NATO makes a new move: "Everything has changed"

NATO makes a new move: "Everything has changed"

This move represents a major change in the North Atlantic Alliance since it hasn't made major defense plans for a long time - in the recent past it participated in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in the bombing of FR Yugoslavia, but it did not consider post-Soviet Russia an existential threat.

However, with the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, the first military conflict on European soil since the Second World War, as reported by Reuters, apparently not including the NATO aggression against Serbia, "everything has changed - NATO wants to have a ready response in case of an attack by any enemies", and above all Moscow.

"The fundamental difference between crisis management and collective defense is the following: the sequence of events is not determined by us, but by our adversary," said senior Alliance official Admiral Rob Bower, adding that they must prepare for the fact that a conflict could arise at any time.

NATO will also provide guidance to nations on how to improve their forces and logistics.

"Allies will know exactly what forces and capabilities they need, including where, what and how to deploy them," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said of the top-secret documents, which, as in the Cold War, will foresee the distribution of certain troops to defend certain region.

Reuters states that this is a continuation of the deployment of the Alliance's combat troops in the east of the Old Continent, led by Great Britain, Canada and Germany, which began in 2014. However, the British news agency points out, the Alliance faces a huge task - in 2022, it agreed to put 300,000 soldiers on high alert, compared to 40,000 in the past.

But the fighting in Ukraine has exposed the lack of capacity of NATO members to produce sufficient quantities of weapons and ammunition, and on top of that, the long-neglected logistics necessary for the rapid deployment of troops by rail or road must be improved.

In order to finance the new plans, Stoltenberg called on the members to give more money to NATO. First of all, by fulfilling their financial obligations to NATO (two percent of GDP each), but also by increasing expenditures for the goals of the Alliance, which will also be the topic of the summit in the Lithuanian capital.

NATO officials estimate that the full implementation of the new plans will take several years.