Sea Control - Sea Control 180 - Narrow Seas: The Black Sea with LTG (ret) Ben Hodges

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

Links:One Flank, One Threat, One PresenceThe Naval Power Shift in the Black SeaRussia's Strategy in the Black Sea BasinGeopolitical Gerrymandering and the Importance of Key Maritime TerrainWargaming of the Black Sea SecurityNaval Warfare Scenarios for 2020

Hey folks, it's Jared. Thanks for tuning in. Our Project Trident collaboration with Marine Corps University's Brut Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity kicks off here. We have Lieutenant General Retired Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe on the podcast to discuss the maritime and geopolitical situation in the Black Sea region. I also want to highlight SimSec's next collaboration for Project Trident. If you don't follow SimSec on Twitter, go do so now or visit the website at simsec.org.

If you're interested in shaping the future of international maritime security, this is your opportunity. We'll be working with stable seas on ocean governance next. More information on questions and content can be found on our website at simsec.org. Submissions can be emailed to content at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we're discussing maritime security in the Black Sea with our guest, the former commander

of U.S. Army Europe, Lieutenant General Retired Ben Hodges. General, thank you so much for joining us. Sure. Thanks for the privilege. So, General, what's led you to focus more on maritime affairs since you departed active duty? A couple of things. First, when I retired, I went to work for SEPA, Center for European Policy Analysis, which is a D.C.-based think tank which has traditionally focused on NATO and on Central and Eastern Europe. And so the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea obviously are part and parcel of the area that SEPA has focused on. So I realized that I needed to understand better what the U.S. Navy's doing, what NATO's navies are doing, and of course all the different aspects of naval strategy and maritime strategy. And then while I was still in

the Army, I had three great Navy teammates as well as shipmates, Admiral Klingin, Admiral Ferguson, and Admiral Fogo. All three of them were at U.S. Navy Europe when I was in the NATO Land Command and then when I moved to U.S. Army Europe. And all three of them, I mean, these are three really good officers. Yes, sir. And I'm going to divert a little bit from the Black Sea here for our first question. As I met you back in Hamburg in 2019, you were pretty intensely interested in the port of Bremerhaven, as well as the other northern European ports and the infrastructure surrounding those. So I think we can agree that canceling Defender 2020 was the correct thing to do, given the circumstances. Did you get to see what you wanted to as far as flexing European transit

infrastructure? So to be precise, the Defender 20 was curtailed, not canceled. So they still got to do about half of what was originally planned. And of course, a disappointment for all the people that worked so hard for the past year to prepare for it. But I would say from the macro level, we accomplished two strategic objectives. The fact that the United States was willing to invest so much time and effort and money into this exercise sent a strong signal to our European allies that the United States is committed in Europe. And of course, the second thing is that it sent a strong signal to the Kremlin that the United States is committed to deterrence in Europe, although it also showed the vulnerability when something like the pandemic

comes along. It affects host nation support because the nations that were involved, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, they all had to turn and focus on dealing with the pandemic. So that was not simply a U.S. decision to curtail. The most important thing that we got done, though, was, I say we, that the Army and U.S. European Command got done was the coordination that's required getting to know the infrastructure across Europe, the people who work, and it's mostly civilian and commercial, obviously, the rail, the seaports, moving through all the different communities, understanding the infrastructure that would be required in a crisis, this host nation support. And, of course, reminded, as always, the lack of adequate sea lift

to do what needs to be done. Defender 20 was something that was in planning for a year. And in a shorter-term crisis, when you don't have months and months to order and request ships to carry everything, I think this is a vulnerability that we have, especially if our strategy depends on rapid reinforcement. Thank you, sir. Let's head over to the Black Sea then, which is the focus of this episode. Why do you think the Black Sea is so important to NATO? So the Black Sea is where Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Eurasia all converge. Typically, the Black Sea is on the bottom right-hand corner of most maps in NATO, and so we don't think about the region as much as we do other parts of Europe. But if you take the map and move the Black Sea to the middle of the map,

