STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. European Command’s Gen. Philip Breedlove says the military here needs to get back to the business of war planning, a skill lost during the post-Cold War era and one needed again in the face of a resurgent Russia.
“I am very sure about how EUCOM needs to change,” Breedlove said during a recent exit interview with Stars and Stripes. “This headquarters shrank and changed from a war-fighting headquarters to a building-partnership-capacity, engagement kind of headquarters.”
“This headquarters needs to be a warfighting headquarters,” he said.
On Tuesday, Breedlove will walk a final time across the parade ground at EUCOM headquarters, handing off leadership of more than 60,000 troops to Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti.
Unlike when Breedlove assumed command in 2013, Scaparrotti arrives at a time of upheaval as the continent contends with Cold War-like tensions with Russia, a refugee crisis tearing at Europe’s social fabric, and increased fears about terrorism because of war along NATO’s southern flank.
Scaparrotti will lead a EUCOM headquarters that over the years has shrunk in size — it is the second-smallest of all combatant commands — even as the Pentagon attempts to boost its presence along NATO’s eastern edge.
Breedlove said more work needs to be done to lift EUCOM out of its post-Cold War mindset, which resulted in “building partner capacity,” military parlance for training missions. EUCOM is a “mere fraction” of what it was a generation ago, a downsizing that occurred when the U.S. was trying to make a partner out of Russia.
“We changed EUCOM based on…
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