenberg said in an interview in Washington in May. “Russia has increased substantially. So they have modernized their forces. They have increased their capacity. And they are exercising more. And they are also now starting to use nuclear rhetoric, nuclear exercises and nuclear operations as part of their nuclear posture. This is destabilizing.”
While American officials say that exercises like the one at this former Soviet tank base are mainly to allow NATO and Baltic States to hone their training together, they are also intended to send a strong message of resolve to Moscow.
More than 6,000 troops from 14 allied nations — three times the number of soldiers that joined the same exercise two years ago, before Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine — conducted the annual Saber Strike training exercise in the Baltics and Poland that ended Friday.
On a brilliant, sunny day this month, 150 Latvian infantry members fought across a sandy pine barren to seize locations defended by Atropians, a fictional foe played by Gurkha soldiers of the British Army. Both sides traded simulated artillery and rocket fire, before the Latvians dashed from the woods and used smoke screens as cover to seize their targets. The A-10 attack planes roared overhead. But what really snapped back the necks of Baltic and other European observers was the B-52 bomber, on call for any additional strikes.
Latvia’s defense chief, Lt. Gen. Raimonds Graube, looked up admiringly at the warplanes, and dismissed any suggestion that a NATO exercise with B-52s might provoke the Russians, as some European officials have complained. “Our soldiers must be ready to train on an international level,” he said.
For a United States military that has spent nearly two decades fighting insurgencies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the tensions with Russia have young soldiers — many born after the Soviet Union collapsed — learning old skills and brushing up on old adversaries.
“It’s not lost on me or my soldiers where we’re operating,” said Lt. Col. Chad Chalfont, an Army battalion commander training at a former Soviet base in Rukla, Lithuania.
Colonel Chalfont, whose father served as an Air Force officer in an underground nuclear missile silo during the Cold War, said American and Lithuanian troops drilled together on mundane but critical tasks like talking on the same radio frequency. Lithuanian infantry troops also learn more complex skills, like operating together with American battle tanks for the first time in dense pine forests.
The threat to the Baltic nations, at least in theory, is acute. For the Pentagon, Mr. Ochmanek of RAND has run war games trying to anticipate how to defend the Baltics in particular, the most immediate concern for the alliance. “It’s not realistic to think they could defend themselves against a determined Russian attack,” he said.
There is a hope that deterrence will suffice to prevent Russia from moving, but many fear that Mr. Putin’s government could seek to undermine the allies by subterfuge, as Russia did in Crimea and is doing in Ukraine.
More likely than any ground attack from Russian troops, NATO officials say, would be some kind of cyberstrike or information warfare assault, two of the critical components of a hybrid warfare style that is central to a new Russian military strategy unveiled in 2013 by Russia’s chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.
The doctrine explicitly acknowledged the use of “military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special operations forces.”
For those on NATO’s front lines, the doctrine appears all too real. This month, unknown hackers targeted the website of the Lithuanian Army leadership, posting false information about NATO exercises in the Baltics and Poland, a Lithuanian Defense Ministry spokesman said.
Lithuanian officials said the false messages included a report that the NATO exercise was a pretext for a possible annexation of the Russian region of Kaliningrad, which lies between Lithuania and Poland.
“They use information like artillery and rockets, in barrages,” said General Hodges, the Army commander in Europe.
All of this is on NATO’s mind as it takes interim measures to deal with the threat.
Asked what steps his military would take if Russian “little green men” tried to sneak across his border, General Terras, Estonia’s chief of defense, said bluntly, “We will shoot them.”
Bravado aside, Baltic commanders and civilian leaders said they were scrambling to improve and enlarge their militaries and other security forces.
These countries are overcoming years when Russia was not considered an enemy, but was still eyed warily. When Baltic nations joined NATO more than a decade ago, they were encouraged to develop niche specialties rather than territorial defense, which was no longer thought necessary. Latvia, for instance, developed capabilities like explosive demolition experts and ground spotters to call in strikes — all skills that filled needs in NATO missions outside Europe, such as Afghanistan.
Now with standing forces of about 5,000 to 10,000 troops, the Baltics feel vulnerable despite being members of NATO. They have no tanks, no air forces to speak of and only patrol craft and minesweepers to ply coastal waters. Each country is now rushing to correct this shortfall.
The Estonians have a “defense league” that is made up of about 30,000 civilians and includes farmers, carpenters, lawyers and other professions. They engage in basic infantry training once a month, receive arms from the government, and in the event of an invasion would be called to active duty to be commanded by professional soldiers.
Juozas Olekas, Lithuania’s defense minister, said in an interview that the government was developing a more comprehensive self-defense plan coordinating across several government agencies. The army will soon add some 3,000 new conscripts. In January, Lithuania’s Defense Ministry published a pamphlet intended to instruct Lithuanians how to survive a foreign occupation and organize nonviolent resistance.
