NATO States Defense Budget Increases To Provoke Aggressive Military Planning - Moscow

An increase in the military budgets of NATO's European member states will provoke aggressive military planning and may lead to a cold war, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Wednesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2019) An increase in the military budgets of NATO's European member states will provoke aggressive military planning and may lead to a cold war, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused NATO allies in Europe of under fulfilling their defense spending contributions to the alliance. In March, NATO said that just seven of its member states were meeting the commitment to ensure defense spending of at least 2 percent of GDP.

"These [increased] defense budgets will entail aggressive military planning, it will provoke aggressive rhetoric and politics, and we may find ourselves in a situation of a cold war, when we observe a symbiosis of military planning and hostile politics.

It will be very difficult to overcome it," Grushko said at a roundtable in the Russian Federation Council on legal and political aspects of Russia's external security.

The discussion about underpayment by European countries is absolutely unreasonable, since the Europeans' share in NATO budget is around 71-72 percent, he noted.

According to the diplomat, diverting resources from the needs of social development and their waste in the field of security could be a major problem for Europe.