Committee on Armed Services House of Rep

Military Assessment of Russian Activities and Security Challenges in Europe Committee on Armed Services House of Rep

From the little green men in Ukraine, to political assassinations, to buying influence in political parties, snap exercises to intimidate neighbors, and cyberattacks of various kinds, Europe has seen all of that and more. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to invest in their nuclear weapons, their anti-access/area-denial capability, and in a variety of other capabilities designed to reduce or eliminate any technological military advantage that the United States may have had in the past. We know that one of their primary goals is to divide and weaken NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization], arguably the most successful military alliance ever. Europe is as great a challenge as we have had since the end of the Cold War now. Russia is reasserting itself not just in Eastern Europe, but in many ways in Western Europe, trying to influence elections, trying to undermine liberal democracy. Vladimir Putin's goal is to make the world safe for autocratic dictatorships and to undermine the values that we hold dear in this country, which is representative democracy. He is doing that on a very low budget using a lot of cyber and a lot of intel operations, and we have to get smarter about how we counter that. Putin is not stupid. They are nowhere near as strong as they were during the height of the Cold War. He is trying to have influence on the cheap, but the higher the cost the less likely he is to engage in his destabilization efforts.