NATO chief reiterates call on allies to 'shift to wartime mindset'

ANKARA

The NATO secretary-general Wednesday reiterated his call on allied members to “shift to a wartime mindset.”

“Indeed, I said this in a speech last month … but let me say it again. To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It's time to shift to a wartime mindset, and this means we need to make our defenses even stronger by spending more on defense, producing more and better defense capabilities,” Mark Rutte told the NATO Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session.

He stressed that the increasing military plans, readiness, and military exercises were “essential, but not sufficient to deal with the dangers coming our way in the next four or five years.”

Rutte also noted that Russia’s “hostile actions,” including cyber attacks and acts of sabotage, which NATO “used to call … hybrid,” were actually “destabilization actions and campaigns.” “Russia is hard at work to try to weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom. And it is not alone. It has China, North Korea, and Iran by its side,” the NATO chief added and called on continuous support for Ukraine.

Rutte’s remarks backed those of Chair of the Committee Adm. Rob Bauer, who said: “Machiavelli taught us that the best way to do that is to prepare for war, not because war is inevitable, but because being better prepared for war strengthens our deterrence, which in turn minimizes the chance of war being fought on allied soil.”

The committee will discuss, over the next two days, the alliance’s “readiness to deter and defend the Euro-Atlantic area and to safeguard the region's 1 billion inhabitants,” as well as ongoing missions and operations, defense planning process, and support for Ukraine, Bauer added.

He stressed the need for NATO members to “stand together firmer than ever” in the face of Russia’s aggression, and the support it gets from China which has “zero transparency about its military buildup, including its nuclear forces,” and “continues to display increasingly aggressive behavior against its neighbors.”