Interview Michael Kofman
Attention: First, a brief summary for Kleine Zeitung; subsequently, the original extended version in English.
Achtung: zunächst Kurzfassung für die Kleine Zeitung; anschließend Original in der englischen Langfassung
Interview Michael Kofman, the original extended version in English.
20241017 Michael Kofman Interview
It is a good timing because Volodymyr Zelensky today in Kiev has presented his so-called plan of victory, his victory plan. It includes that he demands NATO membership, it includes the possibility to fight on Russian territory with Western weapons. I mean, I'm sure you know this plan because there are a lot of elements which are not very new. How do you comment on this plan? Because the question for me is how realistic is this plan at all?
0:02:50
Well, yeah, it's a good question. So I think the plan involves some pretty significant asks by Ukraine, not just for the United States, but Western countries writ large. Some of these are more tactical operational, such as the lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range strike weapons in Russia. Some are fundamental to the questions of the security architecture of Europe, such as giving Ukraine NATO membership, or at least promising it, as part of the armistice or settlement of this war. And then a whole star strategic regarding future investment in Ukraine, Ukrainian integration into Europe and etc.
I'm not sure this is so much a victory plan because the theory of success as to how this gets Russia to the negotiating table in this war, that it compels Russia to the negotiating table, isn't clear. If anything, to me this reads like, what might be a plan to win the peace, in the sense that the dilemma Ukraine has is any agreement they make with Russia is likely to lead to a rearmament period and the potential launch of another war.
That's been the past experience. This war is a continuation war of the 2014 war. And so the question for Ukraine is how can it get security guarantees and how can it get commitments from the West in order to ensure itself and to make any deal stick, right? Otherwise an agreement made that is just for argument's sake is not going to be worth more than the paper it is written on. And so I interpret this plan as sort of part of that broader vision and it really in some ways expresses what Ukrainian leadership thinks their requirements are. The question you have is any of this is realistic. How much of this is actually new, given that Ukraine's been asking for quite a bit of this over the past two years? And I think the more interesting question is simply one of timing. US in unlikely to move on any of this until we've seen the outcome of the election in November. And following the election, there will be undoubtedly a transition period. And so I don't anticipate a new strategy or a new policy coming out of the United States until sometime early next year. And so I think this is part of the challenge that Ukrainian leadership is dealing with is the timing of their proposal isn't particularly well aligned. And I understand that this is a war, and of course for them it's an existential war, so Western political calendars be damned. But notherless where democracy and the reality is that much how realistic this plan is or any aspect of it is likely to be determined in the next couple of weeks.
0:06:37
On the other hand, I mean, this leads to the question which the US election looming, what effects could this have on the Ukrainian war. I mean, okay, I heard one position said if Harris wins it's good for Ukraine, bad for Israel, if Trump wins it's bad for Ukraine, good for Israel. I do not know if this is too much of a placard obviously or too much of a slogan because my impression is that besides the question who will win, there are two facts. First, the United States will less be ready to pay. And secondly for me the question, the United States will not ready to give any guarantees in the Budapest memorandums, is their assurances. If Ukraine is demanding NATO membership, it does not demand NATO membership to be protected by Montenegro, Slovenia and Croatia. It demands NATO membership to be protected by the United States. So, besides the question who will be president, it really chances the United States are ready for such a commitment.
0:07:47
Yeah, so, first, I think folks are overly fixating on who is going to be president without asking who is going to control the House, because that's actually going to determine the funding available to sustain Ukraine's war effort. And that's a much more structural component of this rather than a policy component. Meaning if Republicans control the House, they might be much less inclined to provide significant additional funding to Ukraine. And then who is president is actually far less significant if there's no funding and no material available to sustain the war. Their options will be circumscribed by the resources they have to work with. Right? On the potential policies of either administration, so it is far too speculative until you see who are the actual principles after the election. In DC people tend to be policy. Until you've seen who the people will be, and many of them themselves do not know, it is a bit of a Game of thrones as to how these things play out here. And I'm sure much the same in other European capitals. So you first have to see who the principles will be and then you can make some sound judgments as to what the policies are likely to be. I would say that folks presume, I'm sure presume, that Harris would be much better for Ukraine than Trump and Vance. I think in Ukraine and in Kiev, in my interaction with folks there, I've not heard such a one-sided opinion. It somewhat depends, to be perfectly honest. Or at the very least, there are nuances there. And either way, regarding a commitment to NATO. So, what's interesting about NATO is the United States just by itself wanting to get Ukraine into NATO isn't enough. That's what we discovered in the Bucharest summit in 2008.
