[Amanpour:] Welcome back to the program. The increasingly hostile relationship between Russia and NATO means the two sides haven't met face to face for nearly two years until today. But while exchanging views was constructive, there were no major breakthroughs.
[Jens Stoltenberg, Nato Secretary General:] NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements. Today's meeting did not change that. NATO allies remain firm that there can be no return to practical cooperation until Russia returns to the respect of international law. But we will keep channels of communication open.
[Amanpour:] So those persistent differences, what do they mean on the ground? General Philip Breedlove is NATO's military chief and he joined me exclusively from his Belgium headquarters. General Breedlove, welcome back to the program.
[Breedlove:] It's great to be back on your program, Christiane.
[Amanpour:] General, can you give us a state of play? What is going on particularly with aggressive moves, as they've been described, by Russia? We see that, in the last few days, there's been a simulated attack pass as they buzz a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic, followed shortly by a barrel roll around a U.S. plane, I believe. How dangerous is this? How do you account for this?
[Breedlove:] So you have it right, Christiane. We have seen a series of actions that are a little different, in fact, than we've seen over the past few months. And these have been actions that we have deemed dangerous in certain ways. Certainly we've had several interactions with our ships in the Baltic Sea. One series of interactions during helicopter landing training with one of our NATO allies and we had to suspend that helicopter landing training because the conditions were clearly not safe and conducive to getting good training. I believe that these actions were done deliberately. They were not an accident.
[Amanpour:] Do you see Russia stepping up its provocation?
[Breedlove:] So what I think we should start with is that we see Russia in a more broad sense, engaging nations along its periphery. And it's using all of the elements of national power. You and I have talked about this before. We use a very simple model based on the American coin, the dime: diplomatic, informational, military and economic. And we see Russia using its national power broadly in all of its categories to try to influence those nations on its periphery. In Ukraine, we could make some very straightforward examples. Intense diplomatic pressure to discredit Kiev and to bring discredit on those trying to make the changes in Kiev. An incredible information or, as I call it, a disinformation campaign to misrepresent what is happening. And as we have talked about in Syria, in the beginning of the Russian campaign in Syria, we saw that almost unilaterally their strikes were against the moderate opposition, not against daish or ISIL. Now we must say and we must report accurately that, as of late, the Russian strikes have been more focused on daish and ISIL. So that is a bit of a change in behavior from the first part.
[Amanpour:] General, I know that you don't like to get into politics and I'm not asking you to talk about politics but I need you to respond to the notion by the leading Republican candidate that NATO is obsolete. And I would like to play this and have you react to that.
[Donald Trump, Republican Presidential Candidate:] Many countries are not paying their fair share. That means we are protecting them and they are getting all sorts of military protection and other things. And they're ripping off the United States. And they're ripping you off. I don't want to do that. Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO.
[Breedlove:] So, Christiane, I think I can speak to what you want me to speak to. But let me be very clear, I'm not going to address any political candidate's remarks specifically. What I would like to do is talk about what I think is the value of NATO, obviously as the commander but, as importantly, as a young man who served here in the early '80s, all the way now to the commander. I've been in NATO for almost four decades. And what I have seen is NATO bring peace to an area where there was a lot of problems before. What I've seen is this great alliance serve peace in this area. I've seen this great alliance serve for the reunification of Germany, a nation I've lived in five times and my two daughters were born in. And all of this goodness coming from an alliance that is very capable and performs well, 28 nations for 28 with partners, to bring this very peaceful situation. Now it hasn't been perfect. We've seen the Balkans. We've seen some of the other challenges but, by and large, the kind of wars that happened before, NATO has done a wonderful job of bringing peace, stability and prosperity to Europe Europe, which was torn apart in two world wars. So I disagree with the notion that this alliance holds no value. I think it holds great value. And I think that it will perform into the future as it has performed in the past.
[Amanpour:] One of your big challenges is Afghanistan. And there has been a real spike in fighting there. And we've seen all sorts of attacks just this week. And you're facing a deadline for a withdrawal of troops and a drawdown of troops. Do you have enough time to do one of the things you really want to do and that is train the Afghan soldiers properly to be able to take over in the event that you actually do all pull out?
[Breedlove:] And what we have talked about in relation to the mission is the need to remain for a certain amount of time, connected to these cores in the force folks that we have in Afghanistan and to continue to be able to train, advise and assist, TAA, these cores in the disparate parts of Afghanistan. And they are facing a tough challenge. I believe they continue to react well, not perfectly, but well. We still see the challenges that we knew they were going to have: to build an air force that is able to bring close air support, medevac, et cetera, to a nation doesn't happen quickly. I often joke when people ask me, how long does it take to build an aviator with 10 years' of experience? It takes 10 years to build an aviator with 10 years of experience. So we have work to do in some of these key enabling capabilities that we need to bring to Afghanistan.
[Amanpour:] As things stand right now, the U.S. forces are going to at least due to be nearly halved to just over 5,000 from the current level of nearly 10,000. And this would be by the beginning of the next year, 2017. Now we understand that U.S. officials say that the training mission, if this happens, would not be able to continue.
[Breedlove:] It would not continue in the same fashion that it's continuing in now. I think we would have to agree with that. If you take a fairly sizeable cut, the mission will have to change in some way. But we're looking at options now to retain that connectivity to the cores, providing enablers and possibly other nations providing more troops, et cetera, et cetera, all of these still very preliminary. But what we're looking at are those options to continue the mission which we think is important, which is to train, advise, assist to the core level in Afghanistan.
[Amanpour:] General Breedlove, thanks for joining us tonight.
[Breedlove:] Thank you, Christiane.
[Amanpour:] And coming up, imagine a world where Cuba's towering political monument makes an exit while some of its cultural ones make a comeback. That's next.