and then you start realizing this convergence of these regions, you start to see why it's important. And it's also kind of the frontier between the West and Russia and China. So in this era of great power competition, the Black Sea becomes increasingly important. You have three NATO allies there, of course, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. And then you've got three partner countries, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, as well as Russian Federation. The Black Sea is important to NATO, not only because we have to protect those allies, but because it's so important to Russia. It is the launching pad for the Kremlin for everything that they're doing in Syria, in the Eastern Mediterranean, and even into Libya. Everything that they're doing there

has to come from the Black Sea. So what impact has the European Defense Initiative have had on the Black Sea region in particular? I can't tell specifically in the Black Sea region. We do have a basing agreement in Romania near Constanta, which is on the Black Sea, at a place called MK, which is a Romanian airbase and international airport. And so the U.S. has had like a logistics hub there for several years. The Americans call it MK. It's actually Mikhail is the name of the airport, so you can see why the troops call it MK. We started growing that a few years ago when I was still at U.S. Army Europe to begin to have our own launching pad, if you will, a platform for power projection into the Black Sea region.

So we have used some EDI money to help improve the railhead and ammunition storage and things like that there. Most of the European Deterrence Initiative money, however, has been focused on Poland and Baltic countries. And sir, how would you assess Moscow's Black Sea strategy? Is it sea denial or sea control? Clearly, the Kremlin wants total sea control of the Black Sea. The Black Sea fleet is significant. They've got seven submarines that are based there that we know of, and the facilities that they've established in Crimea, their claims to territorial waters and exclusive economic zone tied to the Crimean Peninsula demonstrates how important it is to them and their desire to make sure that they completely dominate and control the Black Sea.

For us, of course, we want, I think, given things that we can talk about as we go along, I think our capacity and priorities, we should be aiming for sea denial to have the potential in place to deny the Russians the ability to use the Black Sea as that launching pad if we had a crisis. What have the Russians done to improve their position since the Georgian War in 2008? Well, of course, the most obvious thing is the seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and followed by illegal annexation. The work that they've done to make that place pretty difficult to attack. So So you've got the naval bases there and the air bases, significant capability in terms of missile defense systems, their ability to strike targets out almost across the entire Black Sea.

So it is, I know the A2AD acronym is not loved everywhere, but in the absence of another sort of easy way to describe it, they can touch about 95% of the Black Sea from the peninsula with different capabilities. That's one part of it. The other part, though, is with the building of the bridge over the Kerch Straits. I mean, a second lieutenant on day one would recognize that this was a blockade of the Sea of Azov, part of choking out the Ukrainians so that the ability of Ukraine to use. The very important ports of Berdansk and Mariupol are severely limited. So this is another part of their strengthening their position, if you will, in the area. And then part of it is

in the economic sphere or in the economic domain, their efforts to make sure that Georgia did not complete or never really got totally started on this port project of Anaklia, that if Georgia have been able to build this deep water port there at the Naclia, Georgia would have become a portal, the logistics hub between Eurasia and Europe. And if that happens, then everybody in Europe, Germany, the Netherlands, and so on, they start investing there. And then they become very interested in the security and stability of Georgia. Right now, they don't care in a strategic sense. They do in a moral sense, but they don't care in a strategic sense about 20% of Georgia being occupied by the Russians because they're not vested there. But if they had a significant

economic investment that this port would have generated, then they get real interested in security and stability, which is why the Kremlin did everything it could to make sure that this port has not been built. So this is also part of strengthening their position by keeping the West out. What was the impact of the seizure of Crimea on the balance of power in the Black Sea? Up to that point, it seemed like the Turkish Navy was kind of the dominant power there. The Turkish Navy should be the dominant power there. But let me say first that the seizure of Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula, and its annexation demonstrates a couple of things. First, how important the Black Sea is to the Kremlin. The fact that they would use force to change borders, internationally

