President Vladimir Putin ‘may be the finest thing that ever happened’ to NATO, according to James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, who explained that the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine drove the West to beef up its defences.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, Stavridis, a former NATO commander who served from 2009 to 2013, mentioned Germany’s increased defence spending, which was announced just days after Putin began war on Ukraine.
‘I served as NATO’s supreme allied commander for four years. ‘I would find my way to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, at every conference, every meeting of high-level NATO officials,’ Stavridis stated.
‘Vladimir Putin has pushed the Germans to virtually quadruple their defence spending in 48 hours – a wise move on their part,’ Stavridis concluded.
He told Capehart that ‘Vladimir Putin may be the best thing that has ever occurred to the NATO alliance.’
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, opined on February 27 that it will establish a special one-time fund for military spending worth 100 billion euros. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also stated that the country’s defence budget would be more than 2 percent of GDP in the coming years, reversing a recent fall in military spending.
The increased in revenue, according to Scholz, will help Germany strengthen its national security and meet its NATO duties.
The established global system, Stavridis said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday, was like a worn car that ‘might use a decent tuneup.’
‘But it’s still rolling forward, and, funnily enough, Vladimir Putin has done more to fuel it in a week than anything I can recall,’ he remarked.
On Sunday, the retired four-star admiral said that he believed Putin was ‘extremely unlikely’ to use nuclear weapons or engage in direct combat with NATO.
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