Atlantic Council BRENT SCOWCROFT CENTER ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
ISSUE BRIEF
Train, Hone, Deter Enhancing NATO’s Exercise Program MARCH 2016
MATT BRAND
N This issue brief is part of the Transatlantic Security Initative’s ‘Charting NATO’s Future’ project examining how NATO can adapt to the long-term challenges it faces, conducted in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. The Brent Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative brings together top policymakers, government and military officials, business leaders, and experts from Europe and North America to share insights, strengthen cooperation, and develop common approaches. Through high-profile public conferences, off-the-record strategy sessions, and content-rich publications, the initiative provides practical, relevant, and bipartisan solutions for transatlantic leaders, as they navigate this tumultuous inflection point in the history of the world’s most important political-military alliance.
ATO exercises play a vital role in ensuring that Alliance forces can respond to any contingency quickly and effectively. Not since the early 1990s has NATO’s exercise program drawn as much attention from NATO’s national leaders as it does now, due in large part to Russia’s increasingly aggressive misbehavior. The NATO exercise program provides the vital functions of keeping the member states’ forces interoperable by integrating new technologies into the force, practicing new doctrine, and validating units for their rotation into contingency roles, like the NATO Response Force. Exercises are the most important step in preparing Alliance forces to arrive ready to dominate the adversary and to work closely with allies and partners, governmental and non-governmental alike. They are the best preparation for service members to deploy, succeed, and return home. With a little bit of effort, they also can provide the secondary benefit of being tools for deterrence and reassurance. Administering the NATO exercise program is a complicated process that requires meaningful contributions from both the Alliance’s Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT). In general, ACO determines what the requirements of the exercise should be (validation of the future NATO Response Force, for instance) and ACT prepares an exercise to meet that requirement. At first glance, it doesn’t seem the best design to have two four-star headquarters divide the responsibility for running an exercise program of this size. In practice, the current organization is not ideal but it does the job. The hard-working service members and civilians from the Alliance’s twenty-eight member states that support the program have responded effectively to the revised guidance outlined at NATO’s Wales Summit in 2014, which the NATO civilian and military apparatus subsequently refined at headquarters.
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
A Stryker armored vehicle reaches Krakow, Poland on March 26, 2015 during Operation Dragoon Ride. Photo credit: US Army/Wikimedia.
Under the auspices of the Readiness Action Plan,1 the exercise program went from ninety Alliance exercises and eleven national exercises focused on the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in 2012 to ninety-eight Alliance and 198 national events focused on the entire spectrum of military operations (with added emphasis on Article 5 scenarios) by 2015. This dramatic increase in the scale and scope of 1
2
Wales Summit Declaration, North Atlantic Council, September 5, 2014 (Revised July 31, 2015), http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm. From paragraph 5: “In order to ensure that our Alliance is ready to respond swiftly and firmly to the new security challenges, today we have approved the NATO Readiness Action Plan. It provides a coherent and comprehensive package of necessary measures to respond to the changes in the security environment on NATO’s borders and further afield that are of concern to Allies. It responds to the challenges posed by Russia and their strategic implications. It also responds to the risks and threats emanating from our southern neighbourhood, the Middle East and North Africa. The Plan strengthens NATO’s collective defence. It also strengthens our crisis management capability. The Plan will contribute to ensuring that NATO remains a strong, ready, robust, and responsive Alliance capable of meeting current and future challenges from wherever they may arise.”
exercises was accomplished with zero nominal growth in resources, and while complying with the directive to reduce the contractor force to zero. It is clear that the leaders of NATO member states understand the power of the exercise tool; they see exercises as a way to enhance deterrence, reassure allies, validate unit performance, and train for new missions, such as counter-terrorism and countering cyberattacks. NATO’s 2014 Summit communique declares that “NATO needs, now more than ever, modern, robust, and capable forces at high readiness, in the air, on land and at sea, in order to meet current and future challenges,” and “readiness of elements of the VJTF2 will be tested through short-notice exercises.” These mandates have significant additional implications for the exercise program. As the security situation across Alliance territory has changed dramatically, NATO’s exercise program must also change.
2
Very High Readiness Joint Task Force.
