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.
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.
Your assumption is that it’s always been a genocidal, warring regime, and that it’s just been building up the entire time. I disagree with that defeatist attitude. If Germany can be de-nazified and Japan can transform from the ruthlessness displayed during and before world war 2, then surely something similar could be done with Russia. If you think this is impossible, then what solution do you propose?
Both Germany and Japan were defeated in war (that they themselves started) and occupied by foreign forces. Their “denazification” was enforced by occupiers. You are arguing against your own points (not that you have any, except “war is bad and America is to blame for Russia’s actions”).
I’m not sure I saw this point being made, although I agree that not much actionable ideas were proposed
Oh yeah, Russia hasn’t ever been genocidal, not since its tsarist days huh.
The solution I propose is to arm ourselves so that Russia doesn’t think about attacking anyone ever again. And neither does China and neither does Iran or any other asshole that wants war.
Both Germany and Japan were defeated in a hot war, as opposed to a cold war, so your point about occupation is irrelevant in the case of Russia. Germany and Japan also received generous economic benefits, a far more relevant point that you ignored for whatever reason. Are you trying to argue that Russia was a genocidal warring regime right when the USSR collapsed? I guess we should just nuke them out of existence because you seem to think it’s in their genes or something.
Bruh read up on history and stop gaslighting people.
I didn’t say that.
The US is the most armed, most advanced military in the history of humanity. Somehow this hasn’t achieved peace in the world.
We live in unprecedented peaceful times compared to any other age in history. You don’t achieve peace by disarming yourself and hoping your aggressive neighbor magically flips on the decades of genocidal intent and imperialism. I won’t be replying to you further, I hate going in circles about something that has shown to be true time and time again.
That depends on where you are in the world. For the west, absolutely, since they’ve mastered the art of proxy wars. The same is not true of the global south for whom these wars aren’t by proxy.
Sure, but you also don’t achieve peace by provoking and undermining others through proxies and economic exploitation.
Thanks for sparing me an argument with someone who already seems set in their ways and is unwilling to listen to what others are saying.
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.
What do you think examining them will do?
Help us to prevent it from happening again in the future and perhaps give a hint as to how to resolve the issue now. Changing the status quo is much harder than preventing it from becoming the status quo in the first place or, put another way, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Either way, it’s important to learn how/why things happen if we wish to have them not happen.
You can’t get rid of a warmongering dictator through careful examination.
That’s why I said changing the status quo is much harder. You can, however, prevent a warmongering dictator from rising by preventing the conditions in which they rise. To know what those conditions are, you need the careful examination.