Nato admiral says alliance should brace for all-out war with Russia within 20 years

Nations across the West must be ready for an all-out war with Russia within the next 20 years, a top Nato commander has warned.

With Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile rhetoric towards Nato nations as his almost two-year invasion of Ukraine grinds on, and states bordering Russian on high alert, conflict could come at any time.

“We have to realise it’s not a given that we are in peace. And that’s why we [Nato forces] are preparing for a conflict with Russia,” Admiral Bauer, a Dutch admiral said. He warned that a large number of civilians will have to be mobilised if a wider war breaks out in Europe and the process of recruiting much larger reserve forces should be put in place by governments now.

“The discussion is much wider… people that have to understand they play a role… The realisation that not everything is plannable and not everything is going to be hunky dory in the next 20 years.”

Admiral Bauer, a Dutch naval officer who chairs the alliance’s committee of national armed forces chiefs, was speaking after a meeting of the committee in Brussels. It comes with Nato set to launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week with around 90,000 personnel set to take part in months of drills aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia.

Admiral Bauer praised Sweden for asking all of its citizens to brace for war ahead of the country formally joining the alliance, hopefully this year. Stockholm’s move, announced earlier this month, has led to a surge in volunteers for the country’s civil defence organisation and a spike in sales of torches and battery-powered radios.

Carl-Oscar Bohlin, Sweden’s minister for civil defence, had told a security conference in the country that “war could come to Sweden”. Sweden’s commander-in-chief, Micael Bydén, then warned the same gathering that “Russia’s war against Ukraine is just a step, not an end game”. In a follow-up interview with national broadcaster TV4, he said that that all Swedes needed to prepare for war.

“We need to realise how serious the situation really is, and that everyone, individually, need to prepare themselves mentally,” he said. Opposition politicians accused the government of seeking to play up the threat of war for political gain.

Stockpiles of weapons and ammunition have been drained across Europe, the US and beyond in supporting the defence of Ukraine, and will take years to replenish at the current rate of production.

“We need to be readier across the whole spectrum,” Admiral Bauer said. “You have to have a system in place to find more people if it comes to war, whether it does or not. Then you talk mobilisation, reservists or conscription.

“You need to be able to fall back on an industrial base that is able to produce weapons and ammunition fast enough to be able to continue a conflict if you are in it.”

The Nato exercises next week – dubbed Steadfast Defender 24 – “will show that Nato can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” a statement from the 31-member organisation said.

Troops will be moving to and through Europe until the end of May in what is described as “a simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary” – essentially Russia.

“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via transatlantic movement of forces from North America,” Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander, US General Christopher Cavoli, said earlier this week. General Cavoli said it will demonstrate “our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other.”

Britain’s defense secretary, Grant Shapps, has said that the UK will send 20,000 troops backed by advanced fighter jets, surveillance planes, warships and submarines, to take part in the exercises – with many being deployed in eastern Europe from February to June.

A day earlier, Admiral Bauer said the alliance needed a “warfighting transformation” and asked the public and private actors in the West to gear up for an era in which anything could happen at any time, including fighting a war.

Nato governments and companies should adjust their thinking to “an era in which anything can happen at any time, an era in which we need to expect the unexpected, an era in which we need to focus on effectiveness in order to be fully effective”, he said.

Admiral Bauer also pledged the alliance’s backing for Ukraine and said that the nation facing a Russian invasion “will have our support for every day that is to come, because the outcome of this war will determine the fate of the world”.

Nato as an organisation is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support, although many member countries send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups, and provide military training.

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