Channeling Brussels

In this week's show is an interview with General Ben Hodges, the commander of U-S forces in Europe. I caught up with him after NATO exercises in the Baltics and Poland, called "Saber Strike", and just before he was headed off to oversee "Saber Guardian" in the Black Sea region.

General Hodges and Teri Schultz discuss the upcoming Zapad military drills by Russia and Belarus, which don't give him much cause for concern because, he says, "we're always ready." He'd like to see more transparency from the Kremlin as to the actual number of troops being used. Moscow says it's just 13,000, right on the limit for being forced to invite close-up inspections of their drills. Hodges says "prove it".

And he has concerns that don't rest on the Russians -- but on allies themselves. European governments keep laws in place that block the movement of allied military equipment across borders -- even when needed for protection. In this episode, Hodges explains why he's advocating a "military Schengen zone".

This week's Channeling Brussels is brought to you by the Atlantic Council.

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For this episode Teri travels to Lithuania, where NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg presides over the inauguration of NATO's new battlegroups amid the alliance's Saber Strike exercises. She interviews Stoltenberg and US General Neal Loidolt about the new mission along the eastern front and whether they expect a Russian intrusion.

"Channeling Brussels" is sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

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Sir Peter Westmacott has been posted twice to Turkey and harbors deep personal affection for the country. He believes Turkey and the European Union have much to offer one another. But the direction President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking Turkey leads Westmacott to wonder if "Turkey's European Journey", the title of a new booklet he's just written, is about to hit a dead end.

This week's Channeling Brussels is brought to you by the Atlantic Council.

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My guest this week is former Estonian President Toomas Ilves, who served in that post for a decade, from 2006 to 2016. Under his governance, the northernmost Baltic State adapted at warp-speed to the internet, becoming known as E-stonia...home to lots of hip startups, the first country to hold national elections with online voting, the first to offer "virtual residency" to foreigners.

But this week marks another historic first for Estonia: It's been 10 years since what is now considered the first real act of cyberwar, often called "Web War 1", when Estonia's infrastructure was crippled for three weeks by an online attack. Estonia blamed Russia but was not able to pin down perpetrators linked to the Russian government. A pro-Kremlin youth group claimed the attacks.

In the decade since the incident, NATO has gradually responded to the power of such weapons. Last year the alliance formally added "cyber" as a warfighting domain. The European Union has been much slower to sharpen its blades. Former President Ilves has some highly provocative observations about what he sees as the lack of attention being paid to fighting Russian interference in the European political space. Enjoy the show!

This week's Channeling Brussels is brought to you by the Atlantic Council.

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Our guest this week for a special Women's Day show is Ambassador Marriet Schuurman, NATO's special representative for "Women, Peace and Security", tasked with helping implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. The measure obligates UN member governments to elevate the concerns and well-being of women and children, to work to prevent violations of women's rights and gender-based violence, to increase the involvement of women in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction.

This week's Channeling Brussels is brought to you by the Atlantic Council.

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Joining Teri this week is NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Sorin Ducaru. Just from his title you can tell Ambassador Ducaru has his hands more than full. With the threat landscape against the alliance changing constantly in unpredictable ways, many of them breaking new terrain in warfare, Ducaru and his staff have to be prescient and agile.

At the meeting of NATO defense ministers last month, they approved what they call an "updated cyberdefense plan" and also moved forward with discussing how to practically establish "cyber" as the latest operational domain, which means of course, that cyberattacks could hypothetically warrant a declaration of Article 5. But Teri also wanted to draw him in on an incident that had just happened -- the attempt by some "unidentified party" to accuse German soldiers serving under NATO in Lithuania of raping a teenager. This type of thing really makes me angry because allegations of rape are nothing to dismiss out of hand -- or to fabricate -- but this was completely made-up to try to discredit the NATO battle group. It also falls under an "emerging security challenge" faced by NATO.

Ducaru explains how the alliance is approaching all its new threats and adapting the mindset in some surprising ways.

This week's "Channeling Brussels" is brought to you by the Atlantic Council.

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In this episode of Channeling Brussels, Teri speaks to one of the most optimistic people she's ever met. He's the chairman of the Belgian chapter of "Republicans Overseas", an organization founded in 2013, not to be confused with "Republicans Abroad" nor officially tied to the Republican National Committee.

Kulbickas was quite the fixture in Brussels before the U.S. presidential election as the only person openly representing the GOP at the various debates and events. Even Republicans weren't comfortable defending the platform of Donald Trump, Kulbickas told me. But he'd been a fan since the beginning of the Republican primary season and he felt Trump and his policies were being misrepresented in the European media.

On the evening of November 8th, Kulbickas told Teri Donald Trump was going to win the election. He was right.

Now Kulbickas tells Teri he believes the relationships between President Trump and Europe, and President Trump and NATO, could well end up being stronger during this administration than in any other. I'm watching.

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This episode’s guest is Ukraine’s acting chief of mission at NATO, Yehor Bozhok.  With the Trump inauguration looming and bringing with it huge uncertainty about the future US relationship with Russia, Bozhok maintains American support for Ukraine will be steadfast. The interview with Bozhok took place at NATO HQ just hours after Kiev filed suit against Russia at the International Court of Justice in the Hague with a range of allegations, including sponsorship of terrororism for its support to separatists in eastern Ukraine and responsibility for the shelling of villages in the disputed area, the downing of flight MH17 and the persecution of minorities in Crimea.

"Channeling Brussels" is sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

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This episode's guest is Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, who addresses speculation that Donald Trump's election makes it more likely the Kremlin will increase its meddling in Baltic affairs. Rinkevics says "everyone needs to calm down" but warns at the same time there are some real threats to European security if fundamental values aren't reinforced in the face of Russian geopolitical ambitions.

"Channeling Brussels" is sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

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This episode's guest is U.S. Ambassador Alexander "Sandy" Vershbow, who's just retired after a long State Dept. career and more than four years as NATO Deputy Secretary General. He discusses the dire state of relations between Russia and NATO, how perhaps the west should've suspected Putin would invade Crimea and why he changes his email password more these days.

"Channeling Brussels" is sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

[Intro/Outro music "Happy Rock" by Bensound under a CC-BY-ND license (www.bensound.com/royalty-free-mus…rack/happy-rock/)]