The time has come for public and private actors in the West to prepare for an era in which anything could happen at any time, including fighting a war, a top NATO military official said Wednesday.
“We need a warfighting transformation of NATO,” the chief of the alliance’s Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, said in Brussels as he opened a two-day meeting of national defence chiefs.
He further stressed in the post-Cold War era, “The tectonic plates of power are shifting. As a result: we face the most dangerous world in decades,” noting in the past NATO governments and companies lived in an era in which everything was plentiful, foreseeable, controllable, and focused on efficiency, Reuters reports.
File/The Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, says the time has come for the West to prepare for the possibility of war. (LISE ASERUD/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
Not anymore.
That all changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the increasing fears now being expressed across Europe that a Donald Trump return to the White House will lead to an entire reset of U.S. relations with the region in general and NATO in particular.
As a result NATO members must adjust their thinking to “an era in which anything can happen at any time, an era in which we need to expect the unexpected, an era in which we need to focus on effectiveness in order to be fully effective”, he said.
On Monday, U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps announced his government would send 20,000 troops to take part in the NATO military exercises — known as “Steadfast Defender” — with many deployed in eastern Europe from February to June.
The U.K. will also send advanced fighter jets and surveillance planes, plus warships and submarines.
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