recognized sovereign border of a European country, that they were willing to take the strategic risk of doing that. And they probably, after seeing that the West did not do anything to stop the Assad regime in Syria, France, US, UK, I think they probably reckoned that they could get away with Crimea. And pretty much they have. So demonstration of the importance of the Black Sea is manifested in their willingness to use force to change, to seize Crimea. Now, the other impact is they have pretty much thrown down a gauntlet. I mean, they've challenged the West and say, we're going to use force. And then when they seize the three Ukrainian vessels back in November that were headed to the Kerch Strait,

and these were not little green men or little blue men. These were Black Sea Fleet, Russian Navy that did this. And they, again, calculated that the West would shake your fist but not really do anything about it. And so this has, I think, emboldened them to do other things. For example, the claim to territorial waters and exclusive economic zone based on the presumption of ownership of Crimea, which, of course, these are completely false claims. But international law is pretty much what the international community says it is. And if the West doesn't challenge that, those claims, then those de facto become the new territorial waters, which now are bumping up against our ally, Romania. And so the Romanians obviously are very concerned about their offshore oil and gas platforms in the Western Black Sea.

So as the Kaliber system, and for our listeners who aren't familiar, Kaliber is a long-range precision strike capability delivered from air surface and subsurface platforms. Has that system dramatically changed the military situation in the Black Sea? I don't know that it's dramatically changed it, but it certainly is a significant capability that the Russians have added there. I remember when they fired the Kaliber system out of the Caspian Sea just a few years ago. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was, it never would have even occurred to me that they would have that capability in the Caspian Sea. And then I also, again, I'm a little bit embarrassed.

This is why I've been studying Navy stuff a lot lately. How did they even get ships that are capable of doing that into the Caspian Sea? I mean, I just didn't have a feel for what the capabilities were. So the fact that they could launch caliber missiles off of vessels in the Caspian Sea to strike a target in Syria. Now, I think most people know that that was not the ideal weapon system to do that, and the effects were not that great for what they were targeting in Syria. But the real effect they were after was to demonstrate that they have this capability also. Now, if you've got Caliber sitting in Crimea,

knowing that it's a nuclear-capable system that adds to the calculation for what they can do. So, which leads directly to my next question is, should the Black Sea area now be seen as another Bastion and Fires complex in the same way that we view the area around Vladivostok in the Pacific or Kaliningrad in the Baltic? Yeah, well, surely it's a part of this sort of arc that runs from a European perspective, You know, from the Barents Sea all the way down through Kaliningrad and then to Crimea and then on further down to their bases in Syria, where they've got air bases and a seaport now that have systems, air defense systems that actually encompass Incirlik, the Turkish base where the U.S. has capabilities at Incirlik. So this is part of that complex. But when I think about the Black Sea and what the Russians are doing there, I'm much less worried about what might happen in the Baltic Sea. We have a much more favorable geopolitical calculus, if you will. You've got several NATO countries, not just the three so-called Baltic states, but also Poland, Germany, Denmark, and then you've got two very good friends, Finland and Sweden.

So I see Kaliningrad as more of a liability for the Kremlin than anything else. Whereas if you go to the Black Sea, you've got a completely different arrangement with Turkey is focused more on the south to their south and frankly, to their NATO ally, Greece. They have very little naval infrastructure on the Black Sea. I mean, they have a logistics base near near Trebizond, but almost everything they have is in Sea of Marmara or in the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean. So you've got a different geography there. Obviously, the Bosphorus and Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, the so-called Turkish Straits are the strategic access portal in and out of the Black Sea. But you've just got a different, it's a different geography here. And I think, frankly, for the Russians, it is the Black Sea is so much more important to them than the Baltic Sea, which is why they were willing to seize Crimea. Yeah. So how does NATO seize the strategic advantage here, sir? Well, that's the great question. First, of course, we have to develop a strategy for the region. And we don't we don't have a strategic view of what needs to be done in my assessment.

Again, if you the idea of taking the map and move the Black Sea region to the middle of the map, then you start realizing you start to look at Turkey in a different way, for example. I don't excuse some bad decisions by our Turkish allies, but they have been a reliable ally since 1952. We've had a NATO headquarters in Izmir since 1952, longer than anywhere else in the alliance except for Naples. And you start thinking about containment of Iran, for example. Turkey needs to be the bulwark against Iran. But then you've got to change how you think about Turkey. I think if you were talking to one of my Turkish colleagues, they would tell you that their idea is status quo in the Black Sea.

