NATO kan ikke stå i mot et russisk angrep - Stars & Stripes

 

‘We’re not ready’ to defeat Russian attack on NATO, retired US general says

By 

J.P. LAWRENCE  

STARS AND STRIPES • May 31, 2023

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U.S. Army Sgt. Ian Ortiz guides a Bradley Fighting Vehicle onto a rail car in Pazeimene, Lithuania, in 2020. At a security conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, on May 30, 2023, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former U.S. Army Europe commander, said the U.S. and its NATO allies are not ready to defend the Continent in the event of a Russian attack. (Megan Zander/U.S. Army National)

The U.S. and its NATO allies haven’t acted on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and aren’t prepared enough to defend Europe from a Russian attack, the Army’s former top commander on the Continent told an audience this week at a major security forum.

Transporting troops swiftly to the front lines, producing enough ammunition and communicating with allied armies remain challenges for NATO in defending against Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said Tuesday at the Globsec conference in Bratislava, Slovakia.

“When I think of where we were when I was a commander, it’s so much better now,” Hodges said. “But we are nowhere near where we have to be if we’re serious about defeating a Russian attack. … And we’re not ready.”

Hodges took the reins of U.S. Army Europe in late 2014 in the wake of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, and he served in that role until 2017.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO has been slow to learn the lessons from that war, partly because of persistent bureaucratic obstacles, Hodges said.

“We still cannot move where we have to move fast enough to convey to the Russians that we can move as fast or faster than them,” he said.

Hodges estimated that Germany’s rail cars can move only one-and-a-half brigades and equipment through Europe at a time, far short of the 10 or 12 brigades that he thinks would need to be moved “simultaneously.”