Nato was ‘taken off guard’ by depth of crisis, general says
THE Nato general masterminding the alliance’s response to coronavirus has admitted that “everybody was taken off guard” by the scale of the crisis.
Lt Gen Olivier Rittimann admitted that in the early days of the outbreak “no one” fully understood the depth of the crisis that lay ahead.
“I think that everybody was taken a little bit off-guard by this crisis,” said the commander of Nato’s Europe Covid-19 Task Force.
“No one was really completely understanding the full expanse of the health crisis we are facing.”
Nato had changed its core mission in order to respond, he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News, adding: “Nato isn’t a disaster relief organisation. It wasn’t created to do that.
“It was created to defend Europe against the Soviet Union. Now we have changed that mission, but the mission is still defending and deterring.
“What we can bring to bear upon is the skills we have, the structures we are operating and the professionalism of our teams.”
Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Commons defence select committee, said the comments of Lt Gen Rittimann were “close to admitting to a dereliction of duty in accessing the changing security threats”.
“Nato’s thinking is still geared for conventional conflict rather than the asymmetric threats such as cyber attacks, disinformation, climate change and laterally pandemics,” Mr Ellwood added. “Ebola and Sars should have been the wake-up call for an organisation that is tasked with looking over the horizon and watching our backs.”
Lt Gen Rittimann said Nato was “not the first responder for this crisis … because it is inter-agency, inter-governmental and it is much wider than the simple military response”.
He pointed out that it had deployed 4,000 medics and 250 field hospitals – amounting to some 25,000 beds.
“We are providing this coordination mechanism with the rapid air mobility, over 100 flights have been conducted,” he added.