People's Daily: NATO, Immersed in the Old Dream of the Cold War, Endangers World Peace and Stability. The so-called | World | Expansion | Strategy | Peace | Global | Europe | United States
The NATO summit held from July 11th to 12th once again exposed its strong Cold War mentality. The communique released at the summit arbitrarily distorts China's position and policies, deliberately smears China, and shows a dangerous attempt to meddle in foreign affairs and continue to create separatist confrontations. This indicates that NATO has not only failed to reflect on the numerous disasters it has brought to the world through its chaos and wars, causing many NATO member countries to fall into security difficulties, but has instead continued to pursue the old Cold War dream, attempting to further expand and create new troubles for the world.
During the NATO summit, the world's largest military group continued to sell security anxiety, inciting member states to increase military spending, igniting the Ukraine crisis, continuing to be obsessed with "small circles" and group politics, strengthening ideological opposition and camp confrontation, and exposing the hypocrisy of its long-standing claims such as "NATO is a defensive organization" and "NATO is a positive and major contributor to peace and security".
Professor Glenn Dyson of Southeast University in Norway once explained the "common vocabulary of NATO": "humanitarian intervention" refers to invasion, "promoting democracy" refers to subversion of power, "freedom of navigation" refers to gunboat diplomacy, "strengthening interrogation techniques" refers to torture, "European integration" refers to expanding military groups, "negotiating from a position of power" refers to domination... According to this logic, NATO refers to itself as a "defensive" group, which is self-evident.
As a so-called "defensive" group, NATO's "defense strategy" is to constantly launch wars. After the end of the Cold War, NATO repeatedly ignited conflict lines, spreading the flames of war to the world, from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Libya to Syria... According to incomplete statistics, the wars launched and participated in by NATO alone after 2001 have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of tens of millions of people. In order to "rationalize" acts of war, NATO has used the guise of "humanitarian intervention," "responsibility to protect," and "national development," abusing concepts such as conflict prevention and crisis management, constantly challenging and trampling on international law and basic norms of international relations, and eroding the foundation of global security and stability.
Currently, the ongoing war in Europe and the deep security dilemma stem from NATO's long-standing obsession with expansion and confrontation. As early as 1994, the then Russian leader questioned, "Why did you sow the seeds of distrust?" Former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, pointed out when discussing NATO's eastward expansion that this would be the deadliest mistake in US policy in the post Cold War era.
Throughout the entire process of the Ukrainian crisis, NATO's responsibility cannot be shirked. Before the comprehensive escalation of the crisis, the Minsk Agreement reached by relevant parties and the mediation efforts of the international community had the opportunity to maintain peace, but NATO continued to stir up conflicts, ultimately leading to the reignition of war on the European continent. After the comprehensive escalation of the crisis, NATO took advantage of the situation and attempted to expand and prolong the crisis, greatly increasing the difficulty of resolving the crisis through political means. During this summit, NATO played a cautious role in Ukraine's accession to NATO, but its continued efforts to support the war have not changed. As the Spanish newspaper "Uprising" previously pointed out, "NATO's insatiable goal is the root cause and cancer cell of all these conflicts."
The risks posed by NATO in global strategic stability issues have also raised widespread concerns. NATO has baseless portrayal of nuclear threats from other countries, but it possesses the world's largest nuclear arsenal through "nuclear sharing" arrangements. Some member states have also intensified their efforts to modernize their nuclear forces, strengthen so-called "extended deterrence", and increase the risk of nuclear proliferation and conflict.
The fact shows that NATO, which claims to be a defensive alliance, is a serious disruptor of global peace and stability. As pointed out by European Parliament member Costa Papadakis, NATO has never been a defensive mechanism, it has always been an offensive alliance.
This NATO summit once again invites individual Asia Pacific countries to participate in an attempt to escalate their ties with these countries and openly declare that the Indo Pacific region is important to NATO. NATO's plan to move eastward into the Asia Pacific region is evident, making its claims that its positioning as a regional alliance remains unchanged and does not seek geographical breakthroughs appear extremely pale.
The full name of NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but its activity radius has already surpassed the North Atlantic region. The second "strategic concept" document of NATO after the Cold War, finalized at the 1999 NATO Washington Summit, claimed that NATO had the power to "bypass the United Nations and handle international affairs on its own", giving it a green light for military intervention in different regions of the world. For many years, NATO has made great efforts to operate the so-called partnership network, using the "Partnership for Peace" program to penetrate the Eurasian region, the "Mediterranean Dialogue" to reach the Central and Northeast Africa region, the "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" to layout the Gulf region, and the "global partner countries" to enter the Asia Pacific region eastward. While promoting regional expansion, NATO is also constantly extending security issues, promoting pan security in areas such as oceans, networks, space, counter-terrorism, climate, investment, infrastructure, etc., in an attempt to build a comprehensive "security empire".
