NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calls on the North Atlantic Alliance to prepare for war and confront its enemies who are trying to weaken democracy.
„To prevent war, we must prepare for war. It is time to adopt a wartime mentality, which means we must make our defenses even stronger, spending more on defense and producing more numerous and higher quality defense capabilities,” he demanded at the opening of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, as reported by Euronews.
"Russia is working hard to try to weaken our democracies and erode our freedom, and it is no longer alone, it has China, North Korea, and Iran by its side," he warned in front of 20 defense ministers from NATO member states.
He thus invokes an old saying dear to the armies - "Si vis pacem, para bellum" ("if you want peace, prepare for war").
The next NATO summit is scheduled in six months, in The Hague.
On Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Members of the European Parliament that if member countries do not spend more on defense, in four or five years they will have to make an extreme choice.
The EU must rethink its spending priorities to increase defense budgets, Mark Rutte stated on Monday in his first appearance in the European Parliament as NATO chief, according to Politico.
"We are safe now, but not in four or five years," he said, adding that if defense spending does not increase, Europeans should "switch to Russian language courses or flee to New Zealand."