Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met in Finland for six hours Wednesday with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff.
ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The U.S. should explore ways to expand its military contacts with the Russians, potentially to include allowing observers from each country to watch the other's combat exercises, in a broad effort to increase transparency and reduce the risk of conflict, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.
“We need to put in place policies and procedures to make sure that we increase certainty, to reduce uncertainty, increase trust to reduce distrust, increase stability to reduce instability in order to avoid miscalculation and reduce the possibility of great power war,” Milley said. “That’s a fundamental thing that we should try to do, and I am going to try to do it.”
Milley's comments Thursday come in the midst of a furor over calls he made during the final turbulent months of Donald Trump's presidency to assure his Chinese counterpart that the United States was stable and wasn’t going to suddenly go to war with or attack China.Milley has argued that the calls were routine and “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job to reassure an adversary and ensure strategic stability.
In response to the Ukraine invasion, Congress in 2016 severely limited military cooperation with Russia. The law prohibits “military-to-military cooperation” until the secretary of defense certifies that Russia “has ceased its occupation of Ukrainian territory” and “aggressive activities.” The law was later amended to state that it does not limit military talks aimed at “reducing the risk of conflict.
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