The chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, has advocated the need for NATO member countries to shift to a «war economy» to respond to Ukraine’s needs in the face of Russian encroachment.
«We have to increase defense industry production and there are already more and more talks on the subject at the national level. This could mean prioritizing certain raw materials, certain production capacities needed for the defense industry rather than the civilian one. Those priorities should be discussed about, partially, a war economy in peacetime,» Bauer said in an interview with Portuguese television RTP broadcast on Saturday.
Bauer pointed out that in the last quarter of a century the global economy has been operating on the principle of «now and then», but the significant material and technical losses of war have revealed the weakness of this approach.
«Both sides spend a lot of ammunition and destructive material: battle tanks and aircraft. Both sides need to buy a lot of raw materials and ammunition to keep fighting. The problem for both is that the Western and Russian defense industry must increase their production,» he has argued. Stockpiles of arsenals «are usually not needed, but as soon as they are needed, it’s crazy,» he said.
To achieve this transition, a change in the mentality of the population will be necessary, an extreme that he has described as «difficult». «We have to make sure that the Russians don’t win the war in Ukraine. If they do we will have a much bigger problem in terms of money and defense: the Russians will be on our borders,» he has warned.
Bauer thus pointed to rearmament as one of the main priorities of the Alliance, which he also acknowledged has lost its monopoly on military initiative. Meanwhile, Moscow maintains strategic objectives that go beyond Ukraine and seeks to regain the dimension of the former Soviet Union, he pointed out.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
