Hagel Says U.S. Mulls Adding Brigade to Counter Russia
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said permanently stationing an additional U.S. Army brigade in Europe is among options to beef up security as Russian troops remain massed along Ukraine’s eastern border.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has asked its top military commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, to study “a number of new possibilities, new measures, new options that we and NATO should consider,” Hagel said in an interview yesterday in Honolulu with Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Television.
Asked if those included permanently stationing a third brigade of 5,000 troops in Europe, Hagel said, “That’s all part of the measures that could be considered.”
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As part of a U.S. defense strategy approved in 2012 by President Barack Obama, the Pentagon withdrew from Europe two of its four Army brigades, including 10,000 troops and their equipment, and eliminated them. The strategy assumed Europe would remain peaceful and Russia would be a partner rather than an antagonist, laying the foundation for the administration to turn more of its attention to Asia.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-04/hagel-says-u-s-mulls-adding-brigade-to-counter-russia.html