Summary
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that the alliance must adopt a “wartime mindset” to prepare for long-term confrontation with Russia.
Speaking in Brussels, he urged members to increase defense spending beyond the 2% GDP target, noting that only 23 of 32 members currently meet it.
Rutte emphasized boosting defense production, addressing cyber threats, and countering China’s military buildup and actions toward Taiwan.
His remarks come as Donald Trump threatens to withhold defense support from NATO members failing to meet spending commitments, raising concerns about alliance unity.
The organization got complacent with the countries not developing their armies and letting them wither away and lose effectiveness instead. The entire eastern flank of NATO screamed that Russia is still a threat, even with the USSR breaking up. Those countries were called “war hawks” and then 2008 happened, 2014 happened and now 2022 happened. Apparently it wasn’t enough to shake them up.
2008 is about 17 years after the collapse of the USSR. Within that time, Russia experienced an economic crisis with the push for a “free market” and actually had lower life expectancy than during the USSR. Unless you want to argue that Russia is just inherently a warmongering country, surely something could’ve been done to prevent this later aggression. Similar to trump, putin getting elected is a symptom of a broken system.
Oh sorry, they needed time to build up. Fuck em, and fuck their genocidal, warring regime.
Your assumption is that it’s always been a genocidal, warring regime, and that it’s just been building up the entire time. I disagree with that defeatist attitude. If Germany can be de-nazified and Japan can transform from the ruthlessness displayed during and before world war 2, then surely something similar could be done with Russia. If you think this is impossible, then what solution do you propose?