Don't rock the boat. They are not interested in getting into a conflict with Russia again. They've got a history of this. In fact, this is partly why they have resisted over the past few years the idea of a NATO headquarters in the Black Sea region on the Black Sea. But if you think about where the boundary is between U.S. European command and U.S. Central command, it's also the border between Turkey and Syria. Now, if you were starting with a clean sheet of paper, you wouldn't do it that way. You know, the Turks, when they wake up in the morning, I remember talking to the J-5 of the Turkish general staff a few years ago. And he said, Ben, when I wake up in the morning, I've got Russia to the north, Iran, Iraq, Syria to the south, the Balkans to the west, and the Caucasus to the east.

It's a hell of a neighborhood. But we always, in NATO, Turkey's down at the bottom right-hand corner of the map. And so CENTCOM, Central Command, over the last 20 years has been the dominant tribe, if you will, inside the U.S. Department of Defense because of Iraq, Afghanistan, all the challenges we've had in the region, Persian Gulf. So CENTCOM is kind of the dominant combatant command. I think that causes us to look at things like how we treat Turkey in a way that is skewed. And the Turks see this, and they don't have confidence in the United States. There's so much lost trust between both us and them. And I think I would say that kind of Turkey, USA 1.0 is dead.

It's time for Turkey, USA 2.0. So addressing Turkey and its role in the Black Sea region is going to be a critical part. Now, Montreux Convention, it's here to stay. I think too much energy is wasted on, you know, people talking about how do we get around Montreux? How can we do other things that would change the map? Nothing about Montreux really prevents us from having a strategy. It's a lack of capacity and it's not a high enough priority. So, you know, you get the Donald Cook in there occasionally or the Porter, and I think the Navy is doing everything they possibly can. But we don't even come close. We're not even halfway using up the bandwidth of available days that we could have a U.S. Navy ship in the Black Sea. It's just not enough of them. I mean, the same four destroyers are from the Black Sea to the North Atlantic and all over the Med.

And so we've got to prioritize. So I think the last two bits of this I would address are Romania. If Turkey is not going to take on more of a role, then I think we turn to Romania as the center of gravity for NATO's efforts and for U.S. efforts in the Black Sea region. They've got capacity. They are investing. They're modernizing from a geographical standpoint. It's the logical place to do that. The other final aspect of trying to seize the advantage here, I believe we need a headquarters where people wake up in the morning smelling Black Sea air.

Right now, the two naval headquarters that are responsible for the Black Sea are in Naples and in Northwood, UK, and they're working their ass off. I mean, they're working hard to do it. But, you know, you've got to have this unblinking eye that watches the Black Sea region, that has a common operating picture, that has the relationships, that has officers and people from all the different nations that are there working and to increase cooperation. And right now we don't have that cooperation. You've got more, it's more natural cooperation in the Baltics. In the Black Sea, there are no historic cooperations, if you will. It's interesting you bring up these command components, because I know the Germans have set up a Baltic Maritime Component Command. It's a national command, but I bet my students when I was still back in Germany, I said, within 10 years, I would bet you money that that is going to become a NATO command to coordinate activities between Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Norway, and any other NATO countries who sail in there. At the same time, we've seen, I think it was the

