A former NATO supreme allied commander said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be "the best thing that ever happened" to the military alliance.
James Stavridis, NATO commander from 2009-13, told MSNBC that Putin's unprovoked attack on Ukraine has resulted in alliance members stepping up as never before.
"I spent four years as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. At every conference, every meeting of high-level NATO officials, I would find my way to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the Minister of Defense, Ursula von der Leyen," Stavridis said on MSNBC.
"And I would say to them: You've got to raise your defense spending. And I got nowhere in four years.
"In 48 hours, Vladimir Putin has inspired the Germans to effectively nearly double their defense budget — a smart move on the part of Germans. Vladimir Putin may be the best thing that ever happened to the NATO alliance."
On Feb. 27, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany was committing $113 billion to a special fund for its armed forces, raising its defense spending above 2% of GDP.
"It's clear we need to invest significantly more in the security of our country, in order to protect our freedom and our democracy," Scholz told a special session of the Bundestag in Berlin.
In a New York Times story on Friday, Stavridis said that post-World War II global rules-based order needs to prepare itself for a struggle against authoritarianism.
"The global system was built in the 1950s, and if you think of it as a car from those years, it is battered, out of date in some ways, and could use a good tuneup," Stavridis told the Times. "But it is still on the road, rolling along, and, ironically enough, Vladimir Putin has done more in a week to energize it than anything I can remember."
Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral, told MSNBC that Putin was "highly unlikely" to use nuclear weapons or take on NATO directly.
"When you end up in a conventional conflict, the NATO alliance outspends Russia 15 to one," he said. "We have a four-to-one advantage in ground troops. We have a five-to-one advantage in combat aircraft, [a] six-to-one advantage of warships.
"He's not going to pick a fight with the NATO alliance."
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