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
NATO members are asking for Alliance exercises to do substantially more than in the previous decade; they must not only train and validate forces, but create strategic effects, as well. While the demands for output have grown, the resources for developing and executing the program have, in fact, shrunk. The objective of the exercise program in 2010 was to prepare and evaluate military forces with the capacity to perform missions in support of NATO’s three core tasks: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. Because security is deteriorating on NATO’s eastern and southern flanks, leaders now need exercises to perform reassurance and deterrence functions in both strategic directions, prepare forces to respond to conventional and hybrid threats, improve missile defense, and test NATO forces’ compliance with a number of important international legal directives, such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. To reiterate, Strategic Commands must perform these tasks to a higher standard with no nominal growth in financial or human resources. Past performance suggests that the NATO exercise mechanism is flexible enough to accommodate changes to the security environment, as well as new political and military priorities. What remains unclear is the effectiveness of NATO exercises in deterring adversaries while reassuring allies, and what kind of political guidance would be most useful in creating these effects.
than by military means. Concerning reassurance, our national leaders are best equipped to know what troubles their electorates and how to lessen their unease. Specific political guidance on this dynamic to military leaders and their exercise planners is essential. It is more than just a piece of the Alliance’s program for Strategic Communication, because it requires a candid conversation between national leadership and their electorate, each of which is unique unto itself. Recent events have shown that the same steps taken to assure allies on the eastern flank will almost certainly not assure allies exposed to threats from the south. However, it does not “fracture the Alliance” to suggest that different solution sets exist for different types of threats. The effort currently underway at NATO headquarters to formulate a plan for deterrence is an excellent start to this debate. It is the critical time for national governments to tell the Alliance what is reassuring to them specifically, and to start the discussion with their own electorates about what results military activities can realistically produce. The fruitfulness of these conversations depends, at least in part, on the scope of national leaders’ background knowledge about the exercise function and its limitations, specifically in deterring and reassuring. A helpful first step in starting this process would be to:
What remains unclear is the effectiveness of NATO exercises in deterring adversaries while reassuring allies, and what kind of political guidance would be most useful in creating these effects.
With NATO’s 2016 Warsaw Summit on the horizon, it would be useful and appropriate for national leaders to provide precise and important political guidance that specifically improves Alliance exercises. In particular, there are eight steps the Alliance can take to make the program more effective in achieving the dual objectives of enhancing deterrence/assurance and preparation/ validation. 3 •
Define objectives for deterrence and reassurance. Achieving these outcomes is facilitated far more by diplomatic and informational instruments of power
3
For the purposes of this paper, we will leave the important issue of exercises in support of experimentation unaddressed.
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
• Conduct visits to capitals to educate national political leaders on the Alliance exercise concept. The intended audience for these visits should not necessarily be Heads of State and Government themselves, but rather those who advise them. While some Alliance militaries have the access to educate their national leadership themselves, others have been less successful. A common understanding of what deterrent value an exercise can have and how to achieve it is important and, sadly, largely absent. Though this may seem to impinge on the responsibilities of national delegations to inform their own governments, visiting NATO delegations can provide a fresh perspective to familiar subjects and a potentially more effective method of communicating. The composition of the NATO team could be military, civilian, or both, and need not be the same
3
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
personnel on every visit. There are sufficient subject matter experts available that national delegations in the headquarters (HQ) can provide insight on the appropriate mix of team members to create the best effect in their respective capitals. National leaders might find this idea more attractive if it is presented in a package and as a seminar to prepare to: •
Conduct a distributed Command Post exercise4 for the decision-makers in capitals. Without calling into question the authority of the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary members of the North Atlantic Council, it seems reasonable that leadership in member capitals want to be directly involved in decisions that commit their men and women to combat. It is no secret that the speed of decisionmaking is a disadvantage for an alliance of twenty-eight, and unfamiliarity with the conditions when those decisions must be taken quickly impedes the process. There has long been an intention in the HQ and the commands to involve those that will be making decisions during real crises in an exercise that replicates the difficulty of those situations. There is a strong argument to be made for national leaders to agree to conduct exercises meant to improve and speed decisionmaking in crises. The biggest “ask” for this idea is for time from senior leaders to rehearse how they might prevent a provocation from escalating, or to save the lives of their electorate by preventing a terrorist attack. The scenario for this first exercise is not as important as the quality execution of it, and national leaders can later decide for themselves whether subsequent exercises are appropriate. Irrespective of whether national leaders agree to practice the decisions that will be theirs in a crisis, the Alliance should:
