Nato chief Mark Rutte has called for a 400 per cent boost to air and missile capabilities – and his demand to raise defence spending across the alliance to 5 per cent has raised the voices of doom to a scream.
A return to Cold War levels of defence spending is not, however, a hysterical plea from a lackey of the military-industrial complex.
It is a sad acknowledgement that the peace dividend that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union has been squandered by the West in a pointless war in Afghanistan and a criminal conflict in Iraq which expanded the list of peoples with a good reason to hate democracy.
But there were plenty around already. Vladimir Putin is one of them, Xi Jinping is another – Donald Trump is rushing to their ranks. Autocracy is on the rise around the world while democracies have been consumed by complacency.
“Wishful thinking will not keep us safe,” said Rutte, who called for Nato to become a “stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance”.
“The fact is, we need a quantum leap in our collective defence. The fact is, we must have more forces and capabilities to implement our defence plans in full.
“The fact is, danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends.”
He’s right, of course. But he is the secretary general of a military alliance. He is banging the drum for more money because he wants to see the return to the days when MAD – mutually assured destruction – was the sword that hung over every head on the planet.
In the bad old days, nuclear war was the horror that kept the peace between the superpowers. They pursued their rivalries through proxies – often in Africa.
Marxist Mozambique, Angola, and Ethiopia endured civil wars for decades while Western-backed rebels battled the Moscow-backed governments from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Sometimes, as in Vietnam and Korea, the West sent its forces into war – but overwhelmingly the suffering for the ideological schism that split the world was in what was then known as the Third World.
In South America, CIA-backed coups removed leaders who were deemed too “commie-inclined” by Washington where Republicans and Democrats were terrified of reds getting under beds in their back yards. Kennedy’s clash with Khrushchev came close to WW3 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But it was the ability of the West to outspend the Soviet Union that brought the Iron Curtain down on the Soviet Empire.
The Soviets spent between 10 and 20 per cent of GDP on the military while Nato was spending half that. Moscow depended on high oil process for its economic wellbeing while its collectivisation of farming and industrial policies stifled innovation. When oil crashed from $120/barrel to the mid $20s/barrel in the 1980s, the social and political necessity for reform became overwhelming.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia is estimated to spend at least 7.2 per cent of its GDP on the military, but this does not account for social welfare payments or the costs of administering the occupied territories in Ukraine.
A cheap option for Putin in splitting the attention of the West has been to encourage semi-autonomous private military companies to operate in north Africa – like the proxies of the Cold War.
Groups like Wagner have expanded their operations in Mali, Niger, from the Sahel to Khartoum, drawing resources and focus away from Ukraine.
But in Europe, Rutte said, Nato seems to be no match for Russia.
“Our militaries also need thousands more armoured vehicles and tanks, millions more artillery shells, and we must double our enabling capabilities, such as logistics, supply, transportation and medical support,” he said.
Cuts in military spending after the Cold War ended were based on the assumption that a western-style way of life would be adopted in Russia.
But the country largely fell into gangsterism and is seen by many there to have been rescued by Putin’s more organized oligarchic kleptocracy underpinned by vigorous Soviet-style fear and denunciation of “The West”.
It may be a Moscow myth that Nato covets the Russian Federation but it is one that is believed widely in Putin’s realm.
That the West is somehow always going to be safe for democracy is an equally dangerous delusion, Rutte suggested.
“Wishful thinking will not keep us safe. We cannot dream away the danger… Hope is not a strategy. So Nato has to become a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance.”
In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer has committed to spend 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence from April 2027, with a goal of increasing that to 3 per cent over the next parliament, a timetable which could stretch to 2034.
But this is well short of what is needed, according to the Nato chief.
Mr Rutte’s visit to the UK comes after he proposed members of the bloc spend 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence as part of a strengthened investment plan for the alliance.
The target would require nations to raise core defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, while the remaining 1.5 per cent to be made up of “defence-related expenditure”.
Nato leaders will meet in The Hague later this month, when the 5 per cent spending target by 2035 will be discussed. The leaders gathered in the Hague will all agree that more must be spent.
Few, if any, will know how to sell that idea to their voters.
But, as Rutte warned: “If we don’t do this you better learn to speak Russian.”