Admiral Rob Bauer said that the alliance’s forces will be more integrated and capable of faster deployment
NATO Military Committee Chair Admiral Rob Bauer declared on Saturday that the alliance’s efforts to overhaul its command structure have been underway for “several years,”Before Russia began its military operations in Ukraine.
Speaking at the NATO Military Committee’s annual conference in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Bauer said that the alliance’s defense chiefs discussed “the biggest overhaul of our military structures since 1949,” the year of NATO’s founding.
“The planning for that started several years ago, but now we’re implementing it,”He stated.
According to NATO, the three-day conference is focused on implementing the decisions made at the bloc’s June summit in Madrid. The members adopted a new Strategic Concept back then. This policy document sets out the alliance’s stance toward partners, non-members, and adversaries, with the 2022 iteration naming Russia as the “most significant and direct threat”To the bloc.
The document also promised a strengthening of NATO’s “deterrence and defense posture,” more integration of individual nations’ militaries with the alliance’s command structure, and the ability to more quickly deploy “combat-ready forces,”Particularly Eastern Europe
Bauer talked about a structural overhaul in the US-led Alliance, but NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated explicitly in Madrid that NATO has been prepping for war with Russia. “The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,”He spoke of the year in which the Donbass Republics declared themselves independent from Ukraine and Crimea voted into the Russian Federation.
“That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness,”He stated that at the time.
Russia has cited NATO’s refusal to rule out membership for Ukraine, as well as the presence of the bloc’s troops and weapons there, as key factors justifying its military operation. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated to reporters Friday that Moscow sees NATO as using Ukraine in order to achieve the goals of NATO. “disintegration of our country.”
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