 Good morning. Welcome to CSIS, the Center for Strategic International Studies. My name is Andy Ketchins. I'm director of the Russia and Eurasia program here at CSIS, and I'm delighted to present the program in cooperation with the U.S. Army War College Carlyle Scholars Program to talk about, from cooperation to competition, the future of U.S.-Russian relations. Russian aggression in 2014 caught a lot of us off guard, forcing reactive measures and reevaluation of U.S. policy towards Russia. Russia has used nonlinear approaches and operated just beneath traditional thresholds of conflict to take full advantage of U.S. and NATO policy limitations. In light of this strategic challenge, members of the Carlyle Scholars Program at the U.S. Army War College conducted a war game last month in the middle of April. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate myself as I was in Moscow at a conference organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. And in the war game, there were revealed four key considerations for the future policy and strategy. This panel and presentation will present the findings from that war game and also from the NET assessment study that the Scholars Program had conducted in preparation for the exercise. The views presented by the panelists are their own and should not be implied to be those of their sponsoring service, the U.S. Army War College. I will briefly introduce our panelists today. And in your materials, you have a fuller biography. But directly to my right is Colonel Gertjuan Koy from the Royal Netherlands Army. He is a Colonel in the Royal Netherlands Army and is currently an international fellow at the U.S. Army War College. Lieutenant Joe Hilbert is just to Colonel Koy's right and he is a career Army Field Artillery Officer and has experienced supporting light, airborne, armored and special operations forces. And directly to Joe's right is Dr. James McNaughton who earned his PhD in European history from the Johns Hopkins University. I guess we are co-alumni. Johns Hopkins, I presume, or in Baltimore. Oh, the home campus. Okay, from the mother ship. And he has served as a Staff Historian for several Army and Joint Headquarters. And directly to Dr. McNaughton's right is Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Lay. He is a C-130 master navigator in U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, a weapons school graduate. He graduated from the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force Academy. Excuse me, Christopher. I know these mix-ups and services can be a little touchy. With a B.S. in U.S. history and earned an M.A. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Central Arkansas. And finally to my far right, last and hardly least is Lieutenant Colonel Karen Brigham. She is a Strategic Intelligence Officer with military intelligence experience ranging from the tactical to the strategic level. So with that, let me turn the floor over to Colonel Coy, who will introduce the program. Andy, thank you very much for hosting us today here. Good morning to everybody. I'll explain a little bit about where we come from and why we're sitting on this table. So yeah, what led to this. First of all, we have five of six students from the U.S. Army War College. The sixth student was already moving to his new assignment in Europe so that he couldn't be here. So we're actually five of six. We're in the U.S. Army War College, but we're in a special program, what's called the Colours Scholars Program. The Colours Program is the idea behind that is that we do the curriculum in four months instead of eight to nine months. Just condense it a little bit. So we have got more time to do research, to do engagements with think tanks or state department. We've been there as well. And to do more research. We want to do our own that we are really motivated to do. So that's part of the program. So yeah, we started in October 2014, and I won't go to all the steps in this slide. We started in October 2014 to study into Russia and the relationship. We started relationship Europe, Russia actually. And it linked into several other programs that we were doing already at the U.S. Army War College. And over time we had meetings with many respected experts from think tanks, from universities, from DOD, from state department as well. And those meetings were to confirm and to improve and to refine our ideas or our understanding of the Russian system. So that's what we did over time. So the war game was actually a month ago, but prior to that we had many meetings here in Washington with think tanks to discuss our view on what we thought that the Russian system was like. Yeah, we used what we call operational design. It's a way to frame the environment, to frame the problem and to frame the approach to the system. And we started with first understanding the problem. So we looked into putting scramb strategy and trying to figure that out. And we used N-Waste means to define that. And we also looked for tensions within the system, the current Russian system, and fractures that are in the system as well. And for that environment we used the visualization of the Russian bear. And the Russian bear with his own DNA and he is moving through a forest and he is gears that controls the bear and they make him move or some gears that move counter to the bear. So that's what we used to frame the environment, so to say. And then we framed some approaches. And those approaches are approaches on how to influence the Russian system. And those approaches led to the war game that we did in April. Okay, thanks, Gershon. So as Gershon mentioned, once we completed the process of design and collaboration with the different organizations you saw on the chart, we thought it would be good to take this design and test it and as close as we could get to a random field experiment. And in our case that would be a war game. So what you see on the slide in front of you is how we laid that out. Our first problem statement, when we looked at the national security strategy and a lot of our other strategic documents, we talked a great deal about strengthening our enduring alliance with Europe. But as the question was then given that, how should the U.S. then consider its policy toward Russia? How should that impact it? So the purpose of the event was to come up with policy considerations and then you see some of the other objectives that you see there with really finally the final research question being what kind of insights can we gain that we could then use to inform policy makers. This was the methodology. So as Gershon mentioned, we met with several different folks along the way in building the net assessment. And we then took those engagements and invited people with whom we engaged and others to come to Carl Albert and participate in this war game. We divided them then into three teams. We had a Russia team, we had a U.S. team, and then we had a white cell or a control group. And the way the war game would work, we started out in a large group plenary session. We presented our assessment of the Russian system. We presented what we currently understood U.S. policy toward Russia to be. And then we let the Russia team and the U.S. team go to their breakout rooms and then either refine or confirm what had just been presented to build what would be their baseline for going forward. In each case, we told the two teams, if you're the U.S. team, consider yourself members of the National Security Council or advisors to the president. And the same thing for the Russian team, consider yourselves advisors to President Putin. We brought them back into the plenary session. Each side had an opportunity to brief the other. And then they had a chance for clarification, questions of clarification from one side to the other. And that was as well with the white cell or the control group. Once they had baselined their policy going into the game, we then provided what we would call a strategic inject or a scenario that each side would have to deal with. What we found was there was not a lot of movement from the way we had designed the Russian system or the way we had presented U.S. policy. So we felt like we had a pretty good baseline going in. And then after they had come into the plenary session, a pretty good refinement. So we started with the first scenario. The two teams would then go to their breakout rooms, the Russia team and the U.S. team. They would confirm the policy that they had wasn't still valid. If it wasn't valid, what changes did they need to make? And then what was going to be their strategic approach going forward, given this new environment or given this scenario? They then came back into the larger group briefed each other, and it was kind of a courtroom type setting. They'd brief one side would brief the other side would brief, and then they'd be allowed to provide a counter argument back and forth. And then the white cell again would ask questions for clarification. Once that turn was complete, we then issued the next inject, and then as the Russian and the U.S. teams went away, the white cell would then go through a debriefing process. What did they hear that was feasible? What did they hear that was not feasible? How did they understand what they had here? And that's how we gathered the data. And we repeated that process through five different injects. These were the, there should say scenarios. These were the scenarios that we went through with the strategic in-state of the game being we really wanted to see a secure, stable and prosperous Europe. The lines with the national security strategy, the lines with what we think would be our view of Europe. And then a Russia that acts responsibly and honors territorial sovereignty. So these were the five different scenarios. The first one you see is a rapid movement toward energy independence in Europe. We had to suspend a little bit of reality and say if we could go, if Europe could be completely energy independent from Russia, what would that look like and how would both sides react? The second one probably more plausible and maybe even more urgent is expansion of the Ukrainian conflict. If it were to go beyond the line of control, if there were, it was an expansion in other regions of interest and then a strategic miscalculation of sorts. The third move was uncontrollable nationalism. We had characterized Putin's use of nationalism as a weaponization of nationalism. What happens when he loses control of that nationalism? We thought of him falling off the bear or the bear takes off on its own. How then do both sides react? The fourth turn that you see there, the power leads turning against Putin. This was not meant to be a coup of sorts, but effectively the way we structured that is Putin has no longer in power. How does the U.S. interpret it but then also these power leads, these advisors, what would they advise to now what is left and how to go forward with it? The final turn, getting beyond crisis, was less a strategic scenario as much as it was. What is each side, what do they want to see from the other, both from the Russian side and then from the U.S. side? In the