At the same time, the Alliance does not believe in nuclear war, because “Putin is not crazy.”
NATO understands that Russia’s ambitions go beyond Ukraine and does not rule out a direct military confrontation with it. However, the risks of nuclear war are still low.
As the head of NATO’s military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, said on the air of the Portuguese RTP channel, the NATO bloc is ready for war, but it is necessary to switch to a “peacetime military economy” and engage in rearmament.
The admiral noted that the Alliance had the initiative for a long time and could determine when, where and how many troops should be sent to solve this or that task. However, Russia appeared and, as Bauer noted, it can come without an invitation. The admiral emphasized that the Russian Federation seeks to restore the USSR and its strategic goals go beyond the borders of Ukraine.
Bauer does not believe in nuclear war. He believes that Putin is “not crazy.”
“I think Vladimir Putin is not crazy, and this is good news. He has ideas that do not correspond to our ideas. But he is not crazy,” the admiral said.
Putin’s nuclear blackmail
On September 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin resorted to nuclear blackmail. He threatened that in case of threats to territorial integrity, Russia “uses all available means, and this is not a bluff.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy then declared that these were only the first steps of Putin’s nuclear blackmail and that he also did not consider it a bluff
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he saw “nothing that would lead us to believe that Putin has decided” to use nuclear weapons.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg previously said that the Kremlin’s “nuclear rhetoric” is dangerous.