some exercises involving the nuclear mechanism, they are done largely without advertisement and apart from conventional exercises. In order for the nuclear arsenal to have significant deterrent value, its exercises should be observable and preferably seen as part of conventional exercises. In order to create the desired deterrent effect, NATO needs to demonstrate a willingness to use the entire complement of the arsenal to defend our populations. Put simply, a capability must be visible to be credible—it would be a stretch to call the Alliance’s nuclear forces sufficiently visible today. Recent public statements by NATO’s adversaries suggest that they believe there is not adequate solidarity in the Alliance to use the nuclear capability. That perception is detrimental—a completely selfinflicted wound and poor policy if deterrence is NATO’s objective. The following four-step process sets out a model for maximizing the nuclear component’s deterrent effect (as politically delicate as it may be):
Recent public statements by NATO’s adversaries suggest that they believe there is not adequate solidarity in the Alliance to use the nuclear capability.
•
Exercise the whole of the arsenal, and do so openly. For some time, the allies have ceded the discussion of nuclear weapons to the adversary. While there are
4
The term “distributed Command Post exercise” refers to a type of exercise that allows each country’s leadership to participate from its own capital and need not gather all participants into one geographic area.
4
1. recognize that the adversary is publicizing its nuclear arsenal in the hopes of splitting the Alliance 2. educate national electorates on the purpose, cost, and safety requirements of the nuclear deterrent 3. forcefully restate the previous policy in appropriate public venues
4. improve plans and forces by exercising the nuclear mechanism in conjunction with conventional and/ or cyber forces Though perhaps politically difficult, NATO nations should return to a nuclear policy that more closely resembles the policy from the 1980s. Alliance forces of the past routinely exercised the full complement of the arsenal, so while those muscles may have atrophied we are confident that they are still there. Refreshing and reinvigorating the nuclear policy is not the only “old” idea that deserves a second look. Many veterans of NATO will remember that getting to the fight isn’t always easy, either. The Alliance decided some years ago that it would rely on readiness and speed to move forces from where they live to the operational area. For that system to work, we must:
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
Military bridge assembled during the NATO Trident Juncture exercise in Portugal, November 3, 2015. Photo credit: Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum/Flickr.
•
5
Exercise the large-scale deployment of forces from their home stations to the flanks. We often underappreciate the complexity of moving personnel and equipment from where they are to where they need to be in a hurry. Like any other complex movement, organizing forces at their various installations and transporting them to an operational area on short notice is difficult but crucial. Thirty years ago, the REFORGER exercises rehearsed precisely this capacity. The trade-off in operational terms for moving from a permanent forward presence to a rapid response model is concisely identified in the 2014 Summit Communique: Host nation support is critical to execute the Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration tasks that result in a capable force at the decisive points on the ground. 5 “We will further enhance NATO’s ability to quickly and effectively reinforce those Allies, including through preparation of infrastructure, prepositioning of equipment and supplies, and designation of specific bases. Adequate host nation support will be critical in this respect.” Para 8 of Wales Summit Declaration, op. cit.
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
The Alliance also requires support from countries along the transit route, in order to respond quickly. US Army Europe’s well-considered DRAGOON RIDE exercise in 2015 served notice to all Alliance nations that national requirements for allowing lethal equipment to move by ground and by air have become more complex.6 While the free movement of people throughout Europe has grown easier, NATO has lost the ability to move military equipment quickly, and members have forgotten how to host large numbers of Alliance troops both in-transit and in the field. The REFORGER series exercises were expensive for those deploying and a major inconvenience for the hosting and transit nations, 6
Dan Lamothe, “In show of force, the Army’s Operation Dragoon Ride rolls through Europe,” The Washington Post, March 24, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/ wp/2015/03/24/in-show-of-force-the-armys-operation-dragoonride-rolls-through-europe/; Michael S. Darnell, “‘Dragoon Ride’ convoy ends with troops back in Vilseck,” Stars and Stripes, April 1, 2015, http://www.stripes.com/news/dragoon-ride-convoy-endswith-troops-back-in-vilseck-1.337876.