end, these were the considerations after distilling the data that we got from both sides and from each of the turns. These were really the four key considerations that we saw. The first one, compete with Russia to maintain an international order. It sounds counterintuitive. We talk a lot about cooperate where we can, but what we found is in each turn, as the U.S. side would come in and look for areas for cooperation, the Russian side would come in competitively. At one point, we had one participant said, we're in an environment where we are competitive, we should compete. Compete when you must compete and then cooperate when you can cooperate. While you would think that order would come through cooperation, in this case, the competition has got to be resolved first. The second one was just clearly articulating the position toward Russia, Eastern Europe and Ukraine. When the U.S. team would come in and debrief, we often found that there was a little bit of ambiguity toward each of those different players, and that was one of the other pieces that needed to come out. The policy had to be very clear in regard to each. The third challenge, Russia, in the competition of ideas and influence, that was a consistent comment from the White Cell, was the U.S. team's lack of a good information policy or information strategy, rather. Then the last bullet that you see there, somewhat the blinding flash of the obvious, but with two election cycles coming up, both in the U.S. and with Russia in 2018, clearly that timeline needs to be leveraged. We felt like, from President Putin to maintaining the power, one of the comments was, we need to look for what is going to be Crimea 2017. While we don't, by no means, is an attempt to influence the U.S. national election, but whatever policy is built, it's going to have to survive both our own national election, but then be implemented by a new administration going forward toward and stepping right into an election cycle on the Russian side. With that, I'll pass off to Dr. Jim McNaughton, who was one of the observers of the U.S. team. Thank you, Joe. I had the opportunity to be a note taker sitting in and listening to the U.S. team's discussions over the two days of the war game. I just want to start with two general observations, and I look forward to questions and discussion after our introductory remarks here. My observations really are on point one and point two that you see on the screen here. Having watched a mix of people try to come up with the U.S. policy or what the policy would be with some of these hypothetical situations, it was very interesting to find out that really they were confronting a sea change in U.S. policy, and it was clear to them that something had changed in the international environment. The tough part was figuring out what to do about that. They realized that for the past two decades at least, our relations with Russia in general have been based on the concept that we would encourage Russia to become a normal country within the European security architecture and the European community, and that Russia would be encouraged to play by the rules and the U.S. could treat them as they treat any other regional power around the world. After the seizure of Crimea and then when the conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine, it became very clear that that set of assumptions was no longer valid. So everyone could see that sea change. The hard part among the players who were trying to formulate in this academic environment what should U.S. policy be was to figure out how to compete with Russia. It's very difficult to jettison those set of assumptions and long-range policies that the U.S. had worked with for many, many years, but we considered alternative futures within the war game, and it became clear that at least for the next several years, the U.S. would have to manage strategic competition with Russia rather than simply treat Russia as another normal country in the environment. The second general observation I would like to start with is that it's easy to say that the United States needs to articulate a more clear position towards Russia and Eastern Europe and Ukraine, but there are some severe challenges we discovered and Joe is absolutely correct that the U.S. team ended up being more reactive than proactive as it struggled to balance several major sets of considerations. The United States policy is not developed simply in Washington, D.C. We must take into account our NATO allies and other partners and other countries in the region, which means a great deal of consensus building and discussions before a policy can be, in fact, clearly stated by our leaders. A second area where we have challenges to developing that policy consensus is the lack of clarity on how Russia is going to respond. As we work through hypotheticals, and we could do this, we could put troops in the Baltics, we could send armaments, lethal equipment to the Ukrainians, we could tighten sanctions. At each step, we just lacked an understanding of the Russian system to where we felt comfortable that if we do this, we're pretty sure Russia will do that. So that really muddied the policy waters as well and made it difficult to achieve a consensus. And then finally, there are clearly areas that everyone agreed on that we really, we very strongly want to continue to cooperate with Russia in areas such as the discussions over the Ukrainian, the Iranian nuclear program. This is something that's quite important for very valid reasons that we need Russian cooperation to continue. So how do we change to a situation where we're managing strategic competition while maintaining these areas of cooperation with Russia? And it took a lot of time, and oftentimes the result was quite messy when it came time to go into the plenary session and say, okay, U.S. team, now what have you come up with as far as a policy? That was one of our great challenges. And I will be, turn to my colleague, Chris Lay, who is going to talk a little bit about what he saw while observing the Russian team. Thanks, Jim. So as Jim alluded to, I was on the Russia team, I was an analyst or an observer. We must note that none of us here were participants during the war game. We facilitated, we observed, we took notes, which allowed us a unique vantage point, I would dare say, and without any of our sort of predispositions since we've been doing this since October. I'll just start with a couple of general comments, and we can speak a little bit with a little bit more fidelity or some granularity during the Q&A period. But I will say that on whole, through the two-day war game, Russia was able to operate with quite a bit more strategic flexibility. They had a good bit more options available. Jim had mentioned that the U.S. team seemed to always be reactive. Well, the Russia team had a lot more options. They were less constrained by international norms, laws, alliances. For instance, during one of our turns, Russia was able to deploy armor and troops along the border. And of course, this was cast as a defensive move or a defensive imposter rather than what it was, was an overly aggressive move, which leads me to the second point. As we all know, Russia operates with a far more robust international, informational operations campaign. Their I.O. was remarked by one of the participants as the more or less weaponized propaganda. Oftentimes, Russia was able to spin a particular narrative that the West could not easily counter. Or if they did attempt to counter it, it takes a good bit of lead time in order to gather the facts, the figures in order to purport more of a truthful message. That gave, again, leading to the first point, the Russia team quite a bit more flexibility in how they reacted to most of these scenarios. And then lastly, it was interesting to note that Russia had no desire in expanding the conflict in Ukraine. Rather, they desired a frozen conflict over the two-day war game that they could escalate and de-escalate at will. Again, it provided them a good bit of leveraging for the West in order to either argue for reducing economic sanctions or moving troops or forces around as they willed. Again, we can speak a little bit more fidelity during our Q&A period, but with that, I'll pass over to Karen. You can offer some more insights. I was also on the red team with Chris, and I observed two key themes throughout the war game. The first being the competitive attitude of Russian decision-making towards U.S. and NATO policies within the region. The Russia team sought strategic flexibility, if you will, not through the development of clear long-term policy, but instead through the creation of what they called tools designed to seize opportunities as they arise. The Russian team saw long-term strategy as ineffective in this complex strategic environment that they're operating in. Why spend time developing this strategy that we may never use? Let's spend our efforts on tools that allow us the strategic flexibility and also surprise. Those tools were frozen conflicts, bilateral agreements, backdoor economic deals, and the development of proxy forces, which we've seen them use here recently. As one player summed it up, Russia's intentions vary succinctly, and we've used this quote quite often. He said, the Russia team played to win while the U.S. played not to lose. So diplomatic posturing had little impact on the Russian behavior throughout the game. As they tried to determine the best way to characterize President Putin, is he a long-term strategist? Is he a tactician? What is he? They decided that Putin was more of a chess player. He studies the board, and he improvises as needed. Hence the need for tools, vice long-term strategy. The second observation was the Russian team decision-making process was driven mostly by the desire to maintain power, and second, the return of Russian preeminence. In every discussion and every decision made, the desire to maintain, perpetuate, and preserve the system was evident. While the team was very confident that Putin would be in power or as the President for years to come, they always considered that position when making decisions. They didn't want to jeopardize these upcoming elections. That came up in their discussions. We have this election cycle coming up. It's in sync with the U.S. elections. Let's not do anything that would put President Putin at risk. And then finally, the team used Russian propaganda to ensure that the perception within the Russian population was one that Russian greatness was on the rise and that the Putin machine was returning Russia to its rightful place on the global landscape. And also, of course, to undermine U.S. and NATO actions in the region. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Gertjian. Thank you, Karen. Yeah, during the war game, I was actually the facilitator for Team White. So we could sit a little bit back and see both teams coming back from the small rooms and they were presenting their new policy or their reaction to the in-yaks we gave. And there were some, and it's partly repeating what has already been said, but there's some key takeaways that I took from there and my team as well. And my team consists mostly of Western and Eastern European international fellows. So that was sometimes the European, how do you say that, look on the situation, so to say. So like I said, partly repeating, but the U.S. team always came back and they were kind of struggling with how to deal with the situation. And because they were always reactive and defensive and they wanted to play within the international rules, so they were always like waiting for the other side what will happen. So they were struggling with their position all the time. Whereas Russians could play more savvy and cunning, I would say, and they were always proactive and more on the offensive. They would say, okay, we'll try something new and look what happens. So that was a big difference between the two sides. And we all agree where it comes from or understand, but whether it's just an observation. And the second takeaway is everybody talks about NATO all the time, not everybody, but we should have a united NATO on this and a united NATO and have consensus. The question is, what are we ever going to get that? Those 28 countries on one line. So maybe, and that was one of the things that we saw in the game, maybe it's wiser to just address a couple of countries within NATO and create a coalition of the willing. And those willing will probably be, depending on the subject, 22, 24 of the 28 countries. And that's maybe all you need. So that's what was one of the takeaways that we got as well from the war game, looking from team white. With that, Andy? Well, really interesting exercise. Would love to know more about your net assessment. It's something that I think needs to be widely done about Russia. Personally, over the last three weeks, I have spent more than half of my time in various scenario exercises. Four of them, actually. One of them conducted by the Joint Force, looking out to changes in human geography and engineering technology and also world order, looking out to the year 2035, the implications for the Joint Force. I see Steve Blank out there. He was also there for four days with me at Andrews Air Force Base two weeks ago. I've also spent a couple of exercises for the National Intelligence Council Global Trends publication looking out again to the year 2035. And then last Friday over at the German Marshall Fund, in a more near-term exercise, thinking about Russia. And part of the fun for me is that I always get to play Russia. And I think some of the notes that we concur on is that there's greater flexibility in the means and the mechanisms, the timing in which Russian can act. There is constantly the number one concern is regime preservation. It starts there. I think it's important to think about the Ukrainian conflict today in those terms as well. There's a big domestic political aspect to them. Now, one area that there has been a lot of disagreement about looking in the near term is whether Russia is looking to expand the conflict in Ukraine. Now, I'm interested to hear that in your game, Russia is not. That is also my personal conclusion, but I think it's a pretty contentious issue. And we might talk about it, talk about it more. Now, I did have an opportunity to read through your report that's come out. And we will have a link and a copy of this on our website shortly, the report about what this presentation is based upon. And there are a couple of things I want to raise that I'd like to hear a little bit more from you before we turn the floor over to the audience. In the executive summary, you note that U.S. and Russia's systems are inherently competitive, especially regarding Russia's near abroad, NATO, Asia, and the Arctic. Well, I would probably contest the term inherently competitive. We were inherently competitive during the Cold War. I'm more skeptical that we are inherently competitive today. I'm not quite sure what that means necessarily. But I think to me what the Ukrainian conflict is mainly about, if you take the Russian domestic political aspect out of the picture, it's about the failure over the last 25 years to come to an agreed European security framework. And certainly the contestation and competition in Russia's near abroad, no question. But when I look in different theaters, though, then I think it gets a lot more complicated. And I see, in some places, overlapping interests, a good deal of overlapping interests. And two of them, to some extent, would be the Arctic and Asia, or at least northeast Asia. And you could point to others as well. And Joe, you pointed out, of course, that in this exercise, there was the desire to maintain a certain degree of cooperation with the Russians on issues that we saw extremely important. The Iranian nuclear program was one where, for the most part, we've been able to walk and chew gum at the same time over the past 14, 15 months or so, since the conflict began. And you could point to others. For example, the decommissioning of the declared decommissioning, excuse me, removal from Syria and decommissioning of Syrian chemical weapons, declared Syrian chemical weapons in the first half of 2014. A second question I had came to the point, and I struggled with this question all the time. And you raised the question, does Putin have a grand strategy? Well, I would argue that he certainly has strategic goals. Now, whether that adds up to a grand strategy or what is the relationship between a grand strategy and strategic goals, I'm not sure. Does the United States have strategic goals? Absolutely. Do we have a grand strategy? Well, I wouldn't call what we publish to be a grand strategy. So if you could kind of elaborate a little bit on what you see is the differences. Because it is often said that Putin is a great tactician, which I absolutely agree with, but he's not a great strategist. And on that, I'm not sure that I do agree with that. On a third, and kind of related to this, or to the earlier point, actually, there is the, you know, it's pointed out that the United States should seek on page 7 to seek areas cooperation with Russia on a range of regional and global issues. Nonetheless, a return to business as usual, perhaps through another reset with Russia, is not possible in the short term. And I guess, you know, the term reset, of course, is attached to the specific historical moment for the Obama administration when they came to power in January of 2009. But I would argue that the Bill Clinton administration, the George W. Bush administration as well, maybe not from day one, had a strategy for a, we don't need to call it a reset, but certainly a major effort to set the U.S.-Russia relationship on a constructive path and to work together on many, many issues together. And I don't necessarily exclude the possibility that when the next administration comes to power in January 2017, they're going to look at the panoply of issues and challenges to U.S. national security and foreign policy. And from that, they're going to make a judgment about the degree to which they want to, for lack of a better term, have a reset with Russia. Now, of course, it depends an awful lot about what happens between now and January 2017. And I would postulate that what would have to happen, I think, is that the Minsk-2 ceasefire courts would be judged to be not in complete violation and to still be in effect per se. And from that, I think we would already be, we would already have seen significant efforts of rapprochement between Europe and Moscow. I mean, if I am, if we take, if we take the point that Moscow is not seeking a wider conflict in Ukraine, then the tactic to me would seem to be stable over the radar of a violation of the Minsk-2 ceasefire courts. There's no big offensive on Mariupol or any other place for that matter. And with that, the pressure for relieving sanctions in Europe will grow significantly. You'll see some of that probably this summer, if that condition holds. More of it, I think, at the end of the year, which is sort of the timing for the Minsk-2 ceasefire courts, and then even more of it, I think, in 2016, in which case holding together alliance unity may be considerably harder as we go along. Another, let me just raise two other things quickly. I'm taking up too much time, but it's a quite good document, the report that you produced. You state that Ukraine, this is a quote, would likely be the best place to confront Russia and to send a clear message of intent, capability, and will. And here I just have why. Ukraine is not a NATO member. So it's the hardest, it's a much harder place to send a clear message of intent and capability and will. And I think this is at the crux of the dilemma for the Obama administration, as well as our European allies, because we are in kind of a gray zone with Ukraine. So I guess I would ask you, what do you mean to confront Russia? What does that mean exactly? And why is it the best place? It sounds like, I won't put words in your mouths, that you're kind of operating under kind of a domino theory process behind this, that with success in Ukraine, then the Russians move elsewhere, or he looks at the chessboard and decides what's the greatest vulnerability. And, you know, I would submit that there is an awfully large difference between undertaking some kind of hybrid or other military action against Ukraine versus a Baltic state or a NATO member. And I think, and I hope that that is a bridge too far, but that's, I like, I was very interested by your point of the coalition of the willing. But Gertrude, that would require a very, well, I guess to what extent would it require kind of a different rule-making framework within NATO? And what would that mean, what would it mean for NATO, if we're more explicitly drawing coalitions of the willing from NATO? And I think I'll stop there and give the panel some time to respond, and then we'll open up for discussion with everybody. Thank you. So I think we're struggling, taking a lot of notes there, Andy. That was very good though. So your first question on... In terms of inherently competitive and, you know, I think you asked a question of is it really competitive in the fact that there are other areas where we can cooperate or where we should cooperate? I think the challenge is that at the currently, the distraction of the Ukraine prevents the cooperation. And so once that crisis is solved, then we can go back into a cooperative mode. And so that conflict or that competition overshadows a lot of those areas where we can cooperate. I mean, look at the meeting, what was it, two weeks ago between Secretary Kerry and Putin? Nothing. We walked away saying it was good that we talked. But there were no agreements, substantive agreements that came out of that meeting. And because of this competitive environment that we're in, we've got to solve this one major competitive issue before I think we'll start to see fruits and other areas of cooperation. And if I may address the U.S. side of that. The system's sort of an emerging view within the context of the war game was on the U.S. side that the Russian system was fundamentally different from the U.S. system. Russia, as we've already mentioned, we perceived it to have much