The history shows that contrary to popular belief, despite the immense influence that the United States has, just because the United States wants something doesn't mean it's going to happen in NATO. This were Euroepans sustain a fairly strong voice. And I'm not sure I've seen significant movement, or at least I don't expect significant movement in the U.S. on this question without coordination with Germany and other major European powers. Lastly, NATO is many things, but to put it simplistically, it is not just a club where the United States is the doorman.
And at the end of the day, as we've seen even most recently in easy cases like Sweden, attaining membership can be a more difficult road than folks anticipate or expect.
0:12:42
With Ukraine approaching the mud season and the winter, how do you assess the current military situation at the front line? Because at the East at least we have small but permanently an extension of Russian forces, they are going to Uglitar, then other cities. How do you see this situation on the front line now before the March season is starting?
0:13:26
Sure. So, look, it's clear that the situation's been trending negatively for much of the past year in this war. Russia retains a strategic initiative along the front line and has a significant material advantage. Ukrainian forces now are stretched thin on a fairly broad front, maybe about 1,300 kilometers in length, if you include Kursk, the Kursilium. They're exhausted and they've been facing a very difficult fight over the course of the past year. That said, the Russian advantage has not proven decisive in that while the Russian military has been making steady gains, pressing the Ukrainian military across Donetsk and also by Kupyansk, it's not enabled them to achieve operational breakthroughs, right?
That is, the gains have come at significant cost to both equipment and manpower. And after all these months, we're only now seeing both sides prepare for the siege of Pokrovsk, and Russian forces have still, at least still so far, not broken through Chasiv Yar to hold Kramatorsk and Sloviansk at risk.
So the two main issues I see are that the war at this point isn't really about who controls the next several kilometers of the Donbas. Yes, it's clear that Russia's minimal goal is to take at least the Donbas, and I think more broadly to destroy Ukraine's viability as a state. I'll turn to that in a minute, right? But Russian forces still have a long way to go before they're able to may achieve this objective, and the real fight right now is fundamentally about who will break first, which is will the Russian offensive be exhausted when come winter, in which case Russian military will still continue fighting into 2025, but the relative advantage is likely to decrease. They have significant manpower and equipment issues and their advantage in firepower is also likely to decrease as well, just because Western output of ammunition is increasing steadily.
Alternatively, Ukraine is now under or has been for the past recent months under the worst pressures faced in this war since the spring of 2022.
And Ukraine is challenged to stabilize its manpower situation and to find a point at the front when they can hold Russian forces. And most importantly, avoid a major collapse of the front. One of the challenges the Ukrainian military has is it's trying to find defensible lines in which to make a stance, and if Prokhorovsk is lost, then Russia ends up taking control of a major transit hub, and then it'll become much harder to stabilize at least this part of the front.
The second part to keep in mind is that increasingly the more significant aspect of this war is a strike campaign being conducted by both sides. The Russian strike campaign against Ukraine's critical infrastructure, which has significant implications for the economy, for the people, and Ukraine's ability to sustain the war effort. So we have yet to see how this winter will go. And Ukraine's growing strike campaign against Russia and Russian infrastructure employing their own domestically produced drones. Whatever happens with the front line, I suspect that these respective strike campaigns are going to grow more significant over time. Lastly, there's the question of Kursk. Kursk was a gamble. It was tactically successful as an offensive for Ukraine, but so far it has not produced the operational results they'd hoped for. I think they hope that Kursk will divert a significant number of Russian forces from the Pokrovsk-Torezk Chasov Yar axes of attack in the Donbas, and this hasn't happened. Secondarily, I think Ukraine hoped that Kursk would bring tangible political benefits and change the narrative and discourse on the war. It may have done that temporarily, but I think it's fair to say that far, those benefits haven't really materialized. Or at the very least, as you start this conversation on the victory plan, for example, so far I've not seen any positive responses or changes in policy regarding these issues.
You know, the Russian offensive accelerated quite notably after the Kursk operation began. So, I won't say there's a one-for-one trade-off between defending the Donbas and offensive and curse. And I understand why Ukraine did it in some respects as a sort of insurance policy that if they were forced to negotiate with Russia in the coming months, they would at least have something to negotiate with in terms of the cards they were holding, right? But so far, I've not seen it play out that way.
