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.
Should have done that a few years ago
I agree, but better late than never. And absolutely better now than when putin starts bombing some civilians in a NATO country.
Finland seems to be the only member of NATO who hasn’t forgotten who their neighbors are. But yes, better late than never.
As an Estonian, I obviously know some jokes about Finns. But I won’t go into anything weird or racist because my favourite one is actually relevant and not racist, but more like historic satire.
It’s the Winter War. Russians in Finnish territory make camp. Then a voice from the nearby forest yells: “I’m all alone, come and get me!”
The Russian commanders discuss for a moment and agree: Better not send just one man, or the Finn might best him. So they send ten.
Half an hour later, nobody is back, but they again hear the Finn: “I’m still alone, come and get me!”. They send a hundred, thinking this will surely be enough.
Finally, the commanders get really irritated to hear the Finn’s voice again, so they send a thousand, and this time one man comes back, all bloody and ragged: “Don’t listen to that lying piece of shit! There’s two of them!”
Cold wartime, maybe. For sure we’re not at the “assess tolerable casualty percentage” stage of conflict yet, which is what that means to me.
You mean it wasn’t already? The organization was created to counter the USSR and never really drifted from that, even when the USSR fell, funnily enough.
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.
The USSR fell and has now been replaced with someone with far more warlike intentions than anyone since Stalin.
We need to examine the conditions that allowed such a figure to get elected. It wasn’t an instantaneous transition to putin, it took about a decade of a miserable economy where people had to sell whatever they could (including vouchers for shares in previously state enterprises they were given, which ended up being bought up by oligarchs to consolidate power) just to eat. Life actually got worse than during the USSR. Along comes putin and luckily for him, the price of oil increases while he’s in power and things look like they’re improving. Is it any wonder that someone like that could grab power during such a turbulent time? It’s happened in the US with trump and things are a lot less dire here than they were in Russia post-USSR-collapse.
Stop spreading cold war propaganda. Made people scared.
Provoking each other. Buying expensive killing machines.
We have more important social problems to solve.
Make love, not war.
Can’t say I’m a military analyst but if Russia can’t take over Ukraine why should NATO be worried, 2% or otherwise? Russia’s ongoing sabotage against NATO countries is a job for intelligence and policing. Greasing the palms of the arms industry won’t touch that.
Because Russia doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Also it is better to be prepared and not need it, rather than not be prepared and lose a large portion of the population, industry, potentially getting genocided away etc.
I agree about that but in the case of defence against a potential Russian invasion of European NATO members I think it’s a false dichotomy. We are already stronger than Russia by nearly all measures and would be better off investing in infrastructure that makes us more prosperous and resilient whatever the future holds.
Are we stronger than Russia + China + Iran + any other country that joins them?
If we were strong enough, we could have helped Ukraine win. Multiple countries have neglected their military up to a point it should be considered treason.
Because the industrial base for producing critical things like ammunition is nearly nonexistent. Despite USA and European arms support Ukraine has been permanently shell-starved for the entire course of the war. Three years later, even after spinning up some new production, Ukraine’s allies still don’t make enough shells to get anywhere close to 1:1 with what the Russians fire at them (and that was before North Korea started supplying the Russians)
The invasion of Ukraine has made it crystal clear that Europe’s military industrial base is utterly incapable of responding to an actual peer conflict on their own soil, let alone providing a deterrent to wars of expansion outside of it. It would be foolish not to be investing in sovereign military capability in today’s world.
You’re talking like the whole of Europe has been pouring everything it’s got into the war in Ukraine, which it hasn’t even come close to.
I think Czechia is the only country who has not immediately replenished military aid given to Ukraine. UK arms manufacturers continue to supply the international market. Meanwhile Russia is pulling tanks out of museums, begging from impoverished North Korea and has spent nearly three years capturing 20% of a non-NATO country below Egypt and Australia in military rankings.
The issue here is not that Europe is vulnerable to Russia, it’s that there is a renewed American mandate to cut spending on other people’s wars and deterrents and they are wondering whether Europe should cough up more money. Mark Rutte licks Trump’s anus and is making what he thinks are the right sounds. Fair enough. On the flipside European lawmakers are going to be wondering whether Donald will go back to keeping intelligence documents in his bathroom, whether US military bases in their countries are really worth it and whether they want much to do with the US at all as gets more and more nutty.
If you put aside the argument that Russia isn’t capable of running over Ukraine, cities are still laid to waste, people are getting killed…
Wether or not Russia is capable of taking over Ukraine, lives are lost in Ukraine. That’s a reason to be worried. You can laugh at Russia’s failure to carry out the task they put before themselves, but in the end people are suffering.
The whole point of their operation wasn’t to “not be capable to take over Ukraine”, it was “(to be capable) to take over Ukraine”.
I think you misunderstood me.
In your analogy it’s like increasing your grocery budget by 25%, knowing that you already have more than enough groceries to see you through the winter and that extra 25% will rot before it gets used. Spending that extra money on groceries has also cost you the opportunity to buy a backup generator in case the snow knocks out your power supply as well as a new starter motor for your snowmobile.
instead of war let’s use critical weather as an analogy
That’s hard to agree with. War efforts are largely dependent on finite resources, of which the upstream comment argued that if Russia is struggling (and losing those finite resources for later use) in Ukraine, they’re sure to have even less if they spread their efforts elsewhere.
Weather generally doesn’t get “used up” the same way, so it would make more sense to be prepared for that theoretical unlimited supply of snow.
Do I think countries around Russia should be on alert? Yes. Do I think their position is weaker now than it was before they invaded Ukraine, which would continue further if they tried the same thing elsewhere? Also yes.
