Prepare for War

Dec 12 2024 The BBC

Nato must switch to a wartime mindset, warns secretary general

Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato, warned that Nato members were not spending enough to prepare for the threat of a future conflict with Russia.

He also said that Moscow was "preparing for long-term confrontation with Ukraine and with us", and it is time to "shift to a wartime mindset".

Nato members have been spending more on defense in the last few years, but not all have reached the 2% of GDP as of yet, and Rutte said that "a lot more" would be needed in the near future.

"If we don't spend more together now to prevent war, we will pay a much, much, much higher price later to fight it."

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Si vis pacem, para bellum - If you want peace, prepare for war.

Russia is at war, and though the “special military operation” has obviously not gone according to plan, Russia is gaining a lot of experience and will eventually learn to wage the war better.

Also Russia’s economy is on a war footing, and in 2025 defence spending is set to be "a third of Russia's state budget”. In contrast, some Nato members have not reached the agreed 2% of GDP spending level as of yet.

When the current hostilities eventually end, some kind of agreement will be negotiated, most likely one that will leave all sides unsatisfied. That in turn will result in an unstable peace, which basically ensures that there will be a next war to settle the score later.

Russia has lost huge amounts of materiel in this war, not to mention the casualties, but once this war is over, it will rebuild its army. It will also use all the experience gained fighting Western weapons and armour, to equip the rebuilt army with better and battle tested equipment.

That rebuilt army with the new weapons will be the one Nato will have to prepare for, not the army that is currently fighting in Ukraine.

In five years from now, no Nato member, or anyone else for that matter, will want to face that rebuilt Russian army unprepared. There really is no other option, either we prepare as well as we can now, or we pay a much higher price later, and that price will not only be much higher, it will include blood as well.

This is not a new idea or related to just this conflict, even our ancestors knew this. The Romans had the adage Si vis pacem, para bellum, and way before that, the old guy from the bible, Noah, did not wait for the rain to start, he built the Arc before the rain.