Okay, this is the sort of short summary of the situation that I think we're in. Much is going to be determined by this fall and winter. The big question is, can Ukraine stabilize the front and exhaust Russian forces at the peak of Russia's material advantage this year. And the second question is what will be the impact of the Russian strike campaign on Ukraine's ability to sustain the war and the Ukrainian economy? And these matters very much remain in question. As I told folks, military analysis is not fortune-telling, so we cannot predict the outcomes of specific This agenda being highly contagious.
0:20:29
But I mean, it is clear that this is a war of attrition.
And this is also almost three years and we have this ups and downs. We have also a huge potential even to destroy critical infrastructure in Ukraine, even much more worth; one example was the Kachowska dam. But if you would have to compare both sides, Ukrainian or Russian side, you have mentioned also the shortcoming on manpower on the Russian side, many soldiers died, many fled the country. But if you could compare, what is your perspective, what would be the criteria to evaluate which side has more chances in surviving under quotation marks this war for Trish?
0:21:26
So the challenge is that this is a war where Ukraine's prospects are heavily tied to external support. Without external support, this war would very much have the arc likely of the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland, okay? In that Ukraine was able to successfully resist the initial Russian invasion, but the critical factor beyond Ukraine's will to fight fundamentally was direct military support and assistance from the West in terms of material equipment, training, planning, and intelligence support. Without that, it's very likely that Ukraine would have lost this war, maybe in 2022, certainly by 2023. So, your question depends somewhat on the extent to which Ukraine can actually maintain Western support. So far, the two big issues I see on the Ukrainian side is fundamentally a deficit of manpower and training capacity, which has come to the fore over the past year, and challenges in command and control and coordination of the war effort, but also the fact that Western countries simply have not come up with enough equipment to restore offensive potential to the Ukrainian military, right? In a sense that the commitments being made are far shorter what Ukraine requires.
The commitments being made on air and missile defense are also far short of what Ukraine requires in order to effectively defend the country. And unless that changes, I see that the prospect remains for Ukraine to drag out the war, right? But it's very difficult for Ukraine to attain the necessary leverage to achieve war termination on favorable terms with this level of assistance. And also with their own challenges in mobilization, and we have to keep in mind, I do not like pointing the causal arrow solely at the West, which folks commonly like to do without forgetting that this is principally Ukraine's war and many of the decisions that have led to the outcomes of this war have been political decisionsmade in Kiev, right?
In the sense that they too have significant agency and we should not ignore Ukrainian agency and how certain things went, such as the summer 2023 offensive. On the Russian side, so on paper Russia appears advantaged, but Russia also has significant issues. I think that time-wise you could argue that Russia has more time, but nonetheless, looking at the problems they have with manpower, with equipment, okay, and much of the Russian equipment is coming out of stocks, is essentially eating through its Soviet legacy. It is notreplacing it with newly built manufactured equipment. Looking at the significantly increased price that they're paying to sustain their losses, I think the reality is that the Russian military is unlikely to sustain this intensity of offensive operations into 2025. And that they will be faced with the need to conduct another partial mobilization, which they very clearly do not want to do.
And if their strike campaign is unable to break Ukraine, and I think Ukraine will get through the winter, just a question of how costly it will be, then I think they too face significant challenges with their theory of victory, right? In that if the war drags on well into 2025, Russia is actually not that well positioned to attain many of their demands that they've issued to Ukraine and their hand is not that particularly strong. And so I hope to balance the impression of both the difficult and precarious position that Ukraine finds itself in, but also the reality that despite Russia being advantaged in this war, if you look at how the war has actually gone on, I mean, you're right it's a war of attrition, but all wars are fundamentally wars of attrition. Attrition is an inherent characteristic of any war, right?
If you look at how the war has gone on, it would be difficult to explain the outcomes we have seen the advantages Russia has on paper, yeah? Meaning, if you just take a rote assessment of superiority in manpower, equipment, and what have you, you expect a significantly improved performance. But the truth is that both sides have very much struggled with breaking through a prepared defense and with employing forces effectively on a large scale. And so all those advantages don't necessarily add up to the capacity to make very significant gains or breakthroughs.
