During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Derek Schmidt (R-KS) questioned General Christopher G. Cavoli, the Commander of the U.S. European Command, about maintaining a ground presence in Europe.
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00:00I'd like to add my condolences as well to those expressed by my colleagues of the family,
00:10loved ones and friends of the Lost Soldiers, and General Cavoli from the home state of
00:15the first Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, I'd like to extend our congratulations
00:20and gratitude to you for your service, and would just note that we have had an unbroken
00:25line of American leadership at the top of NATO from its inception, and I for one expect
00:30and hope that's going to continue into the foreseeable future.
00:35But we are engaged in a, I'll call it a public rethinking of America's role in the world.
00:42Everybody in this room certainly spends their lives, their careers, their talents focused
00:47on this at a granular and strategic level every day, but because we've been effective
00:51at that for so long, many Americans have not had to engage in those discussions out and
00:56about, and their support is critical as we make the decisions that move us ahead.
01:00So with that in mind, General, I'd like to ask a couple of questions that are intended
01:08to inform the public discussion, not only the particularized discussion.
01:14Can you talk for a bit about the level of importance, the nature of importance, of continuing to have
01:23a heavy ground presence on the European continent in terms of our security planning going forward,
01:30whether it's armory, infantry, or otherwise?
01:32Sure, sir.
01:35So the alliance, we collectively require a heavy ground presence.
01:44That is specifically to be able to overcome that singular Russian advantage of being able
01:51to put its forces on our borders as an alliance before the initiation of hostilities.
01:58That causes a time-space problem for us in terms of reinforcing.
02:02So the positioning of this large force has to be appropriate to the situation, right, to
02:08the level of threat.
02:10Whether that ground force comes from America or someplace else is really SACIER doesn't
02:16care as long as it functions.
02:18There are some capabilities that the U.S. is very careful to make sure we continue to contribute
02:25because they're exquisite and in some cases unique.
02:29And we understand that.
02:31Those will have to be there all the time otherwise.
02:33So really, the question is, what is the preponderance of U.S. versus other nations heavy ground force
02:41that is committed?
02:43And that's something we balance all the time.
02:46And that's something that will change as our European allies pick up the capabilities targets
02:52we've just assigned them in the NATO defense planning process and commit the money that they've
02:57devoted in a profitable and a productive acquisition program to get the stuff they need.
03:03Thank you, General.
03:05And at risk of sounding like I'm reading from the history books, I'm old enough to remember
03:12Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
03:15And if my memory is correct, it was our ability to rapidly move the Seventh Corps from Europe
03:20to the Middle East that allowed us to launch a desert storm with the rapidity that we did.
03:26Can you speak a little bit, your point about whether there are American heavy ground forces
03:30or European allies in Europe, how does having American heavy ground forces pre-deployed in
03:38the European theater affect our planning and our ability to respond to American interests
03:43in the Middle East or in other proximate areas outside of Europe immediately?
03:48It's fundamental to it, sir.
03:53There are three principal components of what's important to us, access, basing, and overflight.
04:00So our ability to base our forces someplace and to have the ability to access those forces
04:07to deploy them and then to have the agreements to overfly nations, all of those things happen.
04:14They're usually based on pretty deep relationships.
04:17If you want it to be there when you need it, it's got to be, you know, you have to have
04:22prepared for that moment.
04:24So that, those three things, access, basing, and overflight are really a shorthand way of
04:29saying that gives us the ability to put forces forward in readiness waiting to be deployed.
04:36Now, to what extent do we need to do that?
04:38That's largely a policy question.
04:41But that is the strictly military advantage of having forces forward for our own purposes.
04:46We do deploy them all the time.
04:48We've been, you know, you know, leaning toward and then backing off of noncombatant evacuation
04:54operations throughout the Mediterranean area for a couple of years.
04:59We provide forces on short notice to General Cruella to be able to use in central command.
05:06I could go on, but I think I've, I hope I've answered your question.
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