Episode 11: Gen. Ben Hodges on Zapad 2017 and a "military Schengen zone"

Channeling Brussels

In this week's show is an interview with General Ben Hodges, the commander of U-S forces in Europe. I caught up with him after NATO exercises in the Baltics and Poland, called "Saber Strike", and just before he was headed off to oversee "Saber Guardian" in the Black Sea region. General Hodges and Teri Schultz discuss the upcoming Zapad military drills by Russia and Belarus, which don't give him much cause for concern because, he says, "we're always ready." He'd like to see more transparency from the Kremlin as to the actual number of troops being used. Moscow says it's just 13,000, right on the limit for being forced to invite close-up inspections of their drills. Hodges says "prove it". And he has concerns that don't rest on the Russians -- but on allies themselves. European governments keep laws in place that block the movement of allied military equipment across borders -- even when needed for protection. In this episode, Hodges explains why he's advocating a "military Schengen zone". This week's Channeling Brussels is brought to you by the Atlantic Council. [Intro/Outro music "Happy Rock" by Bensound under a CC-BY-ND license (www.bensound.com/royalty-free-mus…rack/happy-rock/)]