In Latvia, Defense Minister Raimonds Vejonis said that with the Baltics’ bitter history under Soviet occupation, the public and the government were only too aware of Mr. Putin’s attempts to use propaganda and military might in Ukraine to intimidate NATO’s smallest members. “We will stay united because if we don’t, NATO will die,” said Mr. Vejonis, who becomes Lithuania’s president in July.
Col. Martins Liberts, a Latvian brigade commander who joined his country’s new military when it formed upon Latvia’s independence in 1991, said: “We are all monitoring closely what’s happening in Ukraine. And we’re learning lessons. We’re different from Ukraine.”
Not all of the NATO allies are as ardent. While there has been striking unanimity against Russia’s actions in Ukraine — and separately, the European Union extended its sanctions against Russia this week — divisions remain.
“There’s a hope this is all a bump in the road and with a little bit of tweaking we can get back to the status quo,” the former American ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said in a telephone interview. “In my view, that’s naïve. Putin’s not going to change his position, and he’s not going away. You’ve got to be in this for the long haul.”
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Watch "CNN Special Report: The DC Mansion Murders" at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
"If Daron Wint was arrested in March and (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) never received those fingerprints until he's arrested for quadruple homicide, it's an indicator there's a breakdown in system to me," said John Torres, former ICE special agent in charge. "Had ICE been notified they would have looked at Daron Wint's history and undertook a legal review to determine whether or not he was eligible for removal."
The Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said it ran Wint's fingerprints in March in the FBI database, which was supposed to automatically flag ICE, but the immigration officials were never notified, officials said.
Police have identified Daron Dylon Wint as a suspect in a quadruple homicide in Washington.
Police believe Wint, born in Guyana, killed Savvas, Amy and their son, 10-year-old Philip Savopoulos and their housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa inside the family's $4.5 million mansion not far from Vice President Joe Biden's home and several embassies.
Wint is being charged with first-degree murder.
Law enforcement officials now tell CNN that Wint's DNA was found on other parts of the crime scene as well.
Wint worked from 2003 to 2005 as a welder at American Iron Works, the same company owned by Savvas Savopoulos, CNN has learned. Wint's cousin worked there as well until being fired in 2005, and sources tell CNN that the cousin then threatened to burn the place down. The company earned a restraining order barring the cousin from the premises, the sources say.
Investigators are currently talking with other American Iron Works employees.
Court documents say that the family was found dead in a mansion set ablaze after Wint allegedly kidnapped and held the family hostage for 18 hours. Everyone from the housekeeper to the young son Philip was brutally beaten and then stabbed, the documents say.
In an exclusive television interview with CNN, Philip's go-kart coach, Jay Howard, recalled the 10-year-old as "passionate beyond belief."
Amy and Savvas followed Philip to all his races and completely devoted themselves to his sport, Howard said.
"No matter how he did on track, he would just be smilin' from ear to ear and it was very contagious," Howard said.
Philip wasn't supposed to be home on the day of the murders, Howard said. But after a go-kart accident left him with a mild concussion, he was ordered to a few days of bed rest.
"I mean, obviously wish he wasn't at home," Howard said. "But I don't know. Not somethin' you really wanna kinda think about. You know, it's, like, just horrible thing that happened."
Ten days later, Philip was killed.
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Last Updated Jun 23, 2015 7:57 AM EDT
TALLINN, Estonia -- Secretary of Defense Ash Carter confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. is to station heavy military equipment, including tanks and other weapons, in new NATO member states for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
"These are responses to Russia's provocations," Carter told CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan in an exclusive interview in Estonia, one of the nations the American defense chief said could already "feel" the imminent threat posed by its massive neighbour to the east.
The increased American military presence -- some 250 tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment -- on Russia's doorstep is intended to reassure jittery allies like Estonia, which have been alarmed byRussia's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists leading the war in eastern Ukraine.
Carter's announcement of plans to permanently station the heavy weapons across seven eastern Europe nations, and a promise of a larger troop and aircraft presence, comes days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would add more than "40 new intercontinental ballistic missilescapable of penetrating even the most technologically advanced missile defense systems" to Moscow's arsenal.
The newly positioned U.S. military hardware was to be located, at least for now, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.
Carter told Brennan it was that "aggressive rhetoric, aggressive behavior -- the kind of thing that doesn't belong in a Europe" of today, making America's NATO allies nervous.
"We continue to hope that Russia will change course," added the defense secretary. "I don't see any signs of that, but we continue to hold the door open."
Asked by Brennan whether Putin's words were seen as a genuine military threat or merely rhetoric, Carter said he took the Russian leader "at his word."
"What's odd about it is the level of rhetoric," added Carter. "That's what's so out of tune with the times and the way responsible world leaders have conducted themselves with respect to talking about what are very fearsome weapons."