greater freedom of action. But there's a degree of cronyism and corruption that was a great worry to the U.S. players. And there was a sense that we didn't want to go back to the Cold War. We kind of had a historical memory of the Cold War. And we were glad that we got that beyond that. So then we thought, okay, if it's not Cold War, then we're moving to normal relations. But that didn't work either conceptually. So we're kind of stuck between the two. And the U.S. team kept coming back to the fact that the Russian regime was operating by a different set of behaviors. So that's what we meant by inherently competitive. It wasn't that we just had a dispute over a particular issue, but there was something fundamental in the Russian system that just had it consistently at odds with the U.S. and the West. So from a Russian team perspective, you mentioned the expansion of conflict in Ukraine. It was much debate on the Russian team whether or not they wanted to continue to foment opposition to Western actions. Of course, the narrative they spun was that the Ukrainian crisis and the regional maladies that were subsequent to that are all, of course, U.S. machinations in the area. But the desire to expand the contrast or the conflict, there was no appetite. Specifically, if the separatists pushed towards a variable, the Russian team said that they will not let the separatists fail. However, the desire to create a long strategic flank on the Russian army in Ukraine wasn't a desired outcome. Andy, you mentioned whether or not Putin is a strategic thinker versus a tactical chess player. Often, we saw the Russian team was able to craft this particular narrative that they had. As I have mentioned in my general comments, during one of our turns, there was a protest in Latvia that we had and a small eruption of conflict there in terms of protests. Russia was able to mass their armor, move troops to the border, and spin a narrative of defensive posturing. So this was an opportunity that we were able to observe that Russia operated tactically. Was there a strategic desire to mass troops there? We didn't observe that. They were reacting to a opportunity that arose. That being said, at no point did Russia ever want to, I guess, enter into any sort of general conflict with the West. Economic sanctions at this point, according to the Russian team, were livable. While the rubble has been plummeting, they found ways to operate within the context of the sanctions that were there. So it was a concerted fear of increasing any opportunity for the West to impose more sanctions. So that oftentimes constrained to some extent some of the Russia team's actions. But oftentimes, again, it was this tactical improvisation rather than a mass strategy that the team operated in under the two days. I just add that the team chose to go that route because they felt like it helped divide NATO decision making. It created this tension within NATO. And so it was the tool of choice, if you will. I'd like to just briefly, Andy, go to one of your last points about why Ukraine. And it was a sense of, at least on the U.S. side, that in fact we were hearing from some very distressed messages from our East European NATO allies in the context of the war game from the Estonia Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and some other NATO allies. But the U.S. team didn't feel that Russia was ready to cross that clear, bright, shining line of triggering NATO's Article 5. So in fact, though, we wanted to reassure our allies, particularly in the Baltics, and particularly to encourage them to head off any possible protests or mass mobilization of their Russian ethnic minorities that might give an entree to Russia to meddle further in their domestic politics, we felt that the real challenge was happening on the front doorstep of NATO. And that means Ukraine. Obviously, there are some other countries like Moldova and Georgia that we were concerned about. But we felt that if the U.S. simply encouraged NATO to build a wall around the current NATO members and say, we're not going to take any cognizance of what happens beyond the borders of today's NATO members, that that would be a big mistake. And that's why we came back to the very, very, the thorny problem of how to stabilize the situation in Ukraine and reinforce that new government there to where it can settle its different, its domestic differences with no outside interference. So at least from the perspective of the U.S. team, that's why they were interested in essentially making a stand in Ukraine, even though it's not a NATO member at this point. Yes, and I think that ties a little bit into the last question about NATO. And we threw it out there. So I think I have to answer that a little bit. And Karen mentioned that Putin uses attention within NATO as well. And we all can see that. So, and the ties into the Ukraine part as well, as long as we stay strong in Ukraine, I mean, there are a lot of agreements that have been broken in the past already. So the Baltic states were going like, if you're going to leave there, we're going to be next. And whether it's going to happen or not, there's probably this this yellow or red line that they will never cross. But it's a message that you send to the countries. And that was the most important part of it. So we all like the United and consensus within NATO. But we didn't see it happen in the game. Every time that U.S. came up with a policy and thought, okay, we'll choose this approach, there were some countries say, we don't agree. So we're moving somewhere else. And by giving that to Putin, he can use that to use attention within NATO. We can also step away as NATO and say it's not a NATO problem, but we're going to solve it with mostly NATO countries. So with that, you don't give him the opportunity to use that leverage. So that's kind of where we came from. Well, it is a bear of a policy problem. There's no question of that. I didn't mean to make a bad pun. It just happened. For me, I think over the last 15 months, and turn it over for questions, there's sort of three baskets of baskets of policy. And one area, and it's the hardest area, it's the one that deserves the most attention, is how you help Ukraine. How you help Ukraine survive. And it's not just military, of course. It's financial. It's governance. It's everything. And you know, we're fighting difficult odds. Ukrainian management of itself over the last 20 plus years has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. But the focus of attention in Washington is often the punish Russia part in ways it's the easier part to do, at least with the economic sanctions. And the middle part, where I've been surprised there, that the United States has been so ready to kind of outsource is the diplomacy. And I think that at some point that I've written about this several times over the last six months that we need to, I think, play a larger role. But let me open it up to questions, comments, and right here, yes, Hank. Hank Gaffney, for the panelists and the audience. I'm Hank Gaffney, a longtime follower of Russia, a deep experience in NATO, and still following all this in retirement after 28 years in OSD and 23 years at the Center for Naval Analysis, and including 15 trips to Russia and 16 seminars that I ran with them. And what the discussion reveals to me right now is the real big obsession is Ukraine. And I want to come back to what Putin in his paranoia saw. And remember, as we've decided in some discussions here, it's all Putin. I can't wait to see the discussion of how he's going to be overthrown in the booklet. But he thinks that we want Ukraine and NATO so we can move U.S. forces and their nuclear weapons up on his border. And therefore, do what from that, I have no idea. But of course, we have no intention of doing that. But he thinks so. He thinks we wanted a naval base in Sevastopol and we're going to move our ships there. He thinks we're going to put nuclear weapons in Crimea, et cetera. And how do we really overcome that in our process of trying to stabilize Ukraine? Who wants to take that first easy question? For our group and our net assessment, I studied Putin. And before this project, I was not a Europe analyst nor a Russian follower. Putin is a hard man to understand, first of all. And I agree with you. He is a paranoid man. He's an intel analyst. He thinks everyone's watching him in some corner somewhere. I'm not sure that we have the answer to that exactly. I mean, we have, I've struggled with this a bit, but I think Putin has has hit his own reset button. And that reset button, I'm not sure has any cooperation with the West at this point. So I'm not sure that we can get past that. And we may not be able to do that diplomatically ourselves. We might have to work with that coalition of the willing. That was the recurring theme in our war game is that we have these two perceptions. We have the Russian perception of the U.S. that actually sees the U.S. as this declining power. We have the U.S. perception of Russia, and we see it as a power and decline. And we tend to not give Russia the the do it believes it deserves. And now we see Putin snubbing the West more and more often because of that, I think. If I can add, listening to the discussions of the U.S. team during the war game, everyone was very hesitant to do anything to feed the Russian narrative. So, you know, to what extent do we provide support to the government of Ukraine? To what extent do we provide support to the NATO members in the Baltic? We were second guessing ourselves to the point of paralysis. The consensus was over the course of two days that we had to break out of that paralysis and not sit on our hands out of a fear of feeding someone's paranoia. We had to take concrete measures that everyone would understand. Someone would perhaps misunderstand or twist them for their own purposes. But the U.S. team felt that the greater risk was to do nothing. They acknowledged that there was some risk of making it look like that the U.S. was wanted to put troops into Ukraine. But I think if we could just get the message across clearly in a straightforward objective manner that we are providing trainers to the Ukrainian government, that the people who really want to understand what's really going on will not misinterpret that as putting a permanent NATO base on Russia's borders. Just a quick comment about that question because it's one we all struggle with. But there was a one moment where if I were in the White House advising our president, it would have been on February 21st of 2014. And this is the day of course there was the political agreement signed between European foreign ministers, Mr. Yanukovych, and the Ukrainian opposition that would call for early elections 10 months later and a number of other provisions. And I recall reading that here in my office in Washington and realizing that there is no way that this agreement was going to be, was going to hold because the people on Maidan would not agree to it. And in October when I was at the Valdai Discussion Club and heard Putin talk about a bit of the chronology and his decision making because I'd had one question