Jeb Bush calls for more 'robust' military exercises to counter Putin

POLITICO

BERLIN — To Jeb Bush, it’s clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “bully” who is waging a covert war in Ukraine and that NATO should not rule out putting ground troops in the Baltic states.

So why, Bush was asked, did the Obama administration and others — like his brother, who famously said in 2001 that he’d gotten a sense of Putin’s “soul” — miscalculate in their initial dealings with the Russian leader?

“I think Putin has changed,” Bush said, offering an implicit defense of his brother’s oft-ridiculed initial assessment of the former KGB official. “He just invaded another country. That was different than it was a decade ago.”

“This is a different Putin, much more aggressive,” Bush added. “I don’t begrudge anybody trying to develop better relationships with any country; but it’s clear that, in this particular case, the much- heralded reset didn’t work out.”

It’s a new line of attack for Bush against Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state launched the Obama administration’s attempt to improve ties with Russia with a bright red “reset” button — but risks reminding voters that George W. Bush was the first president to get Putin wrong.

During a 10-minute press availability with American reporters, Bush expanded on the comments he made Tuesday night in his speech at the Wirtschaftsrat, an economic conference held by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, in which he called for a harder line against Russia.

“There are things that we could do given the scale of our military to send a strong signal that we’re on the side of Poland, the Baltics and the countries that truly feel threatened by the ‘little green men’, this new cyber warfare and these other tactics that Russia now is using,” Bush said, employing a term used to describe covert Russian forces. “I think we ought to consider putting troops there for sure.”

Pressed on whether he’s advocating the deployment of U.S. ground troops, Bush would only say that he believes training exercises in the region should be more “robust.”

President Obama last year announced the U.S. would station new aircraft and trainers in the Baltics, but Bush said the measures didn’t go far enough.

“You see the difference between our training exercises and the Russian training exercises, where they deploy tens of thousands of people in the region, literally next door to our allies — and our response is far less mean,” he said.

“To deal with Putin, you need to deal from strength,” Bush said. “He’s a bully, and bullies don’t — you enable bad behavior when you’re nuanced with a guy like that. I think just being clear — I’m not talking about being bellicose, but just saying, ‘These are the consequences of your actions.’”

The tough foreign policy stances comes just days before Bush is expected to officially become a candidate for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination. For Republican primary voters, national security has remained the top issue over the last few months; Bush’s six-day trip to Germany, Poland and Ukraine is designed to underline his experience on the world stage and present him as a leader who can stand up to Putin.

As he did Tuesday night, Bush qualified his remarks, emphasizing that he’s not trying to start another Cold War.

“I don’t think we want to isolate Russia to the point where we push them into the arms of China,” Bush said. “I don’t think that that’s necessary at all. But the difference, let’s be clear: Russia invaded a neighboring country and occupies a sizable chunk of that country. It’s violated the Minsk accords,” Bush said, referring a February 2015 ceasefire agreement. “This is a different time than it was just five years ago. And I think the United States and our friends and allies in Europe need to be resolute.”

After more meetings here Wednesday morning with government and business leaders, Bush will fly to Warsaw, Poland, later this afternoon and then on to Tallinn, Estonia, on Friday.

Both countries, which share borders with Russia, are eager for a stronger NATO military presence to deter Putin from taking further actions there.