As head of NATO’s military committee, which brings together the 32 chiefs of staff of member countries of the organization, Dutch admiral Rob Bauer is at a privileged observation post of the conflict in Ukraine. L’Express was able to question him on the current situation on the occasion of the assumption of command by French Admiral Pierre Vandier, in Norfolk, in the United States, as supreme allied commander for the transformation of NATO . “There is progress on the battlefield for the Russians, but not as much as they would like,” argues the former chief of staff of the Netherlands, who also returns to repeated nuclear threats by Vladimir Putin.
L’Express: Russia is progressing in the Donbass and seems in a more favorable position in his war against Ukraine…
Admiral Rob Bauer: I don’t agree. The Russians are not in a favorable position at all. They have achieved none of their strategic goals in two and a half years of war. Then, the Ukrainians present them with a strategic dilemma with their invasion of Russian territory [NDLR : dans l’oblast de Koursk].
For the first time since 1941, there are foreign troops on Russian soil. Putin said he was defending the motherland, but that is not the case. The Ukrainians are also forcing the Russians to push their logistical nodes and ammunition depots further and further away. [du front] in Russian territory, thanks to their drones. The Russians have thus lost large quantities of ammunition and fuel and are unable to defend their own territory. Both countries struggle with the same problems: they both need more fighters, more capabilities, weapons and ammunition.
But there are Russian advances in Donbass and in-depth attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, particularly energy. Don’t you fear that the coming winter will be even more difficult than the previous ones for Ukrainians?
Yes of course. This is why it is important that these strikes [longue portée] in Russia are permitted. Today, the Russians are bringing war into the daily lives of people in Ukraine. But Ukraine has failed to do the same with the Russians even though it is being attacked by the latter completely illegally. There is progress on the battlefield for the Russians, but not as much as they would like. It’s very slow and very costly for them. They’ve had the initiative for a while and the Ukrainians are just defending themselves, but the offensive on Kursk Oblast is a good example of the Ukrainians’ ability to be bold in finding weak spots.
Do Ukrainians receive enough military aid from NATO member countries?
Ukraine receives support from around fifty countries, not just NATO, even though 99% of this military aid comes from NATO allies. The Ukrainians will always ask for more, which is understandable, given the fact that they are at war. We now need to increase our industrial capacity, to ensure we obtain more weapons systems for our defense, but also to enable Ukraine to fight.
What would strikes with Western long-range missiles on Russian territory change for the Ukrainians?
There is no miracle weapon. But all the weapons we have are for good reasons; and therefore a nation at war wants them all to have all the advantages of these combined arms. Militarily, hitting Russia ever more deeply is in line with what must be done. It is also in accordance with the international law of war: if you yourself are invaded, you then have the right to wage war on the territory of the other. Whether or not to give such weapons is a political question. Nations have the right to think about it, to talk about it and to set limits for Ukrainians.
Is there a risk that Putin, or Russia, will carry out an attack on NATO territory?
Russia’s ambitions are broader than Ukraine. We know this thanks to the document received in December 2021, where the Russians asked to return to their sphere of influence, by demanding that nations that have become members of NATO since 1997 cannot have NATO forces stationed at home. . We also know this given what they did in Georgia in 2008, in the 1990s in Moldova, in Crimea and Donbass in 2014 and since 2022 in the rest of Ukraine. No matter the outcome of the war, we will have a Russian problem. If they win, they will feel like they can continue against other countries. If they lose, they will be angry, and we will have another problem.
Will they be able to attack a NATO country? Not at the moment, but if the war ends, then they will have an industrial base in advance [sur celle de l’Otan] regarding the production of military equipment. Their capacity to replenish themselves will be stronger than ours. Some nations estimate that in three years, others that in seven years, the Russians will be able to attack us militarily. Will they intend to? It’s a possibility. In the end, it will be a decision, not of NATO, but of Mr. Putin or the Russian leader in place. There are many things that can be planned in our society, but not war.
That’s to say ?
We thought that this would not happen in Ukraine, and yet it happened and it caused a great shock in our society: that if Ukraine can be attacked, we can be attacked. And this led to NATO’s reorientation towards collective defense. All these decisions have been made. But the biggest problem, at the moment, is industrial production capacity.
Russia has made a lot more nuclear threats since February 2022. Do you fear Putin using an atomic bomb? [NDLR : l’interview a été réalisée deux jours avant que Poutine déclare, le 25 septembre, que la Russie se donnait la “possibilité” d’utiliser l’arme nucléaire en cas d’attaque aérienne “massive”]
Yes, there is more rhetoric from Russia. Is it possible they could use a nuclear weapon? Their doctrine talks about using a tactical weapon in a conventional conflict, so that’s a possibility. But we recently agreed that a nuclear war must not be started and cannot be won.
If the Russians used a nuclear weapon, then they would go back on this, and Russia would have a serious problem with a number of allies who are indifferent to what Russia does or who support it. China is one of the nations that might reconsider its support for Russia if it uses a nuclear weapon. Is this going to happen? I don’t know. Every time the Russians issue a threat, it should be taken seriously. But until now, we have not had to change our position on nuclear power.
Donald Trump could return to the White House. Could this derail NATO?
Mr. Trump is not that much against NATO. He was angered by the fact that many countries, when he was president, were not spending enough on their own defense, probably because they expected the United States to intervene if NATO was attacked. A lot has changed since then: 24 nations are spending 2% or more of their GDP on defense in 2024. When he was president, our record wasn’t so good. In fact, we did what he asked, not because it is not a good thing to have one nation footing the bill and looking after our security, but because you cannot come to the rescue from another country if your own defense is not well assured.
This summer, within the Republican Party, we heard less and less comments about the uselessness of NATO and the fact that we should leave it, but more about the fact that nations should pay more than 2 %. We hear figures like 3 or 3.5%. If the leaders of NATO member states have not agreed on a figure, they have already decided that financing the capacity to execute regional plans [les forces dédiées à une réaction rapide de l’Otan en cas de nécessité] would be added to the 2%.
Isn’t China a threat, in the long term, to NATO? The Atlantic Alliance mentions this country, in its latest post-summit communiqués, in the same way that it mentioned Russia a few years ago…
For a long time, it was thought that economic interdependence with Russia would guarantee security. This turned out to be false. The other assumption that has proven false is that if our trade with the Chinese allows them to get rich, they will become democratic. China is increasingly detaching itself from international rules, which Russia has already done in many respects.
But we are not neighbors, except in the digital world. China is not in the area covered by the North Atlantic Treaty. That’s an important difference. No one is arguing that China should be considered a threat in the same way as Russia. But there are a number of dependencies on China about which we must be less naive. 75% of medical raw materials are in the hands of China. Furthermore, rare earths are not that rare and we should reconsider the deposits we have. For environmental reasons, we do not open mines. It is a choice, but one that makes us dependent on China, voluntarily, even though we know that this could harm us in terms of security in the long term. If we understand that there is an addiction, we should talk about solutions to reduce it. But I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have trade with China, that’s not the point.
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