which I would have wanted to ask him and I'll tell you in a second. But he said that when the agreement was signed President Obama called and they talked about it and everything was okay. My question to him was did you receive another phone call when the agreement fell apart? Because it was at the time when the agreement fell apart that it was absolutely necessary to try to reassure Mr. Putin that in fact we did not want this agreement to fall apart, that it was not measures that we were taking or supporting that led to this agreement falling apart. Because when the agreement fell apart and Mr. Yanukovych fled Kiev to me that reflected the complete destruction of Mr. Putin's Ukraine policy and he had to react to that and he did in the way that he did whether we could have prevented that I don't know. But I think what I fear is that inside our government at the time there was probably a little bit of a feeling of we won when Yanukovych fled and rather than thinking of you know what we've got a big problem and we need to work together, try to work together with Mr. Putin our European allies to try to resolve the problem in Ukraine because it's very dangerous. But I'm afraid I have a fear that the sense of a little bit yeah we got him. Okay Steve. Stephen Blank American Farm Policy Council formally the Army War College having just emerged from the same bunker as Andy a couple of weeks ago I have a suggestion that might help alleviate some of the problems Andy pointed out. First of all with regard to the objectives we in the United States tend to separate the objective of regime preservation which is the alpha of Putin's policies from the restoration of Russia as a great power and one that is seen as a great power globally. I would suggest to you that those are the same objectives that the latter the restoration of a Russia that is seen at home and abroad as a global great power is a precondition for the survival of the regime. For as Andy has suggested that if Ukraine went west Putin would come under enormous domestic pressure if not may even be unhinged in power. So there is no difference here the conditions of regime survival and preservation into the future is the strategic goal and the condition of that goal being met. One of the conditions is this restoration of the Velikaya Russia of the great Russia. The second point here is that we can therefore overcome the distinction between strategy and tactics or whether Putin is a tactician or a strategist because I think he is a strategist in that he has creatively taken and used all the elements of Russian power the dime concept I think we're all familiar with as an acronym in order to bring about that restoration and preservation of his power and the point of this whole operation therefore is not to achieve some final state but to develop these tools as you have called them instruments of power others would say in order to keep the game going because that is how Russia sees the world as being in any case and second this is the only way that it can maximize what is the condition of its great power and the regime at home that is a fully independent sovereign great power which is what it says it is and wants to be recognized as with that doesn't have to answer to anybody either at home or abroad and that's the strategic objective I think that things thus become much more clear to the analysts and and I think they'll become clearer to you and you therefore can overcome this dilemma of whether he's a tactician or a strategist because the fact is the tactics do serve the strategic objective and I would and there is no gap here and the final objective is not whether or not Ukraine or some specific territory in Ukraine belongs to Russia but whether Russia is accepted as a great power the specific territorial parameters of Ukraine are beside the point but it's that now everybody understands you have to deal with Russia on its terms yes good morning I'm Tracy Wilson I'm a consultant here in Washington DC thanks for your your your comments this morning I did this this this this war game looked like it was very interesting very very enjoyable time and I and I applaud you taking a structure to look into the future and helping us understand these issues three quick questions of clarification if I might you mentioned one area of cooperation that you saw Iran and you mentioned Syria of course as well in in in your discussion in your work did did the did the topic of corporate threat reduction nuclear security in Russia come up obviously that's an area that's on hold right now and we have some concerns about that so so just curious your thoughts on that and then a couple of reactions if you might in recent days there's there have been two high level State Department visits to Sochi and Moscow now are these positive signs indicators of a thawing of relations if not what what should we be looking for in the future as a as a positive sign and then finally Russia will hold the chair of the Security Council in September is this is this a concern possible areas of mischief that could that could be introduced into the the agenda at that time and so I welcome your thoughts thoughts CTR UN Security Council and Department of State Trips Joe I'll start briefly with the James excuse me the areas of cooperation the US team was very concerned about the the safety and stability of the the Russian nuclear enterprise we didn't go into great details but in some of the scenarios several team members you know were concerned about that and even to the extent that that we might want to provide at least reassurances directly to the the the Russian forces that are responsible for those sort of cooperative threat reduction well we didn't go into detail but there was some some nervousness about that obviously particularly if the Russian government became less stable due to economic crisis or regime change or something like that so yeah there was great concern and this is tied also to your next point about the how do we read these most recent contacts during the Cold War as the years went on as you know we had developed a pretty robust series of ways to communicate and coordinate with the Soviet Union their leadership and also their armed forces it was never perfect but at least there were channels everything from incidents at sea to aircraft and airspace to yeah different kinds of signaling the mo-link the hotline and there was a sort of a sickening realization on the part of the US team that perhaps some of that has eroded or no longer exists we've talked quite a bit as we've gone out to various think tanks we've we've found that the the generation of Soviet experts are now in retirement or and there's the next generation is not nearly as as as extensive they're they're just as eager and just as smart I'm sure but there aren't as many of them on the ground as there were 25 years ago so there's a there was a concern on the US side that perhaps there's value simply in strengthening the mechanisms and that's how I would read just me as a citizen reading what was happening with Secretary of State Kerry's visit recently for example as a good thing in general not because of any grand agreements that may or may not have been signed at that time but it's certainly reassuring that that we can talk and I would hope that if they're talking publicly that there's some back channel communication going on as well which I think is where the real work can get done certainly I would agree Jim I will say from the Russian team perspective looking out in the future the most notably it's the election cycles that drove a good bit of the the Russian teams analysis in some of our later scenarios it was interesting to note that it came up in off conversation we'll have a new administration new US administration in 2016 the Russia team was looking for a political win or a win of some sort in 2017 in order for Putin to be reelected in 2018 so Russia team discussed numerous times of what that political win or that international win might be and it it was notable that they surmised that it will be a new US administration facing those challenges and again the Russia team would hold those strategic cards I guess if you will so while there might be conversations now and certainly they're worthwhile I think the most telling point at least from the Russia team's perspective what what's going to happen next year when it's a new administration and Russia's looking for that that win whatever that win might be right Jack really I teach part-time at Catholic University now religion and international politics in my previous hierarchy I was in the State Department and was enabled one time to participate in the program at the Armed Forces Staff College and there we we did a mini version of what you all have been participated in at the Colo and having to do with the Middle East and thinking back it it strikes me very much that in all our discussions we we paid very little if any attention to the role of religion which certainly I think in recent years has proven to be much more important certainly in our involvement in Iraq and Syria but I'm kind of surprised that in looking at the Russian bear with everything else in there there's nothing about religion and it strikes me that the certainly important role of the Russian Orthodox Church which is kind of come back more into popularity also with Mr. Putin should be considered a bit here not just simply because of its relationship with Western Orthodoxy if you will the Christian Church in the West but also the you know Islam and I wonder to any extent did religion play any role in the considerations either on the US or the Russian side okay next direct the gentleman right in front of us Steve thank you very much I am Dr. Nisar Chaudhary with the National Defense University fellow of Pakistan my question is that you mentioned that Ukraine is the perfect place to confront Russia but in this war game what some of a couple of factors I figured out what they really factored out in this war game as well for example if the confrontation or the collusion or the conflict you don't have to both parties don't have to agree to expand it if one expands it unilaterally then how do you deal with that number two USA has got allies was it also considered what allies Russia has and number two three is that when you say Putin do you mean Russia or Putin or Putin mean Russia Russia mean Putin that is also another important factor and the last but not the least was the China factor do you think China and Russia do have any commonly perceived are real threat and if they have from where they have thank you thank you a reporter from voice America a follow-up question about China factor actually I'm looking at this Russia figure two at the far corner of the figure talking about the Chinese assurance so could you elaborate on that a second question is also about a concerning China the growing relationship between China and Russia they're talking about so who poses a greater threat to you as China or Russia thank you back to the panelists so sir in regards to the question on religion it did come up in the initial net assessment mainly within relationship