German, the British Navy, and the French Navy call for the reestablishment of Channel Command, Chancom. This would seem like a natural extension to have a Black Sea, whether it's a maritime command or some sort of joint command. It seems like a natural expansion of these sort of regional geographic commands. Yeah, I agree with you. And the German Navy's command up there in Rostock is something that the Germans have offered as a capability. In fact, most of the three-star commands all over Europe are, in fact, national commands that will take turns in sort of a rotation, if you will, fulfilling NATO rapid response duties. But there is nothing in the Black Sea region that's focused on the Black Sea region. Now, Romania is standing up a three-star

land headquarters, the multinational core southeast, hopefully one day that becomes a joint headquarters. I suspect that for a while, Turkey would not support having it as a NATO headquarters. So in a way, if it's a national or multinational headquarters, then like the one up in Rostock, that doesn't have to have NATO approval, but yet you could have U.S., British, German, as well as Black Sea nations participating in it, just like you have in Rostock. I think that'd be a good start. So I'd like to shift focus a little bit here and talk about NATO expansion. So I think you've been pretty bullish on expansion for Georgia. And if I've done my research correctly, Ukraine as well. Why do you think that's so important? Well, it's certainly

Georgia. Ukraine is further away. I think there's too many issues there. We need to have them continue to work towards meeting NATO standards. We need to, the Royal Navy, for example, I think should be the permanent partner for Ukraine. I mean, that's, we've got the U.S. Army and the Canadian Army are working with Ukrainian land forces. The Royal Navy, I have heard, is considering offering some more of a, some kind of a more established relationship. I think that's a great way to do some burden sharing, but it's still a long way to go before I think it would be appropriate for Ukraine to be invited to join the alliance. They're not ready. We're not ready. And certainly there will be challenges with Russia, although Secretary General Stoltenberg

has said, as have all his predecessors, that Russia does not get the vote or to veto NATO expansion. Nonetheless, that would be a challenge. And I think many other European countries would be super concerned about this. Now, Georgia, I think, is a different story. Georgia's got nothing left to prove. They have had troops with us in Afghanistan for years. They suffered more casualties per capita than anybody except the United States. They meet NATO standards. And I think, in a way, it would give us this potential for horizontal escalation if there was a crisis.

If you had U.S. or NATO capability in Georgia, even on a rotational type basis, I'm not talking about permanent basis, I'm talking about rotational. And also, if we got this port built of Anaklia, that's a game changer. And I am sure as long as the alliance sticks together, as long as the Russian, the Kremlin looks over and sees a cohesive alliance, they will not attack a NATO country. So Georgia's security goes up immediately, day one, when they become a member of the alliance. Right now, you've got Russians pushing what they call motorization in Al-Qaida and South Ossetia. And some people say, well, how can we take – how can you admit Georgia into the alliance when the Russians still occupy 20 percent of Georgia? And I say, well, we admitted Germany into the alliance with the Soviet Union sitting on top of one-third of Germany, called East Germany. So there is an historical precedent, and I think that it strategically would change the dynamic in the Black Sea in a much more favorable way for us if Georgia was a part of the alliance.

I know internally Turkey has been discussing a canal running parallel to the Bosporus to ease some of the maritime traffic in and around Istanbul. Do you foresee any strategic gains generated by a possible creation of a secondary exit that runs parallel to the Bosporus? Yeah, I don't. I know I've seen that this has been discussed, and allegedly President Erdogan has said that, you know, if we do this, that that would change Montreux or somehow this other canal would be outside of Montreux. First of all, I don't think that's a unilateral decision for Turkey to make because there are all the other countries that are signatories. Secondly, it's still, you know, Montreux is about how many ships can, what can be on the Black Sea, not what moves through the Bosphorus. And of course, even if you do add another canal, it still goes into the Sea of Marmara, just like the Bosphorus, and you still have the Dardanelle at the bottom.

So I don't, I don't really understand how that would change anything with Montreux. And as I said earlier, our challenges in the Black Sea are not because of Montreux. Our challenges in the Black Sea are because we don't have a strategy and we don't have enough capacity to do more. I mean, opening up that canal would not add one single destroyer or frigate to what we could put into the Black Sea region. And so, you know, from an economic standpoint, perhaps, I mean, certainly you're familiar with moving big ships through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. I mean, it's challenging and it's over time damaging. But from a strategic standpoint, I don't see big gains in that. Yeah, I wouldn't actually reread the Montreux Convention this morning here.