5
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
11
5
4 2
3
7 14 6
8 1 12 10 9
13
6
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
ISSU E B RIEF
1
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
2015 Date
Name
Size
Participants
Location
March 20 April 1
Dragoon Ride
500 troops; 129 armoured vehicles
1 participant: The United States (countries travelled through: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany).
Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland
13: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United States.
The North Atlantic (British Coastline)
2
April 11 April 23
Joint Warrior
13,000 troops; 3 Standing Naval Forces; 40 warships and submaries; 70 aircraft
3
May 4 - May 15
Steadfast Javelin
13,000 troops (of which 7,000 Estonian)
8: Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States.
Estonia
4
May 4 - May 15
Dynamic Mongoose
5,000 troops; 13 surface ships present
11: Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and United States
Off the coast of Norway
5
May 25 June 5
Arctic Challenge
4,000 military personnel; 115 combat aircraft.
9 countries present (organized by Norway, Finland, and Sweden)
Norway, Finland, and Sweden
6
June 5 June 20
Baltops 2015
5,600 troops; 49 ships; 61 aircraft; 1 submarine.
12: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
Baltic Sea and the coast of Poland
7
June 8 June 19
Sabre Strike 15
6,000 troops
13: Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United States
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland
8
June 10 June 21
Noble Jump
2,100 troops
5: Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Poland.
Poland
9
June 17 June 28
Trident Joust 15
1,500 troops
25 countries
Bulgaria, Italy, and Romania
12: Azerbajan, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Greece, Moldova, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, and Ukraine
Black Sea (Odessa, Ukraine)
10
June 22 July 3
Sea Breeze
400 troops; USS Donald Cook (DDG 75); P-3C Orion from Patrol Squadron (VP) 9.
11
July 20 Aug. 28
Czech Republic Deploys to Iceland
70 troops; 4 JAS39 Gripen aircraft; Italian Air Force KC-767.
3: The Czech Republic, Iceland, and Italy
Keflavik, Iceland
12
Sept 14 Oct. 2
Slovak Shield
4,000 troops; 640 US soldiers and 150 pieces of military equipment.
3: The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland
Slovakia
13
Oct. 21 Nov. 6
Trident Juncture
36,000 troops
All 28 alliance members, plus partner countries Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine
Italy, Portugal, and Spain
14
Nov. 9 Nov. 21
Arrcade Fusion
1,700 troops; 350 vehicles and over 100 containers
20 countries
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
7
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
but they provided the foundation for an effective conventional NATO deterrent. Alliance members that have joined since 1991 have no experience in facilitating forces moving from the west to the east, and it is unreasonable to expect them to perform well without benefit of rehearsal. Regardless of whether the mission is to defend or to counterattack, bureaucratic delays in approving overflights or ground transit neither deter nor assure. Most of these movement restrictions are member states’ policies—conceivably, some are laws. An exercise that tests the ability to move quickly from twenty-seven points of origin to one flank will certainly illuminate many of the constraints that are in place. The first iteration need not be an expensive, full-scale mobilization; it can be conducted first in a seminar or workshop, providing it involves representatives from each state’s border administration. It would be most effective if this exercise were held soon and completed in preparation for the Alliance to: •
8
Alliance should invite representatives from potential adversaries to observe every step of this—both the deployment and the operations at the exercise sites. Deterrence requires visibility, and the adversaries are not as exposed to the impressive Alliance capability as they should be. The ability of our forces to adjust to the unexpected is our strength, and we should advertise it. As part of accepting (better yet embracing) the experimental nature of the first VJTF exercise, the Alliance should: •
Fall out of love with the word “coherence” and all of its variations. “Coherence” is used so often in the Alliance that it has lost its meaning. Popular opinion holds that for an exercise to be “coherent,” it must relate directly to those that have preceded or will follow it, must simultaneously integrate the same scenario into the command post and field phases, or must integrate deterrence and assurance in equal measures—a wholly unreasonable standard. Effective exercises accomplish specific objectives, which necessarily makes each exercise distinct. For example, an exercise focusing on a conventional threat will not be comparable to one countering an unconventional threat. Certainly there will be some tactical similarities (working through the response to a cyberattack, the presence of Improvised Explosive Devices, and working with local law enforcement to protect the local inhabitants, etc.), but the differences will far outnumber the common tasks. There is no need for the exercise program to mathematically reflect the formal Alliance level of ambition simply to make the numbers appear consistent. Exercises can and should train different levels of maneuver and decision-making at the speeds that best tax these specific mechanisms. The process of political decision-making has its own tempo—one that is incompatible with the training requirements for forces deployed in the field, sea, or air. Purely from the point of cost efficiency, each of the levels requires its own rhythm of activities to maximize the investment of time, personnel, and finances. The Alliance should not sacrifice realism for efficiency but NATO should:
Deterrence requires visibility, and the adversaries are not as exposed to the impressive Alliance capability as they should be.