to the Orthodox Church where why you don't see it on the on the actual diagram we characterized it pretty much under the as a tool of Russian nationalism frankly we didn't see it as a as a driving factor as much as a resource that could be used to continue to push forward a Russian nationalism on the question about Russian allies I don't we didn't consider that as a major factor within the artificial construct of the war game we know that Russia has reached out to particularly to Central Asia and some of the countries there but we didn't see that as those partnerships as really contributing much either to Russian policy or to the Russian impact in the situations we were trying to look at specifically Russia will never be able to recreate the Warsaw Pact and even the Warsaw Pact was an alliance of unequals much more so than NATO I would argue but but no we didn't take those allies into into account and I think that's an opportunity for the West actually to make a very very telling point through the international media frankly that you know anyone who understands the world situation today with any degree of clarity can see that you have a group of 28 democracies at different stages of development who are cooperating and trying to create a security architecture for Europe and then you have one power that is throwing its weight around and violating some of the norms of the international environment and reaching out to frankly some of the countries that they have reached out to are more in line with the Russian's idea of how a government and an economy should run than Western Europe so I think that's something that the West could use to its advantage to make sure that that message is loud and clear you have 28 democracies confronting countries that have bought into a or controlled by a very different system actually I was going to kind of pile on the gem's comment on the on the alliance is what we didn't see was and I'll let the Russia team kind of speak to this clearly but as they would come into the each of the different preliminary sessions what we saw was a continually reaching out of bilateral bilateral relationships that facilitated a purpose just just kind of as any nation would do and that's what we kind of saw in the Chinese relationship as well frankly as far as where the the assessment was is that as Russia's would turn turn toward China that they really had the lower end of the of the bargaining relationship China had the upper hand and that China needed or Russia needed China but not China needed Russia so so that's why they had like said the Chinese relationship was was one of one of risk for for the Russians they could they could play to it but they were coming into it having to negotiate less than a less than their optimal deal if you will just a quick comment the the US needs to be aware of its own seems and weaknesses and and I think one of those is that we now at least within the Defense Department tend to view the world regionally there are some some broad threats transnational threats we get that we have some functional combatant commands but in general terms we have this goes back of course to the Cold War one combatant command focused on Europe and Russia and one focused on the Asia Pacific region and China and so we tend to want to put our problems into those bins and assign a military commander to deal with it that said there's a there's a huge amount of cooperation that goes on with other US government agencies as well and we're finding more and more that perhaps that regional structure for the defense commands is not as helpful in places like the Arctic where you have several US four-star commands that have some involvement in the Arctic from North com and you come and pay com and others so that is something that we need to be aware of on the US side and and think about perhaps ways we can overcome that in the future you would have you would have enjoyed it last week I proposed at a different session that there be created on the National Security Council a new senior directorship for Eurasia but Eurasia from Europe to Asia from Russia to India the large continent Eurasia so you overcome some of the stove stove piping okay Paul thanks Paul Schwartz from CSIS I had a question about the disparity in the way the two contestants in the Ukraine crisis view how vital the interests of Ukraine are respectively and how that actually played itself out in the exercise in addition I tend to agree with the findings on that currently the likelihood is that Russia will pursue a frozen conflict in Ukraine given that there's a little to gain from seizing Mariupol for example and much to lose but that will hold up only unless and until Russia starts to see that perhaps if Ukraine policy is headed for a second collapse as Dr. Kutch and so aptly put describe the first one I'm curious if your thoughts on that or at least how that played out as well in the scope of the exercise thank you thank you Kyle Scott State Department fellow at the German Marshall Fund I want to turn to your policy consideration to clearly articulating a position towards Russia Eastern Europe and Ukraine I'm sure my colleagues in the State Department would argue that we in fact do have a clearly articulated position but I'm going to posit that you're correct and then challenge you what you all did all the studying what would you articulate as what that policy should be and after I hear that ask Colonel Cui if he could state whether he thinks the Europeans would agree with that policy thank you Tom O'Donnell I'm actually based in Berlin nowadays Energy and International Affairs and I'm actually here as a fellow at the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies to actually interview American experts and officials on their take on energy vulnerabilities in Europe so you can imagine this is I've been talking interviewing a lot of people about this and it's sort of coming down to a few scenarios and I'm not going to you know I just want to I'm not saying this is the most likely scenario but it goes a little bit along the lines with Schwartz pointed out over here and what you pointed out Mr. Kuchans I don't get so much out of this is there's something else that can happen it's not just a matter of what the US wants to do and how it reacts to what Russia does or Mr. Putin does it's the flow of objective circumstances that gets out of hand if people don't take a hold of the situation a lot of people know so a lot of people certain people I think well a lot of people have been telling me they have a clear feeling the European attitude is please take this problem away you know they don't want to really face up to what's there and frankly that there's a similar situation on our side and somewhere that goes along with what you're describing the reactive nature so the objective things that are developing is if the Ukrainian economy collapses in a couple years or there's going to have to completely collapse major demonstrations and other Maidan you have huge amounts of refugees in Europe you can have all sorts of things happening to the energy passage you don't know who did it what about that sort of situation as things basically collapse if there's not a major program of the west to get involved and sort of help them take control of their economy and rebuild it fine if people don't want to send military aid fines for whatever reasons but take control and do something proactive otherwise it degenerates and and really both sides lose control and then you get a situation as I think it's true what mr. kitchens said about what happened after Maidan and the agreements falling apart things get out of control of both sides I'm just real I don't it's a question the reaction I apologize too so if I might address the first question from a Russian perspective of what the policies are or the objectives are in the Ukraine so as I previously mentioned the Russian team had no desire to escalate the conflict they were not planning on letting the separatists fail nor were they planning on giving back Crimea in fact that one of our final turns was the demise of Putin a new alternative form of government arises what are the first actions the rush team immediately said that we will not give back Crimea it was a political win that they do not intend to turn back on but in terms of escalating the conflict they had again they had no appetite for increasing the conflict whatsoever of course come 2017 when they're looking for a political win if that happens to be a target of opportunity certainly it was one that the rush team had addressed likewise to return to a previous question regarding China as we saw a play out although we didn't really explore a whole lot of the China Russia dynamics the Russia team during one of the turns on economic independence of Europe chose to try to undermine that as much as possible through back back back room deals sweetheart deals if you might and primarily the reason they were so interested in doing that is to maintain an economic dependence of Europe on Russian energy and and that was weighed against some of the economic deals that they had most recently made with China which were not so favorable for the Kremlin so from a I guess a minor perspective that's how I probably addressed the the Russia China question is that as we saw a play out in the game that was really the only time that China came up in the discussion was with regards to economics and energy the Eurasian Economic Union was mentioned briefly but that is not where they they focused their their discussions while we the Russia team said they would turn to China they would much rather maintain the European market that they now enjoy reference the the the policy going forward that was probably the greatest challenge of the war game frankly and that's part of the reason that you see that as an outcome is that in each turn there was just a lack of clarity at one point the the discussion was we continued to say we want to Europe that's whole free and at peace but maybe this is the good fast and cheap discussion do we want to Europe that's whole do we want to Europe that's whole and free do we want to Europe that's whole and at peace and we look at kind of historical examples of when that might have been the case so I think we do want a Europe that's whole free and at peace and I think our policy is that we do want a democratic Ukraine and that we do want the respect for international borders the challenge is how do you then clearly articulate it and then what is the strategy linkage to the policy so if that's the policy what what are the methods and mechanisms that we're going to use to then continue to advance that and I think that gets to to your point sir reference how do you prevent the spillover and how do we encourage a democratic Ukraine that then becomes stable and a prospering member that's probably where your answer is and and and once that linkage is correct then we probably have a clearly articulated policy toward those three areas Europe yeah it's our and that was our second consideration came actually from from the Western Europe and the Eastern European countries as well because they need