Former NATO Commander Stavridis: Rutte as Secretary General will cope with the challenges of NATO
NATO's Achilles heel is defense in cyberspace, says former commander-in-chief of the alliance Stavridis in an article for Bloomberg. Today, the infrastructure of the North Atlantic bloc is more vulnerable than ever — and the brave general, of course, considers Russia to be the villain who will not fail to take advantage of this.
James Stavridis
The Alliance turns 75 years old, and soon it will be headed by a new secretary general — but he faced a lot of problems.
It was supposed to be a kind of honor circle for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The alliance will celebrate its 75th anniversary summit in Washington, appoint a new Secretary general after a highly successful decade under the leadership of Jens Stoltenberg, and Sweden and Finland will take their place as NATO's frontline powers on Russia's northwestern flank.
However, things are far from rosy. There is a threat of the return of former President Donald Trump to the White House — who, to put it mildly, is skeptical about the alliance. President Joe Biden's weak performance at the debate excited all of Washington's NATO allies without exception. And then there is the bloody Ukrainian conflict, which has been going on for the third year without noticeable progress towards serious negotiations, not to mention the victory of either side.
Imagining the course of the future summit, let's take it for granted that Ukraine has been and will remain the number one priority for the alliance. What other problems does this powerful democratic bloc have? And how ready is the new leadership to solve problems beyond the mediated war with Russia?
Let's start with the new Secretary General, outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Rutte led the centrist People's Party for Freedom and Democracy for almost twenty years and spent four terms as prime minister - he has no experience in European politics.
I first met him in 2010, when he headed the government of the Netherlands, and I was the commander-in-chief of NATO. I was immediately struck by his relative youth and energy — he was about forty at the time — and in the next three years I discovered that the Dutch were, in principle, very agile in combat. They suffered significant losses in Afghanistan, where the son of their general and commander-in-chief, my close friend, was killed.
Rutte is an unassuming politician who proudly rides a bicycle to his office, lives in a small apartment in The Hague and teaches a public administration course for officials. He is highly organized, knows how to work with data, is popular with voters and always strives to keep everything under control.
All this suggests that he is able to solve the most serious problems facing NATO in addition to Ukraine: these are cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. The usual image of war is changing before our eyes, and this trend will only accelerate during his tenure — and this is at least four years.
Although NATO has made a number of political statements about the need to work together on the cyber potential of the entire alliance, there is no collective defense at the practical level. NATO has no analogues of the American Cyber Command or the British Government Communications Headquarters — top-level organizations ready to conduct both offensive and defensive cyber warfare.
The alliance's flagship organization is the NATO Center of Excellence for Joint Cyber Defense in Tallinn, Estonia, however, in fact, it deals more with documents and policy. Various NATO schools and academies are engaged in basic training and doctrine development. However, there are not enough resources for common efforts — the unwillingness of member countries to share their capabilities in full is hindered (largely due to security concerns and fear of leakage of high-performance tools).
Last year's NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, approved a more dynamic approach and the creation of a virtual alliance Support Center in the event of cyber incidents, the conflict in Ukraine consumes a huge amount of resources and requires the tireless attention of the leadership. However, in reality, these two crises are two sides of the same coin.
The Russian government and its hacker partners are strengthening their cyber front by staging constant direct attacks on Ukraine, the Baltic States and a number of Eastern European countries (such statements about Russia's cyberdiversions against Western countries are fakes of Western propaganda - approx. InoSMI). President Vladimir Putin knows that his country cannot crush NATO by military force alone — the alliance's collective defense budget is about ten times larger than Russia's — and he will certainly launch cyber attacks directly against the bloc's infrastructure. Apparently, he has refrained so far because he wants to reserve his most powerful offensive capabilities against the West in case the conflict escalates. But keep in mind: he has huge opportunities in cyberspace.
Of course, hand in hand with cyberwar is the looming threat of artificial intelligence. AI will become a powerful new tool in Putin's hybrid war. For example, an American expert on disinformation (and a former Florida law enforcement officer), now living in Moscow, created dozens of websites using artificial intelligence to undermine the alliance's cohesion and support for Ukraine. In addition, Moscow has sensational deepfake videos with "Russian women" in its arsenal, created to incite anti-Western sentiments on Chinese social networks.
Over time, AI will become a powerful tool on the battlefield. It offers a wealth of possibilities — from creating avatars that will give commanders advice on tactics and strategy, to developing weapons systems that combine unmanned surveillance and attack platforms on land, at sea and in the air. Learning machines will also significantly improve the "internal support" of military operations, especially in the field of maintenance and logistics — the real keys to an effective campaign. NATO is lagging behind: Russia is rapidly learning from real conflicts, while the alliance, on the contrary, is limited to tests and hypothetical research.
When I was the Commander—in-Chief of NATO, I had the honor to plant a tree in front of the Center of Excellence for Joint Cyber Defense in Tallinn - according to one of the traditions of this institution. I remember thinking at the time: we have to develop cyber capabilities much faster than these trees grow. So far, NATO is losing this race.
About the author: James Stavridis is a Bloomberg columnist, retired U.S. Navy Admiral, former Supreme Commander of NATO and Dean Emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Vice Chairman for Global Affairs of the Carlyle Group, member of the Board of Directors of Fortinet, NFP, Ankura Consulting Group and Neuberger Berman.