And the Dardanelles, the Bosporus and Sea of Marmara all being included in the treaty there. It means that you would have to construct some sort of monster canal to bypass all three if you really want to, quote-unquote, get around the Montreux Convention. And at that point, you just create another choke point, maritime choke point, going in and out that's easily targetable as well. So, okay, I would completely agree with you there. What impact did you see from increase of rotational forces in the region, either while you're in command or afterwards? Well, this is one of the ways that the United States and or the alliance communicates or demonstrates that we are committed to a place. It was when you put U.S. Navy ships there, when you're flying U.S. Air Force aircraft out of there, or when you put American soldiers there and develop infrastructure, that tells friends and potential adversaries that this is important to us, that we're going to develop resources to it. And so I was very pleased, obviously, with the beginning of the rotational armor brigade that brought tanks back to Europe because we have no tanks in Europe without that rotational brigade.

But it also gave us a battalion task force. So you're talking about 700 or 800 troops that we based out of MK in Romania. And part of that battalion also was down at the Novoselic training area in Bulgaria. So it gave us ground presence as well as Army aviation. We build up facilities at MK to have attack helicopters and lift helicopters there at MK, which is also, by the way, the same place where NATO's Black Sea Air Policing Mission flies out of at MK. So you see how MK is so important, and it's a half an hour drive from the port of Constanta, which is one of the largest ports on the Black Sea. I think it's the first or second largest port on the Black Sea. Having rotational forces gives the commander of U.S. Army Europe and the commander of U.S. European Command something tangible that can exercise and that helps develop over time the knowledge of the region, who's who out there.

Like we used to have when you had almost 300,000 U.S. troops in Europe. I mean, everybody in the Army passed through Europe, and everybody understood NATO and understood the geography. We've lost that now with the dramatic reduction in capability. Same thing for the Navy, I would imagine. Yeah, absolutely. Sir, that was all the questions that I had. General, any final thoughts from you, sir? Well, I think, you know, when we talk about strategy, you've got to talk about all the domains. It's not just military. The diplomatic effort required to build cooperation in the Black Sea region, to get all of our allies and friends in the Black Sea region to put their voices together the way the Baltic countries have done.

In fact, we're encouraging the ambassadors in Washington, D.C., to put their voices together so that you can reach the policymakers on Capitol Hill, as well as within the administration and in the departments, to explain why the Black Sea region is so important and why we need to have a strategy for it, why we have to compete there in this great power competition. If you don't compete there, then the Russians totally control it, and they use it to do what they're doing in Syria, which, by the way, has put about three and a half million refugees into Turkey, and about a million have continued on into Europe. So this is all connected. What Russia's doing in Syria has direct impact in Europe, and it is destabilizing. As General Breedlove said one time that the Russians have weaponized refugees. And so we don't compete in the Black Sea and we can't do anything about that. And I think we're getting close to Libya becoming a Russian outpost. They're supporting the side that's opposed to the side that the United Nations is backing.

Again, without them being able to have so much flexibility out of the Black Sea, we can't stop that. So this is about great power competition. So there's diplomatic efforts. You have to compete in the military space, obviously. You have to compete in the economic space. And if we get European countries interested in the economy of the Black Sea region, then they start getting invested and then they start caring about the security. Right now, they just don't, I don't think, in a big way, they don't really care. Thank you so much for that comprehensive answer, sir, and for the interview. That is unfortunately all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Lieutenant General Retired Ben Hodges. Ben, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Well, of course, we're about to roll out our report from SEPA on the 26th of May. The title is One Flank, One Threat, One Presence, A Strategy for NATO's Eastern Flank.

And the title, of course, comes from NATO's enhanced forward presence in the Baltic Sea and tailored forward presence in the Black Sea, which means you've got a lot less forward presence in the Black Sea. And our report advocates doing several things to increase NATO's presence there to compete in the Black Sea region exactly as we have been talking. Thank you very much, sir. We'll look forward to the report, and I'll be sure to include a link to it in our show notes. And for our listeners, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week. A pot of rum and a pot of gin, oh Why, hey, put it in the alley A pot of wine, both white and red, oh Put it on the shimbo now

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