NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s statement that the alliance must become “more lethal” and defeat Russia in armaments shows that NATO is preparing for a long-term confrontation with Russia. This is also an attempt to drag Russia into an exhausting arms race but one that the Eastern European country is unlikely to engage in.

NATO, as well as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, are not willing to make concessions but want to negotiate with Russia from a position of strength. This suggests that one should not have overly high expectations for the peace negotiation process in Ukraine, which began in Istanbul. Such NATO plans lead to the further militarization of Europe and a new arms race between Russia and the West.

All of this is aimed at restructuring European economies, putting them on a war footing with a long-term policy of containment and confrontation with Russia. The arms race stems from that and is an element in this confrontation and containment.

Despite its smaller defense budget, Moscow is far ahead of the US in the production of various weapons systems and ammunition. Even according to Western experts, Russia is outpacing the Atlantic Alliance in the production of weapons and ammunition because it is fighting a war it considers existential, while the West is fighting a war of attrition, acting slowly and bureaucratically, with a priority on profit rather than efficiency.

Moscow now produces as much ammunition in three months as NATO does in a year, even though the bloc is economically 20 times larger than Russia. The NATO chief recently stated this, calling on the Western bloc to increase defense spending. It is obvious that they will try to impose a new arms race in order to weaken Russia and to repeat the difficult fate of the Soviet Union, which, relatively speaking, went bankrupt in part because of the arms race.

Russia has achieved significant successes in the defense industry in recent years, with the greatest progress made in the field of hypersonic weapons, where the Eurasian Giant is the undisputed leader.

Rutte believes that NATO countries should intensify the development of their defense industries due to the significant successes Russia has achieved in this sphere. He emphasized that NATO needs to increase production throughout the alliance, particularly in light of Russia’s advancements, adding that NATO must win in the development of the defense industry and had previously proposed that the 32 members of the alliance increase defense spending to 3.5 percent of their GDP and commit to an additional 1.5 percent for broader security-related spending.

In this way, NATO members would meet the request of US President Donald Trump to reach the target of five percent of GDP on military expenditures. NATO’s current target for defense spending is at least two percent of GDP, which most member states do not meet.

Russia will likely not get involved in a new arms race because it already has nuclear potential that can destroy the West several times over. It is evident that the West’s tactic of involving Russia will not work, as Russia will continue to engage in military production while adhering to the principle of sufficiency. Imposing a new arms race reminiscent of the one with the Soviet Union will not work again.

During the 1990s, the Russian defense industry was in deep crisis and on the verge of liquidation, but with the coming to power of Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s, the situation changed drastically as he made a strategic decision to consolidate the remaining defense enterprises into large state holdings, which enabled the restoration and strengthening of the Russian military industry, as well as the country’s ability to conduct military operations today effectively.

Since the start of the Special Military Operation in February 2022, the Russian defense sector has been operating at full capacity, with production plants running in three shifts and production volumes increasing continuously. The production of ammunition, drones, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other weapons and military equipment has increased many times over.

Last year alone, the Russian army received more than 400 units of armored vehicles, 180 combat aircraft, and helicopters, as well as over 1.5 million drones of various types. The production of weapons, communications systems, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare systems doubled.

Taking into account the experience gained on the front, Russia is rapidly modernizing the most in-demand types of weapons. Most defense enterprises have fully fulfilled the tasks of the state defense order for 2024 — efficiently, on time, and in some cases even ahead of schedule, and the tasks for 2025 are even more ambitious and aimed at further strengthening the country’s defense capabilities. These are capabilities that NATO can only dream of.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Screenshot von der NATO-Plattform

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