0:26:34
Beyond weapons and ammunition, I mean, we have very often reports of the question, how well-trained are soldiers, which are sent from Ukraine on the front lines saying one month. And if I have talked with officers who are training people with Kalashnikovs, only with Kalashnikovs, then the question to stand the stress under when artillery is firing, drones are firing, then the question how you are able really to act in combined weapons in German Kampf der Verbundenen Waffen.
How do you see it, this situation, also Ukrainians' possibility and ability, because very often we have seen that major failures were done also by this rotating system and other questions, because it's the only question of ammunition and weaponry.
0:27:28
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, by the way, been the challenge in some of the discourse here in the West about this war. As folks kept expecting that the next weapon and the next capability would bring some significant advantages, whereas large-scale conventional war has fundamentally come down to attrition, adaptation by both forces, and most importantly, reconstitution, the ability to replace manpower, equipment, ammunition, and regenerate the force. So the reality is that at this point in the war, neither army, Russia's or Ukraine's,is remotely similar to what it was when the war began. Ukraine has lost a fair amount of its experienced personnel, junior leadership, and the better part of the force that it had in 2022 and heading into 2023. Much of the same for Russia.
Both armies are now comprised of personnel that have had a modicum of training but fundamentally learned what they need to learn on the battlefield.
Ukraine has had structural issues both with mobilization that they've sought to address since May and also with training. Basic training in Ukraine is woefully short of what is needed, which is why many Ukrainian units conduct their own basic training for personnel, because they do not trust that the people who have been mobilized received any real basic training at all.
Collective training in the West needs to be significantly expanded.
The Russian side, in many ways, isn't much better in terms of the training offered to the individuals that they contract. And on top of that, Russia is dependent on convicts for a percentage of the force that they use in various types of assault detachments.
So, the reality that you see is that both sides tend to some extent replace the quantity but are really struggling to replace the quality of the forces. That is why it is much harder for them to restore the capacity to conduct maneuver warfare at any scale, right? And why you have grinding battles as a defining characteristic of this war, and a lot of positional fighting, more so than large advances and sweeping thrusts by other forces.
I think on the Ukrainian side, they've taken a lot of steps this year to address their manpower situation, but the problem is that these are policies that they really should have pursued starting at the very least in late 2022, when it became clear that Russia had accepted that this was going to be a protracted conventional war. Following Russian mobilization and defense industrial mobilization, I think folks in the West in general failed to make the right adaptations, the right investment in production of ammunition, for example, in other areas, and still assumed that it was possible to achieve a decisive outcome in this war in 2023, by summer of 2023, not offensive.
And so we are now, in large part, the sum of decisions that were not made earlier in the war, because those choices carry significant inertia. And in part as an answer to your earlier question, whoever is President of the United States in January of next year will have already inherited a situation in this war that will significantly constrain their options based on the choices that were made much earlier this year. And folks fail to appreciate that, that these decisions, or lack thereof, have significant inertia in shaping outcomes in this war. So I hope that at least is a partial answer to your question. And well, let me turn it back over to you.
2
0:31:58
Yes, thanks. There was most recently there was a kind of fair and an exhibition of Ukrainian armament industry mainly drones, electronic warfare in Kiev I was there and this leads to the question And European Union and others are trying to help Ukraine to build up sound if their own defense industry .How much do you think Ukraine is able to compensate lack of Western support or continuous support, large support by developing her own defense industry? Because there are no tanks, no planes, drones, artillery are there.
0:32:45
Yeah, so look, in terms of pursuing power parity, you're going to get a lot more from investment in Ukraine's defense industry in areas where they're comparatively advantaged. For example, production of drones of different types, production of drone munitions, production of certain types of long-range strike systems, ground-launched cruise missiles, and these types of capabilities. And Ukraine is capable of producing certain types of artillery, for example, Bogdanov howitzer, and has a steadily onlining production of its own artillery shells.
Ukraine is very much circumscribed or limited by the fact that in most categories they cannot produce entire weapons platforms or systems, right? And on the munitions side, one of the biggest deficits Ukraine has is that Ukraine cannot produce for the artillery rounds itself. Much the same goes for air defense interceptors and various types of missiles. So, the truth is that, on the one hand, Ukraine's defense industrial complex is heavily undercapitalized. I think a fair estimate is by at least 50% compared to the capacity that's available there. So much so that Ukraine is now openly discussing exporting drones of various types simply to raise revenue in foreign exchange for its own defense sector while in the midst of this war.