to they need to know where the US stands on a lot of things and especially the Baltic states they were going it doesn't matter what path is chosen as long as it's clear and they were kind of afraid and everybody understands that okay what will if Russia takes this next step what will be the reaction of the US so they wanted the clarity instead and it's not so much of the content but the clarity that's the most important part of it and yeah we had a couple of international fellows saying Russia's part of Europe what do we like it or not it is so yeah morning Rob Tim from the national war college although I am army war college grad so as a strategist there's a couple of things that strike me which bring me to ask you a couple of questions the first is if we take it face value your basic assumption that we have a long-term competitive relationship with the Russians that's unavoidable we've also identified in a lot of ways that picking Ukraine is a place for that competition to play out as problematic for the United States because of this asymmetric escalation dominance that the Russians seem to have because of the nature of the situation in Ukraine and then the third observation is how the US was continually reactive they were trying to play a prevent defense and or always caught a move behind the Russians because they've ceded the initiative so the question is how do you see the initiative if you have a strategically competitive relationship what are the places where the advantages accrue to you where you can force the Russians to react to what you're doing rather than you react to them is it the Arctic is it in Eastern Europe is it economically in the oil and gas industry where are the places where advantages accrue to the United States that you can play out in a competitive environment which caused the Russians to rethink being aggressive in places where they have escalation dominance first question second question which is related which is that if you have a long-term competitive relationship with the Russians then what are the critical capability gaps that you have what are the capabilities that you really need to develop that you don't have one of the reasons why you're not acting is that you reach into your toolbox and there's nothing in there what are the tools that you need to develop that you don't have thanks good questions in the back of the road good afternoon my name is lilia muslimov I'm from Crimea international student I have two questions relates to Russia relates to Crimea peninsula the first one what do you think about Crimean annexation was it was a long-term plan or it was just tangible opportunity and the second question the first item in your in this slide you said you say about compete with Russia to maintain the international order what do you think is it possible to cooperate or even to compete with country which so brutally break international rules thank you yes sir yes Jonathan Bemis I'm also a consultant here in Washington I was curious how in preparing for this war game you looked at the evolution of Russian policy over the year preceding the war game with respect to eastern Ukraine the way I looked at it I saw a lot of Russian propaganda kind of at the outset of the period that was intended in efforts that were intended to destabilize eastern Ukraine you had separatists quote separatists unquote who were active in places at Yesa Mariupol Slavyansk Donetsk Luchansk at the end of the day nothing happened in Harkiv the largest Russian speaking city in the country nothing happened in Deneppropetrovsk the police were able to deal with the Netsk and Mariupol the quote separatists were thrown out of Slavyansk they ended up with control of a piece of the Luchansk Oblast a piece of the Denepsk Oblast and they would have been you know either in jail now if it hadn't been for the direct intervention of of Russia so in that context it really looks like a large Russian failure because they were not able to instigate any kind of a mass uprising in eastern Ukraine and they're left with this non-viable sliver of land next to the border with Russia you know okay that's my perspective what's your perspective and how does that failure to ignite some kind of a mass uprising in the Russian speaking population in the country how does that figure in to Russia's calculus thank you okay back to the panel I guess the first question I'll actually start in the reverse order here the the example you gave of Russian policy toward eastern Ukraine I'm actually going to combine it with the question on on Crimea whether it was an opportunity or a plan and I think that going into it we saw that the the Crimea was was an opportunity on the back end of the socio-olympics you kind of have forces available I think this I think the eastern Ukraine frankly was another opportunity the difference was is that the geography of Crimea was fairly well set and that that was that's where that opportunity probably had a little more solid than the than in eastern Ukraine we saw the eastern Ukraine movement going back to what we've said before it's it's all about maintaining the regime and that this was those were opportunities to create instability that's probably why you didn't see the traction in other areas frankly was because there's not a there there wasn't a clearly identified geographically limited goal that was the aim of what we saw in eastern Ukraine as opposed to what we saw with Crimea and on the the second part of your question on the can you compete with somebody who's so brutally how do you say that yeah competing yeah sorry breaking international laws yeah that was the English word I was looking for sorry for that I think it's not a question whether you can I think you must Putin is is is a person that sees if you don't react it's a signal of weakness so I think it's not the question whether you can compete in in that environment we believe you have to compete in that environment because that's that's the game he's playing so yeah from the national war college I appreciate your question about capabilities gaps let me take a stab at that one thing that the the US team wish they had more of is available capabilities forward deployed in Europe itself there was a sense that certainly we need to put a floor under what's there now and perhaps move some forces back into Europe simply because it's a long way from you know Fort Riley Kansas to get to somewhere in the NATO area and so that's a that's a capability you know we we base those drawdown decisions on certain assumptions about the international security environment that were made several years ago and we have to be able and willing to go back and re-examine those assumptions as far as force structure in Europe there's another capability there's of course a great deal of discussion about what to do and how to provide support to the the government in Kiev it doesn't always have to do with weapons it is command and control systems communication systems this is just on the military side let alone the economic and political support and of course we have partners OSCE and the EU and the IMF I mean you have a real you have a you know a joint effort from a lot of different governments and different international organizations and regional organizations that are trying to help Kiev it's not just about how many anti-tank weapons we can provide them and one key area though that that the US team worried about a lot was our lack of ability to communicate with the Russian people and the Russian ethnic minorities in other parts of Europe it is true that there has been no mass uprising in other parts of Eastern Europe even a year ago the terrible tragedy in Odessa somehow the new government Kiev has has been able to keep Odessa from and the Russian speaking population in Odessa from rising up and and staging you know you know overthrowing the Ukrainian government or the regional government there so that's a good thing I chalked that up as a success story but in the long term the west needs to reinforce those avenues and mechanisms that it has to communicate the open free press is probably the best way to do it through social media through websites through television in particular for the Russian speaking minorities throughout Europe so that at least they have an alternative source of information to the highly politicized information that's pouring out of Moscow that's very very well funded and it is not just us instruments it's not just the radio free Europe it could be Deutsche Welle it could be the BBC there's any number of avenues that that the west can reach and and communicate the truth to Russian speaking populations okay just on the very quickly on the seasy initiative because I don't think we've and that was one of the larger challenges throughout the exercise ironically if you look at the shocks that we designed they were all targeting the Russian system there were no shocks to the US system yet at each turn when we came back into the plenary session the US team was continually reactive the Russian team was very proactive in each of their moves they they're why we concur Andy with your assessment that we don't think that there will be any type of hybrid type attack if you will on any NATO member yeah exactly yeah granted that's that's that's a fair knock on wood but but that was that was really the assessment was that that that red line is so well known and so well pronounced that there would not be a provocation and one of the other even as we looked at the Russian minorities in the Baltic states the things they have going for them is they've got the their EU membership life is frankly much better in the Baltic states and across the border even if you're a a Russian speaking nationalist so where do we seize the initiative we seize the initiative on some of those diplomatic fronts frankly on on on governance and other contested spaces or what could be contested spaces we seize the initiative through the strength of the NATO alliance and part of that is how we deal with our own you know with our own allies within NATO and how we approach them on areas where we may have disagreements we've got to show that the alliance is in fact solid despite the fact we may not agree on on on different issues whether they're how we use forces or how we how we build in resource forces let me speak and make a comment on the successor failure question it's a very it's a very interesting one I think there's no question that the operation in Crimea was a brilliant success and it was a it was a great head fake too you know you put 40 or 50 000 troops on the border and you come in through the back door into Crimea and then but to what extent should we have been expecting it well I don't claim to be Nostradamus or anything but over the weekend of February 21 22 23 Jeff Jeff Mankoff and I were writing a piece for CSIS and of course it was about the implications of the February 21st Accord which then the Accord fell apart so we had to rewrite it over the weekend and one of the things that inserted there was you know you have to kind of think about a possible asymmetrical reaction and if there's the most likely place for such a