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Jan. 28 () –
The president of the NATO Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, has defended the need for the member countries of the Alliance to switch to a “war economy” to respond to the needs of Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion.
“We have to increase the production of the defense industry and there are already more and more conversations on the subject at the national level. This could mean prioritizing certain raw materials, certain production capacities necessary for the defense industry instead of the civil one. They should These priorities should be debated on, partially, a war economy in peacetime”, Bauer said in an interview with the Portuguese television RTP broadcast this Saturday.
Bauer has pointed out that for the last quarter of a century the global economy has been operating on the “go and go” principle, but the significant material and technical losses of the war have revealed the weakness of this approach.
“On both sides a lot of ammunition and destructive material is spent: tanks and planes. Both sides need to buy a lot of raw materials and ammunition to continue fighting. The problem for both is that the defense industry in the West and Russia must increase its production “, he argued. Stockpiles are “usually not needed, but as soon as they are needed it’s crazy,” she said.
To achieve this transition, a change in the mentality of the population will be necessary, an extreme that has been described as “difficult.” “We have to make sure that the Russians don’t win the Ukrainian war. If they do we will have a much bigger problem in terms of money and defense: the Russians will be on our borders,” he warned.
Bauer has thus indicated rearmament as one of the main priorities of the Alliance, which he has also recognized that it has lost the monopoly of the military initiative. Meanwhile, Moscow maintains strategic objectives that go beyond Ukraine and that seeks to recover the dimension of the former Soviet Union, he has pointed out.