Exercise the recall, movement, and employment of the VJTF in 2016. First, National leaders or the Secretary General should make a forceful public statement that commits the Alliance to a timeline for this exercise. Undoubtedly, the first exercise of the new unit will be less than perfect—this is to be expected. While there is no point in assembling a force that cannot interoperate effectively and defeat the foe with speed and precision, a highly capable force that cannot reach the battlefield is arguably worse. The Alliance may label this major event as an exercise, but it would be profitable to evaluate it privately more as an experiment. NATO should both expect and welcome the lessons learned when the transiting units encounter unexpected delays, host nation reception is confused, or units arrive without the proper ammunition. The Alliance should, in fact, avoid over-planning the logistics to ensure everything runs smoothly, because when the VJTF must be deployed quickly in a crisis, there will not be weeks of time to make sure the appropriate paperwork is completed in the appropriate languages and in accordance with a half-dozen disparate national procedures. Preferably, the
•
Fall in love with operating blind and dumb. There will inevitably be periods during contingency
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
ISSU E B RIEF
Ideas to Enhance NATO’s Exercise Program
operations when the adversary successfully disrupts Alliance precision guidance, navigation systems, and communications (tactical and strategic). When this happens, the Alliance must be prepared for the uncomfortable position of not dominating in the information domain. It is equally inevitable that the Alliance will eliminate the disruption and regain use of its networks in time, but NATO forces cannot be paralyzed during that period when communication lines are down. Individuals and teams must be familiar with how to continue operations when they cannot communicate. Leaders must be prepared to have forces out of contact for long periods, and strategic leaders must be comfortable with long gaps in data collection and poor situational awareness. A small number of three-day periods when NATO loses its ability to operate using the network is not an existential problem for the Alliance, but it will cause more casualties to its forces and increase collateral damage. If NATO chooses not to operate at tempo during those three days, the situation on the ground will change to its disadvantage, with potentially significant diplomatic effects. When Alliance forces are networked, they are dominant. When NATO fights without the network, it is still superior. The Alliance should re-learn how to be dominant in those brief periods when the networks
ATLANTIC COUNCIL
are down and the enemy has a fair fight. NATO can win in a fair fight, too. The NATO exercise program’s role for enabling successful operations is irreplaceable. There is no more effective means to measure interoperability and prepare for crisis actions than to rehearse them through exercises. With a little bit of modification, Alliance exercises can make the participants better while providing reassurance to our electorates and deterring our adversaries. That said, these strategic effects cannot be created by happenstance—they must become a part of developing the exercise program. With NATO planning expanding rapidly in keeping with the Readiness Action Plan directed at the Wales Summit, NATO’s exercise program could enhance preparedness by instituting the deliberate changes suggested here. The result is a program that is more efficient and more effective. Brigadier General, USA (Ret.) Matt Brand is a specialist in foreign and national security policy and nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security. He worked in senior policy positions with the US Department of Defense for fifteen years, most recently at NATO Allied Command Transformation where he led NATO’s future military transformation studies work.