The defense chief told Brennan the American weaponry being added to NATO's "eastern flank" was meant to bolster the alliance's deterrent power in the face recent Russian actions, but called it "heavy combat equipment for training purposes primarily."
He said it will be easier for U.S. forces training their European allies to "fall upon that equipment," rather than spending the added time and money necessary to move heavy weapons into place just for exercises.
President Putin has insisted repeatedly -- most recently during a question-and-answer session with "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose at an economic summit in St. Petersburg -- that his government is "not aggressive," but merely "persistent in pursuing our interests."
During that session, Putin did not explicitly deny long-standing U.S. claims that Russian troops and military hardware are directly supporting separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Putin has said Russia's increasingly assertive military stance in the region is merely a response to NATO's spread into neighboring countries -- which he said has been, in places like eastern Ukraine, against the will of local populations.
Speaking to Rose, Putin accused Washington of "interfering with our internal political processes" by financing non-governmental organizations in Russia and practicing "interventionist" security measures on the world stage.
"We are in fact being told that the United States know better what we need. Let us define our own interests and our needs ourselves," Putin said.
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White House press secretary Josh Earnest and National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice walk to Marine 1 on the South Lawn of the White House. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
The White House acknowledged Monday, at least indirectly, that its vast National Security Council staff, the subject of considerable criticism both within and outside the administration, has grown unwieldy and could use some streamlining.
“To ensure the NSC staff is a lean, nimble, and policy-oriented organization, we are reversing the trend of growth . . . to align our staffing with our strategic priorities,” NSC Chief of Staff Suzy George said in a statement posted on a White House blog Monday evening.
She noted that growth has occurred “across successive administrations” and said that “this is not about downsizing for its own sake; it’s about gradually right-sizing the NSC staff.”
George did not indicate the current size of the staff, but many outside estimates put it at 400, about twice the size it was at the end of the George W. Bush administration.
Officials emphasized that there is no numerical goal and that any reductions will come primarily from attrition. The NSC staff normally has a rapid turnover rate, as personnel from Cabinet departments, including the State, Defense and Justice departments as well as the intelligence agencies, rotate through White House assignments.
George’s statement, along with the comments of two senior officials authorized to discuss the internal initiative on the condition of anonymity, did not reveal specific changes but rather spoke of “reforms” that will not be readily apparent to outside observers.
“Taken together,” the statement said, “they are designed to result in fewer, more focused meetings, less paper to produce and consume, and more communication that yields better policymaking.”
Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, held a town hall meeting with the NSC staff two weeks ago to explain the changes.
“People looking from the outside are not going to see a whole lot of moving of boxes” on the NSC organizational chart, one official said. “Hopefully . . . over time, colleagues will feel and see the difference in just how the [NSC] is running, an NSC which is leaner.”
The initiative follows public criticism of what former defense secretaries Robert M. Gates and Leon Panetta, who also served as CIA director, have called “micro-managing” by the White House of issues large and small. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is a frequent critic of what he has called “the insular and indecisive White House national security team.”
Internally, across departments and agencies outside the White House, senior officials have complained about slow decisions, too many meetings, and an agency that has undermined policymaking and morale.
Much of the staff growth came early in Obama’s first term, when Bush’s homeland security council — formed as a separate White House entity after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — was merged with the NSC.
A technical staff that responds to a news cycle that has accelerated with digital media and the Internet also has grown significantly.
NSC directorates dealing with the Middle East and other troubled regions have expanded as units have been added to deal with cybersecurity and other issues. No process has been in place to shrink or eliminate workforces and directorates after crises have passed.
Late last year, Rice assembled her own senior staff and ordered members to gather information about who was on the staff and to tell the directorates that “we need to reverse the trend in growth in a way that does not undercut advancing our priorities . . . not just an across-the-board cut for a quota,” said an official who participated in the process.
Rice aides reached out to senior officials at State, Defense and other departments for suggestions on how the White House could do better.
At the time, one official said, Cabinet secretaries and their deputies were being hit by a “confluence of several things requiring a look at a high level at the same time,” including expansion of the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations, as well as Ukraine and the domestic surveillance controversy.
“We have only a finite number of Cabinet secretaries and deputies, and in addition to getting together to forge strategies, [they] carry the burden of implementing,” one official said. “How do you rationalize the time to enable them to do all these things at the same time, in periods of sustained activity?”
Several high-level departmental officials, contacted for their reaction, responded with the verbal equivalent of an eye roll, but said they were glad to see the effort being made. None agreed to be quoted.
“This administration’s 4th quarter has only just begun,” George said in her statement, “and as President Obama likes to say, he’s a ‘4th quarter player.’ Driving the President’s ambitious national security agenda through January 20, 2017 requires an NSC staff that’s firing on all cylinders.”
Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for the Washington Post.
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