One of the alliance’s most senior retired generals has warned that Nato risks a nuclear war with Russia within a year if it does not increase its defence capabilities in the Baltic states.
Banging the war-drum, General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as Nato’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe between 2011 and 2014, said that an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia, which are all Nato members, was a serious possibility and that the West should act now to avert “potential catastrophe”.
His comments came only days after an alliance missile defence system was activated in Romania despite Russia warning against increasing US-led arms deployment near its borders.
BYPASS THE CENSORS
Sign up to get unfiltered news delivered straight to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe any time. By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use
The Independent reports:
He has written a fictional book 2017: War with Russia, but told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the events it describes were “entirely plausible”.
General Shirreff said: “The chilling fact is that because Russia hardwires nuclear thinking and capability to every aspect of their defence capability, this would be nuclear war.”
“We need to judge President Putin by his deeds not his words,” he added. “He has invaded Georgia, he has invaded the Crimea, he has invaded Ukraine. He has used force and got away with it.
“In a period of tension, an attack on the Baltic states…is entirely plausible.”
Nato members would be obliged under Article 5 of its founding treaty to come to the defence of another member if it came under attack.
General Shirreff said that Mr Putin could be persuaded into an intervention in the Baltic by a “perception” of weakness in Nato, and predicted that, as in Crimea, the Russian president would present his actions as an act of defence to protect the large Russian-speaking minorities in those countries.
Nato has already stepped up defences in the Baltic states, but General Shirreff said that it needed to “raise the bar sufficiently high for any aggressor to say it is not worth the risk.”
“I would argue the bar is not high enough at the moment,” he added.
In the preface to his book, General Shirreff is critical of recent defence cuts in the UK, writing: “A country famous for once ‘walking softly and carrying a big stick’…now had a leadership that shouted loudly but, thanks to ongoing defence cuts, carried an increasingly tiny and impotent stick.”
Niamh Harris
Be the first to comment