NATO considers first-strike strategy in case of Russian attack, says top NATO official Rob Bauer

NATO Military Committee Chair Rob Bauer says the West has time to prepare for potential military confrontations with Russia, according to Reuters.

In November 2024, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin escalated threats against the West, particularly targeting countries that support Ukraine’s long-range strikes into Russia. Following an intermediate-range ballistic missile strike on Ukraine, Putin warned that Russia might retaliate against Western nations facilitating these Ukrainian operations.

Meanwhile, Bauer says that the Russian army has grown significantly in size compared to pre-war levels, but its quality has declined since then.

“At the moment, the Russians are not the same threat as in February 2022, so we have a bit of time to prepare ourselves,” he said, adding that the West needs to ramp up investments into the defense industry.

Bauer also called on industries to prepare for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly to reduce their vulnerability to blackmail from countries like Russia and China.

He referenced the early months of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine when Moscow cut off gas supplies to Europe.

“We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with Mr Putin. And the same goes for Chinese-owned infrastructure and goods. We actually have a deal with (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping),” said Bauer.

He noted that China extracts 60% of the world’s rare earth materials and processes even more—90%.

Bauer said that chemical ingredients for many critical medicines consumed by the West also come from China.

“We are naive if we think the Communist Party will never use that power. Business leaders in Europe and America need to realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic consequences for the security of their nation,” Bauer stressed.

The admiral also admitted that NATO is discussing the possibility of preemptive precision strikes on Russian territory if a conflict with the aggressor state begins, as per RBC-Ukraine.

“The idea is that we are a defensive alliance, so we will only sit and wait until we are attacked. And when we are attacked, we will be able to shoot down the arrows (missiles) that come to us. But it’s smarter not only to do that but also to attack the archer that is in Russia if Russia attacks us,” Bauer said.

Bauer praised NATO’s shift in perception of itself as a purely defensive alliance. He added that the Alliance has moved away from the mindset of “sitting and waiting to be attacked” before responding to a threat.

Read more: