Stars and Stripes quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow and NATOSource Director Jorge Benitez on NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Phillip Breedlove’s approach toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine:
“He certainly has been the military leader of the alliance at a very historic time, where we’ve had the most dramatic changes since Gen. John Galvin, SACEUR at end of Berlin Wall and Warsaw Pact,” said Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. “He also has made comments and raised issues, giving him a higher profile than normally we see from a NATO SACEUR and military commanders.”
From blunt statements about the need to halt troop drawdowns in Europe to pointing out areas of insufficient resources, such as intelligence assets and short supplies of precision munitions, Breedlove has “raised some thorny issues in public,” Benitez said.
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“He has shown a great deal of skill in managing the different constituencies and walking that fine line,” Benitez said. “You can’t make everyone happy, but he’s shown the skills of alliance management.”