Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown how economic relations with authoritarian regimes can create vulnerabilities.
Source: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
“The war in Ukraine demonstrates how economic relations with authoritarian regimes can create vulnerabilities – over-reliance on the import of key commodities, like energy, risks created by exporting advanced technologies, like Artificial Intelligence, and weakened resilience caused by foreign control over critical infrastructure, like 5G. This is about Russia. But also about China. Another authoritarian regime that does not share our values. And that undermines the rules-based international order.”
Stoltenberg said that international trade had undoubtedly brought great prosperity, but he added that freedom was more important than free trade. The protection of our values was more important than profit.
“These massive sanctions remind us of one of the important lessons from this conflict, that we should not trade long-term security needs for short-term economic interests.”
See also: NATO believes that Ukraine is able to return Donbas and Crimea by military means