Most Western money has gone on to Western equipment and replacing it and production in Western countries rather than Ukraine. But on the other hand, if you look at the veritable zoo of Western equipment that Ukraine's inherited, it is very clear that the West will be heavily involved in supporting the Ukrainian military for the foreseeable future, both in terms of providing equipment, munitions, but also maintenance, repair, and what have you. And that's why you see all these local offices opening up from Western firms like Rheinmetall in Ukraine itself.
And you're likely going to see expanded Western presence just to service what Ukraine has inherited and been given by Western countries. So, I don't see that capacity being significantly altered in the future. And in some areas, the funding base will have to be significantly expanded.
I'll give you one particular example.
While folks are rightly to be excited about the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine, if you appreciate that Ukraine is likely to only receive several wings of F-16 aircraft, then you must also understand that they will have to come with a significant parts and maintenance and support package, which will be an added cost burden that has to be figured for the coming decades.
0:00:00
Look, you have written an article in FA in 2023 with Robert Lee. You mentioned there, that beyond the Ukrainian offensive the West will need a long-term strategy for Ukraine. Is the Western preparedness for a long term strategy in your point of view now better than a year ago oris this long-term strategy still insufficient?
0:00:42
So depends on what I mean by the word long-term, right?
I thought that there was a reasonable strategy looking out 12 months that was being pursued early this year. I think the challenge is that in general, one, the West is not a unitary actor, okay? It's a political community, right? There isn't a sole center of decision-making in the West.
Secondarily, the strategy that existed clearly has been adrift in that there hasn't been a great alignment in Western strategy with Ukraine, and hopefully that's what's going to happen in the coming months. I think one of the potential outcomes of the Kursk Offensive is that it'll prompt a series of conversations that will lead us towards the establishment of a new vision, a new approach for how to end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine.
The challenge I see is first the strategy that was developed certainly late last year simply wasn't resourced. And one of the biggest challenges we had was the congressional roadblock on passing the supplemental until late spring. It's all fine and good to talk about strategy, but if you don't have the means for the strategy you developed, then it's not going to happen.
Since then, we have been pursuing a general plan, I think, around the concept of hold, build, and strike. Hold Russia to incremental gains this yearstabilize the front, rebuild the offensive potential of the Ukrainian military, which will take some time, well into 2025, and expand the strike campaign against Russia, which would, I think, undoubtedly require much greater support and assistance for long-range strikes being conducted by Ukraine in order to dramatically raise the cost to Russia and to impair the sustainment of Russia's war effort.
And that campaign has actually expanded and has started to show results over the course of this year. The challenge with trying to form strategy is that certainly in the United States, we're at the end of an administration.
And so this is not the time when you anticipate new strategies to be developed, policies to be significantly changed, and so on. That's much more likely earlier next year. I think from the Ukrainian point of view, I sense a great deal of frustration because undoubtedly they feel they don't have the time, meaning they don't have the time to wait for the U.S. political calendar, and they need to begin putting the pieces in place for compelling Russia towards a favorable outcome now, rather than waiting further down the line into 2025, and especially given the uncertainty that they don't know what they will actually face in US politics at that point.
0:03:59
Two questions finally. One is Kursk. I mean one of my association with Kursk was the German Adenen offensive in the end of 1944 or in the United States, the battle of the Bulks and finally because in fact Germany tried to do something in the West when they were, when they lost everything, they were exhausted and it came to the final collapse of the German army. I mean, the war was lost at this time, it's clear.
But in which then this offensive had no strategic result but extended the front line, so it's an additional burden for Ukraine.
0:04:47
So, on Kursk, I think we have to see how it actually plays out because- Look, you can make these comparisons, right, and many of us reason by analogy, but this is in World War II, and the circumstances are quite different. And as I often tell other analysts, you can find many parallels, but you have to make sure not to ignore the differences, you know.
To put it another way, there's a lot of similarities between a tiger and a zebra with a few very important differences.
If you select for the similarities, you might make sense as a gamble. What effect it's ultimately going to have in the history of this world is a bit too early to tell. And I can tell on one hand you could argue that Ukraine was better off focusing on defense and exhaust the Russian forces in Donbass, because from attrition point of view, that was the most cost-effective way of holding the Russian offensive.
