NATO Secretary General Claims: Russia Will Target Europe If China Attacks Taiwan.
“Before attacking Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping will first contact Moscow to ask [Russian President] Putin to involve us in this part of Europe,” Mark Rutte claimed at a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz in Berlin.
Predicting that China would try to somehow take control of Taiwan, the NATO secretary general claimed: “China is rapidly strengthening its armed forces. They now have a larger active naval fleet than the United States and by 2030 they will have 100 more ships. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads. This [equipment] is not for a parade in Beijing. In fact, it is for practical use.”
He added: “Based on the many conversations we have had and of course the information we have from our sources, our assumption is that the danger is increasing.”
Rutte said that security threats to NATO from the Indo-Pacific region had increased significantly in recent years, citing North Korea’s active participation in the Ukraine war in support of Russia, China’s supply of dual-use goods to Moscow, and Iran’s transfer of drone technology to Russian forces.
The NATO secretary general said European allies should increase their defense spending to strengthen deterrence, claiming that Russia would not stop in Ukraine and would likely attack NATO territory within the next seven years.
He also said that NATO member states decided to increase their defense budgets at a summit last month not to appease US President Donald Trump, but because they recognize the growing threat.
According to IRNA, NATO leaders stated in the final statement of their recent summit in the Netherlands: NATO countries commit to spending five percent of their GDP annually on core defense requirements, as well as defense and security-related spending, by 2035 to ensure their individual and collective commitments.
NATO members announced that by 2035, they will allocate 3.5 percent of their GDP to core military spending and 1.5 percent to broader security areas such as infrastructure.
China’s Foreign Ministry had previously responded to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s claims that Beijing had never provided arms to any of the parties to the Ukraine war and that NATO was seeking to justify its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.