Defense Greenpeace study: NATO remains militarily superior to Russia

According to a study, the NATO states are still militarily superior to Russia - despite the rearmament under President Vladimir Putin.

"Only in terms of nuclear weapons is there parity between the two sides," the study commissioned by Greenpeace states. According to the study, NATO countries currently spend around ten times as much money on their armed forces as Russia (1.19 trillion US dollars compared to 127 billion US dollars). Even excluding US spending and taking into account the difference in purchasing power, the clear preponderance remains in favor of NATO (430 billion US dollars to 300 billion US dollars). In terms of major weapons systems, NATO outspends Russia at least threefold. "For example, NATO countries have 5,406 combat aircraft (including 2,073 in Europe), whereas Russia only has 1,026," it says. Only in terms of strategic bombers does Russia come close to the USA (129 to 140).

Russia's weapons technology is lagging behind

In addition, Russia has a considerable technological gap to NATO in many areas of weaponry, which can hardly be made up within a decade. NATO is also said to be ahead in terms of the number of soldiers under arms and operational readiness. NATO countries dominate the global arms market with over 70 percent of total sales. The authors of the study are Herbert Wulf, who headed the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) for eight years and conducted research at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and peace researcher Christopher Steinmetz. "Instead of further rearmament, the existing conventional superiority of NATO - with the simultaneous potential for nuclear escalation on the Russian side - should be used as an opportunity to prepare and initiate arms control policy initiatives that create new trust and allow verification of the respective military potentials, at least in Europe," the researchers say. According to the scientists, the first starting point should be to save the New Start treaty on the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons, the last remaining cornerstone of nuclear arms control between East and West.

SDA