On the other hand, it's very hard to sustain a war for a year without having some positive successes, without seizing the initiative. And how are you going to motivate people to sign up for the Army if you're trying to expand mobilization if what you're doing in practice is defending or slowly retreating? So I can see why folks in Kiev believe that without any kind of offensive or success, the West would increasingly lose hope. And thus, this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that Western countries would increasingly reduce their support, and then Ukraine would be forced to negotiate from a position of relative weakness as a consequence of a steady reduction of Western assistance, because folks would have lost hope that a theory of success existed to achieve decisive leverage over Russia.
0:07:35
Last question. I mean, this war has dramatically changed and I can say the last years, although technically because when I was in 2014, for example, in Donetsk, it was the beginning to use drones mostly for intelligence, as they started to small hand grenades putting your summary how this war in Ukraine will affect defense planning, will affect questions how soldiers would have to be trained, how for example tanks can be used, we see all these different equipments now. Is there anything we can already say about what does this war mean for future military planning?
0:08:29
I mean, there's a great deal we could say. In fact, we could spend the next several days simply discussing that topic. So there is no short, glib answer to that question. And I'm afraid I'll have to leave you unsatisfied, but I have written extensively on this subject as have other defense analysts who have worked in Ukraine.
The issue is that it's important to separate the context of this war which is quite particular as it is in any war and differentiate between observations in this war and lessons learned on the character of war in general.
To be clear, the nature of war remains a human endeavor, it's a contest of wills. And this war shows that as much as any other conflict, on the one hand. On the other hand, it shows that the character of war continues to evolve, but it is comprised of much more than just technology. Combat effectiveness in this war is very much premised on force employment, how you use the forces you have, big decisions on force structure, on organizational capacity, the actual software of the military, not just the hardware, but the ability of your force to conduct complex operations on a larger scale. And of course, the capabilities themselves, which evolve fairly quickly along the tackets.
I think that the war has quite valuable lessons, certainly for Western countries. But it also has important enduring lessons on the need for defense industrial mobilization capacity, on the need to have a plan to reconstitute your forces beyond the initial period of war, on the fact that the West is quite short in terms of armaments and munitions relative to the requirements of sustaining a conventional war in Europe, that in many cases is a result of the peace dividend going back to the 90s and 2000s, but we also see the consequences of underinvestments, plain and clear.
Maybe less an issue for Austria, given its disposition and location, but certainly much more of an issue for other European countries, especially those bordering Russia.
And lastly, I think quite a bit needs to be revisited regarding NATO defense plans and the readiness of forces amongst Western militaries to contribute to them, particularly in the initial period of war. When we look a bit further down the line from this war, and I'll conclude on this point, it's hard to guess when the Russian military will reconstitute from this conflict to pose a major threat to, or significant threat to NATO members. But it is safe to say that this is not an if, but a when.
And the evidence increasingly suggests the Russian forces are likely to reconstitute sooner from this war rather than later, based on the trajectory of Russian defense spending, Russian defense industrial mobilization, and reconstitution.
And so, even though most of our conversations focus on the war, folks should also have an eye on the implications for Europe and for NATO as the principal alliance managing security in Europe beyond this war.
0:12:13
But if you say this, sorry, if we have service that, for example, less than 20% of the Germans are ready to fight for their country. So I mean, you can have the best ammunition, the best weapons, the best defense planning, if you have no threat, no readiness to fight, it does not really help. So there must be done much more, I think, than only defense planning and all these kind of things.
0:12:41
So I don't want to say something that's going to be, I think, a decidedly American comment, or certainly a comment of somebody from the United States. But the observation I would make is that Europe could certainly do more in recovering a degree of strategic thinking and strategic culture that accommodates both the prospect of large-scale conventional war in Europe, which we see unfolding since 2022, what such a war requires, and the need to think beyond militaries that are specialized or overly adapted to fight as complements to the U.S. military, even though that is the defining paradigm of our forces in Europe, simply for the sake of the fact that these militaries lack sufficient capacity.
And I think in some cases, the political leadership, despite genuflecting and signaling that they appreciate that things have changed in European security still haven't taken the steps to really communicate this to their own public.
In the case of Germany, I'm not an expert on Germany, although I travel to Europe pretty frequently. I think that political leaders will be very surprised by the public reaction if they actually communicate the importance of these issues and choose to lead on them. And that's the only comment I will make.
Thank you fort he interview
