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European members of NATO need to cut welfare and direct more of their GDP to the military-industrial complex in the name of “safety,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said.
Rutte spoke at an event in Brussels organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US-based think-tank.
“I know spending more on defense means spending less on other priorities. But it is only a little less,” Rutte said on Thursday.
“On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of their national income on pensions, health and social security systems. We need a small fraction of that money to make our defenses much stronger, and to preserve our way of life,” he added.
While NATO members are spending more of their GDP on the military than a decade ago, that’s nowhere near the Cold War levels, Rutte argued, noting that the US-led military bloc will “need a lot more than 2%” if it wants to defend Europe against the allegedly aggressive Russia.
Spending billions on weapons will bring security, Rutte argued, and “without security, there is no freedom for our children and grandchildren. No schools, no hospitals, no businesses. There is nothing.”
He urged the audience to tell their governments that “security matters more than anything” and that they “accept to make sacrifices today so that we can stay safe tomorrow.”
“Tell your banks and pension funds it is simply unacceptable that they refuse to invest in the defense industry,” Rutte said. “Defense is not in the same category as illicit drugs and pornography. Investing in defense is an investment in our security. It’s a must!”
In 2014, the US pressured its fellow NATO members to ramp up military spending to 2% of GDP, citing the tensions between Ukraine and Russia following the Western-backed coup in Kiev.
The US and its allies have sent over $200 billion worth of weapons, equipment, ammunition and cash to prop up Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The West has mainly emptied out its military stockpiles, while struggling to ramp up production of ammunition and replacement parts due to deindustrialization and the “green energy transition,” among other reasons.
Meanwhile, the Russian military industry has gone into high gear and kept the frontline troops well-supplied, defying predictions from Western experts about the impact of sanctions.
