North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Mark Rutte has delivered a warning to alliance members’ citizens, telling them to brace for the possibility of a major conflict on the scale of the Second World War. Speaking in Berlin, Germany, he pressed NATO governments to dramatically increase defense spending and industrial output to confront Russia.
“We are Russia’s next target. I fear that too many are quietly complacent. Too many don’t feel the urgency. And too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. The time for action is now,” said Rutte, a 58-year-old former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Unilever human resources manager with no military service record. “[W]e must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents and great grandparents endured.”