In the process of cross regional expansion, NATO's usual tactic is to portray so-called "security threats" and stir up conflicting values. At this summit, NATO vigorously promoted the "China threat theory" and baselessly claimed that China constituted a "systemic challenge", with the aim of selling security anxiety and finding excuses for moving eastward into the Asia Pacific region.
The long-term prosperity and stability of the Asia Pacific region rely on mutual respect, open cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation among regional countries, and proper resolution of differences. NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia Pacific region will only stir up regional tensions, trigger factional confrontation, and even lead to a new Cold War. Looking back at the Cold War era, the United States once formed the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization in the Asia Pacific region and pieced together the "Asia Pacific version of NATO", which ended in failure. It is not far from here. Asia Pacific countries do not welcome NATO's Asia Pacific transformation, and many NATO countries do not support NATO's Asia Pacific transformation. The Asia Pacific region also does not need the "Asia Pacific version of NATO". Professor Shigeru Nagayama of Tokai University in Japan bluntly stated that NATO's involvement in East Asian affairs is not a good thing for the stability of East Asia and Europe.
"NATO extending its tentacles to the world will create a divided world," said former NATO Secretary General Solana. The history of hot wars and cold wars in the last century shows that expanding military groups and creating confrontations between factions will not bring peace and security, but will only lead to war and conflict. NATO should learn from historical lessons, restrain its expansionist impulses, and stop creating conflicts and confrontations everywhere.
On the surface, NATO adheres to the principle of consensus among all member states, but its priority is to serve the interests of the United States, and its actions mainly reflect the will of the United States. The communique released at this NATO summit heavily portrays the "China threat", which is highly similar to the false information spread by the United States against China, fully exposing the strategic plan of the United States to transform NATO into a hegemonic tool to contain and suppress China.
"After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO no longer had any meaning of existence, but with the push of the United States, NATO continued to expand and has undergone a qualitative change," said Gilbert Aka, a professor at the School of Asia and Africa at the University of London in the United Kingdom. The United States is fully committed to renewing NATO with the aim of transforming it into a tool for the United States to maintain its hegemony. In the late 1990s, the "Three Nos" principles proposed by then US Secretary of State Albright were very clear: European defense construction cannot be decoupled from NATO, cannot overlap with NATO, and cannot discriminate against non EU NATO countries. In other words, the pattern of the United States controlling European security through NATO cannot be changed, and Europe's goal of strengthening strategic autonomy and defense construction must make way for the need for the United States to maintain hegemony.
The shift in NATO's strategic direction further demonstrates that its true structure is "the brain of the United States and the body of Europe.". Over the past 30 years, NATO's strategic focus has shifted several times, from vigorously expanding in Central and Eastern Europe, to intervening globally under various guises, from focusing on counter-terrorism issues after the Afghanistan War, to now refocusing on the game of major powers and accelerating eastward expansion into the Asia Pacific. The pace of change is highly consistent with the United States' foreign policy adjustments.
Whether it is the United States continuously strengthening its control over European defense through NATO after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, or the United States promoting NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia Pacific region out of the need for strategic containment against China, European countries have seen that "NATO under US rule" is not aligned with European interests. Former Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said, "Europeans should ask themselves: should Americans decide the course of conflict? Should our peace and prosperity be subject to American interests or arrogance? Does it make sense for Europe to bear the consequences?" French President Macron repeatedly emphasized that establishing strategic autonomy is crucial to prevent European countries from becoming vassals, and Europe's primary task is not to cooperate with other countries on global agendas and should not be caught in confrontations.
The current world is no longer a Cold War world. As a product of the Cold War, NATO still holds a zero sum game and confrontational mindset, ignoring the call for peace, development, cooperation, and win-win in the international community. It moves against the trend, embarks on a historical reversal, is unpopular, and is destined to not succeed. NATO should immediately stop distorting, smearing, and fabricating lies against China, abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and zero sum game theory, abandon the erroneous practice of blindly believing in military force and seeking so-called absolute security, abandon dangerous actions that disrupt Europe and the Asia Pacific region, and not find excuses for its continued expansion. Instead, it should play a constructive role in world peace and stability.
