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There may be no other person outside of Ukraine more responsible for ensuring Kyiv wins its war against Moscow than Christopher Cavoli. The four-star general, appointed as NATO’s supreme allied commander and commander of U.S. forces in Europe this year, is tasked with ensuring Ukraine gets all the military, financial and logistical support it needs to keep fighting. Cavoli only started in July, but he has already proposed an overhaul of how the West trains and equips Ukraine’s military. His plan is to establish a new 300-man command operation based in Wiesbaden, Germany, whose job will be to respond to Ukraine’s military needs and requests and which would report to him.
He comes in at a time when there is a revitalization of the military alliance, which French President Emmanuel Macron once said was suffering “brain death.” The war has given NATO renewed purpose, and with Europe redoubling its efforts on defense and security cooperation, the transatlantic relationship has deepened. Cavoli will be in charge during the likely accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance and has called for the 2 percent of GDP commitment to defense spending to be a minimum. Having spent the last four years in Germany, Cavoli supervised the largest military exercises the alliance has conducted, and learned firsthand about the sometimes fractious exchanges that take place within the alliance.
His profile seems well-suited to the job at hand. He speaks French, Italian and Russian, and has done a master’s at Yale in Russian Studies. (His undergraduate thesis at Princeton, however, was on earthworms.)
Source: Politico