reaction would be Crimea it's the least Ukrainian part of Ukraine but yet we do still seemed I mean seemed quite quite surprised quite surprised by it and the fall so the fact that the then the Ukrainian military forces in Crimea completely back back down my concern at that point was that that created an impression for Mr. Putin that the environment was way too permissive that there's no reaction from the west and there would probably be not that much reaction from Ukrainian military forces if there were further you know further incursions into Ukraine which is what I was immediately afraid afraid about on February 28 and that was when my hair was on fire and saying you know we need to mobilize the strongest reaction possible including including sending you know military assistance to Ukraine to try to alter the calculation Mr. Putin said at that moment that the next step you know don't do it don't do it but of course it's almost impossible for our political system to manage a strong response and even more difficult for our European allies at that time now was it a success well I think he miscalculated the degree to which the the Russian supported insurgents would be welcomed in eastern Ukraine and you know Mr. Putin came out on April 17th with the the line about Novorossiya and then but the Novorossiya policy got a very tough defeat in Odessa a few weeks later and subsequently I think the the the ask the aspirations modulated to what extent were how broad were the aspirations in the in the beginning it's impossible for me to say but there's an old Russian phrase the appetite grows with eating but so we'll leave it will this you know will this be judged a success or a failure I think it's too early to tell frankly because if we get back to Steve's point which I agree with and that the foreign and domestic policy are so intertwined then it gets back to well how long is Mr. Putin going to continue enjoying a 25 percent increase in his popular support mainly because of activities in in Ukraine there are differing views about about that we had a very good presentation here at CSIS on April 28th by Mikhail Demitriyev that's up up on our website but one of the things that he argued that if you look in the past when economic downturns have occurred there's usually been some kind of time lag between the impact of the economic downturn on the support for the for the for the president so it'll be interesting to see how to what extent the political opinion polls hold at the level where they are and for and for how long okay we have time time for one more round I saw the gentleman in the gray shirt and then sir gay yes thank you gentlemen eric vetro us European command question to your about the information Russian propaganda we're clearly it's an effort we're not winning and a lot of this is due to one the unified nature of the Russian information warfare state-run media but also the fact that their propaganda isn't so much convincing the average Ukrainian but making them doubt everything even doubting the truth besides pure capabilities do you think our approach to just countering their propaganda is working when frankly the populace we're trying to influence is very cynical at this point of anything to include the truth or do you think we need a new approach okay sir gerek sashenkan on resident and prukins I have I wonder have you elaborated in your exercise two options first Russian invasion of Belarus for example and second Russian Russian massive cyber attack for example against Estonia where government is strongly reliant on internet and it's an electronic government in fact or for example stock exchange in Warsaw that is very important financial center in eastern Europe is it a case for article five gone back to the panel and you can conclude as well yeah okay yeah I'll take the last question about cyber attack yeah I wasn't we don't have one we don't have consensus about everything so when we said that he will never go into the Baltic States I'm not quite sure about that he won't do that with tanks I'm pretty sure about that so actually in our in our war game we did one of the the injects was the the the conflict in Ukraine going out of hand and it was a combination with with smaller attacks cyber attacks in other places so yeah we consider that and that that brought us to the to the idea that Putin is not so much that's how I believe looking for a gain of terrain or and he's looking for a greater Russia but he needs some some sort of conflict going on to keep the momentum within the elections that we will have in 2018 so we'll think that as long as it's the conflict stays in Ukraine that will be his his main interest and as soon as that that dies out he might try and cyber will be one of the the ways he could try that in other places as well yeah I think talking about article five and there's a big red line everybody says in article five I agree to that but I think it's a very thick line as well so whether he crosses it I think he's too smart for that but he will stay just into the line and and with cyber that's really hard to tell and and it's it's really hard to make one clear stand on this is article five and this is not so yeah just on the on the article five that's exactly that was the debate that happened inside the US team was what is going to constitute an article five attack was the cyber attack in Estonia an article five violation what about bear overflights what about other smaller violations of sovereignty what are we going to consider article five there was some some talk of does it need to be rewritten and the and and frankly I think the consensus going out was no because it's it's written it's the way it's currently written is is fine what might need to happen is a discussion about what does it mean in a new environment it was clearly written in the washington treaty on our different environment where some of these other challenges simply didn't didn't have a way to materialize but now that's the next step is we've got to determine what what does that mean and and as Gertran said it's it's probably a thick line and then that's up for the the council to decide is on what when is the line going to be thick and when is it going to be very thin the broad interpretation of the article five for the red team allowed them to hedge their bets to use their toolkit to push up to the line and stop and then create that tension and NATO that's that's what we saw as a goal of the red team quite often if it might also add to Karen's remarks and really addressing one of the questions earlier about what what can we see as the initiative rush team was very concerned over the economic dependence and interdependence of of europe i think if the u.s were to to go forward that might be some avenues of initiative that certainly west can can seize upon is sort of precluding that ability of Russia in the near abroad to control the economic dependency if you might oftentimes the russia team as Karen made mention of would would go right up to that that red line that very thick red line and they acknowledge the fact that they could spin the narrative far faster than the west could so i think you mentioned the question about is there a way to change our info ops i think certainly being faster would would probably would probably certainly help the united states in the in the future while obviously i'm an air force guy and we prefer our safety reports and our after accident reports to to be clear and concise certainly getting a message out quickly after an airliner shot down may have actually improved us flexibility rather than waiting until all of the truth the truth is done as as my small insight and just as a concluding comment i agree with with chris sometimes i getting you know your best information out quickly is better than waiting for weeks and having a thorough complete report that's an aspect of the competition we have to understand this competition though it doesn't have to be u.s. government sources of information and i think it we in the west should not be hung up on just responding to distortions and lies and pointing them out i think we have to provide a positive message to the russian speaking population about what is happening in the west how do the people live how do their governments treat them and then that's a long-term strategy but that's i think the the one that we have to approach and then finally i want to draw your attention again to the point four up there there is a concern that we have two election cycles rolling up in the next two or three years that have the potential to have some negative interference with each other uh we're uh would hope that the us russia policy towards russia does not become highly politicized during the 2016 presidential campaign which has already begun uh and you hear uh you know foreshadowing of that and some you know politicians making statements or asking rude questions um but uh and the new administration uh and the new president whoever he or she may be coming into office in uh january of 2017 will uh be coming smack into a period of priority need on the part of russia to do something to make an impact for their own election cycle a year or so later and we have to be aware of the potential for a dangerous situation in 2017 well i think it's time to to wrap up and i'd like to make a concluding comment uh first of all thanking georgian joe jim chris and karen for coming here to csis today and sharing uh the fruits of their labors so to speak from the work of the net assessment of russia and then the subsequent war game that was carried out uh last last month and one thought occurred to me that um and it was in response really to the question about uh the the importance of a secretary secretary carries trip to sochi and other state department and other u.s. government uh engagement with russia and the the the the issue of mutual communication is so important uh right now never in the i started traveling to the soviet union in 1979 and never have i seen in 36 years a wider disparity between the narratives that are being told uh in our in our in our two capitals and uh you know certainly not everything about our narrative is right and not everything about the russian narrative is is wrong there are different perceptions of in many cases the the same same events and the fact that we're not talking to each other about them as much as we should be doing in some ways we're actually talking less than we were during the so during soviet times i think is a real detriment that increases the danger for miscalculations accidents um and bad policy uh frankly and so maybe one small effort that i would suggest is that i think would be interesting exercise to do a scenario like this that included uh russians europeans and americans but on mixed teams and i think we would learn a lot from each other about uh how we see different phenomena uh through a different lens but how that different lens may not necessarily be right or wrong but we need to understand really uh to i think make better policy towards each other so thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and wisdom with us today and thank you all for coming