9
Atlantic Council Board of Directors CHAIRMAN *Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. CHAIRMAN EMERITUS, INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Brent Scowcroft PRESIDENT AND CEO *Frederick Kempe EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRS *Adrienne Arsht *Stephen J. Hadley VICE CHAIRS *Robert J. Abernethy *Richard Edelman *C. Boyden Gray *George Lund *Virginia A. Mulberger *W. DeVier Pierson *John Studzinski TREASURER *Brian C. McK. Henderson SECRETARY *Walter B. Slocombe DIRECTORS Stéphane Abrial Odeh Aburdene Peter Ackerman Timothy D. Adams John Allen Michael Andersson Michael Ansari Richard L. Armitage David D. Aufhauser Elizabeth F. Bagley Peter Bass *Rafic Bizri Dennis Blair *Thomas L. Blair Myron Brilliant Esther Brimmer *R. Nicholas Burns William J. Burns
*Richard R. Burt Michael Calvey James E. Cartwright John E. Chapoton Ahmed Charai Sandra Charles Melanie Chen George Chopivsky Wesley K. Clark David W. Craig *Ralph D. Crosby, Jr. Nelson Cunningham Ivo H. Daalder *Paula J. Dobriansky Christopher J. Dodd Conrado Dornier Thomas J. Egan, Jr. *Stuart E. Eizenstat Thomas R. Eldridge Julie Finley Lawrence P. Fisher, II Alan H. Fleischmann *Ronald M. Freeman Laurie Fulton Courtney Geduldig *Robert S. Gelbard Thomas Glocer *Sherri W. Goodman Mikael Hagström Ian Hague Amir Handjani John D. Harris, II Frank Haun Michael V. Hayden Annette Heuser *Karl Hopkins Robert Hormats Miroslav Hornak *Mary L. Howell Wolfgang Ischinger Reuben Jeffery, III *James L. Jones, Jr. George A. Joulwan Lawrence S. Kanarek Stephen R. Kappes
Maria Pica Karp Sean Kevelighan Zalmay M. Khalilzad Robert M. Kimmitt Henry A. Kissinger Franklin D. Kramer Philip Lader *Richard L. Lawson *Jan M. Lodal Jane Holl Lute William J. Lynn Izzat Majeed Wendy W. Makins Mian M. Mansha Gerardo Mato William E. Mayer Allan McArtor Eric D.K. Melby Franklin C. Miller James N. Miller *Judith A. Miller *Alexander V. Mirtchev Karl Moor Michael Morell Georgette Mosbacher Steve C. Nicandros Thomas R. Nides Franco Nuschese Joseph S. Nye Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg Sean O’Keefe Ahmet Oren *Ana Palacio Carlos Pascual Thomas R. Pickering Daniel B. Poneman Daniel M. Price Arnold L. Punaro Robert Rangel Thomas J. Ridge Charles O. Rossotti Stanley O. Roth Robert Rowland Harry Sachinis
John P. Schmitz Brent Scowcroft Rajiv Shah Alan J. Spence James Stavridis Richard J.A. Steele *Paula Stern Robert J. Stevens John S. Tanner *Ellen O. Tauscher Karen Tramontano Clyde C. Tuggle Paul Twomey Melanne Verveer Enzo Viscusi Charles F. Wald Jay Walker Michael F. Walsh Mark R. Warner Maciej Witucki Neal S. Wolin Mary C. Yates Dov S. Zakheim HONORARY DIRECTORS David C. Acheson Madeleine K. Albright James A. Baker, III Harold Brown Frank C. Carlucci, III Robert M. Gates Michael G. Mullen Leon E. Panetta William J. Perry Colin L. Powell Condoleezza Rice Edward L. Rowny George P. Shultz John W. Warner William H. Webster *Executive Committee Members List as of March 18, 2016
The Atlantic Council is a nonpartisan organization that promotes constructive US leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting today’s global challenges. © 2016 The Atlantic Council of the United States. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Atlantic Council, except in the case of brief quotations in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. Please direct inquiries to: Atlantic Council 1030 15th Street, NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20005 (202) 463-7226, www.AtlanticCouncil.org