What's Behind America's "Yang Mouth"? Ukraine's Dream of Joining the Treaty Breaks Vilnius | Capital | United States

From July 11th to 12th, the NATO summit was held in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. This is Lithuania's first hosting since joining NATO in 2004.

Previously, there was widespread public concern that NATO would open its doors due to Ukraine's "offensive"?

As expected, the answer is no.

The communique released on the 11th of the summit did not issue an invitation to Ukraine to join the treaty. Ukrainian President Zelensky exclaimed that this move is "unprecedented and absurd".

Looking back, NATO has been drawing this big cake of inviting Ukraine to join for many years.

In 2008, NATO announced that Ukraine would join NATO in the future. Under the guidance and dedication of American and Western honeywords, Ukraine has gradually fallen into the embrace of the West.

However, such a "defection" never opens the door to NATO. The reason is simple - getting Ukraine to join the treaty involves directly placing missiles at the doorstep of Russia, which will significantly increase the risk of NATO going to war with Russia.

The considerations of gains and losses behind this are very clear for the United States, as the leading big brother, after all, the consequences of extreme playing with fire are unbearable for anyone.

Despite Ukrainian President Zelensky's repeated statements before the meeting, hoping that NATO would "give a clear signal" on Ukraine's post-war accession, there has never been a positive response from the United States. On July 9th, US President Biden stated in an interview with CNN that he does not believe NATO has reached a consensus on whether Ukraine should join at this moment during the war, and that if Ukraine is a member of NATO, we are at war with Russia.

In the calculation of American interests, Ukraine is a consumable that weakens Russia. Just hang on to it for good and not for bad, there is no need to play the whole game.

If Ukraine, with its high nationalist sentiment, receives the protection of NATO Article V, its war momentum will further increase; Correspondingly, Russia has more reason to carry out further military actions, greatly weakening the possibility of resolving conflicts through diplomatic means.

The battlefield situation is constantly changing, and in order to ensure that the situation develops according to its own imagined script, NATO cannot give up instigating Ukraine, but it can never readily accept it as a member.

In fact, there is no consensus within NATO on inviting Ukraine to join the treaty.

Today's NATO has long been strong on the outside but weak on the inside, and contradictions abound. A very practical point is how to solve the problem of free riding within the alliance.

NATO allies are expected to reach an agreement at this summit to ensure that member countries invest no less than 2% of their GDP in the defense sector. Observing the 2023 budget approved by NATO allies in December last year, it can be seen that the NATO military budget for 2023 is 1.96 billion euros, an increase of 25.8% compared to 2022. According to Stoltenberg's speech before this summit, the defense spending growth rate of European allies and Canada is expected to reach 8.3% in 2023, the highest in the past few decades.

However, according to the latest assessment, only the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Romania can achieve the goal in 2023, with nearly two-thirds of NATO member countries struggling to achieve it.

It can be said that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has continued to delay, NATO military spending has increased significantly, and the financial burden of the allies has increased, which has formed a vicious circle, intensifying the existing social and economic contradictions within the NATO allies.

In response, Foreign Policy magazine in the United States has commented that the standard is "not sufficiently operational, but strategically counterproductive" and "weakens public support for the alliance.". Some American media also bluntly stated that the old NATO is a luxury that the United States cannot afford.

"China's ambition and coercive policies challenge NATO's interests, security, and values."

If hyping up Ukraine's accession to the treaty has been a routine issue at NATO summits in recent years, then this year, China's so-called "systemic challenge" has suddenly been stirred up and included in the joint communiqu é, making the intention of the United States to carry private goods even more apparent.

It should be noted that promoting the "NATO ization" of the Asia Pacific region is entirely an external support for the so-called Indo Pacific strategy of the United States, fully exposing its hypocritical nature and revealing its expansion ambitions and hegemonic intentions.

In Europe, "Ukraine controls Russia", in Asia, "encircles China", and in the context of the current deteriorating international security situation, NATO, as a regional military group, has clearly gone beyond its bounds in its actions.

But an obvious problem lies in the conflict between the shift of the US strategic focus to the east and its security commitments to Europe, and the tension between "NATO Europe" and "NATO Europe".

From the perspective of Ukraine's application for accession, the gap between NATO's commitments and capabilities is evident——

On the one hand, the United States itself is facing domestic difficulties. As of February 2023, the federal debt of the United States has reached the upper limit of $31 trillion, far exceeding its gross domestic product, and debt repayment is one of the largest expenditures of the federal government. On the other hand, due to the need to compete with China, the United States needs to invest more in the Asia Pacific direction.

Betting on both sides means that for the United States, which has already entered a downward range, it is either to draw resources and energy from the more critical Asia Pacific region or to allow the risk of conflict in eastern Europe to soar.

These all mean greater strategic costs and burdens. Once unable to balance, the already bankrupt reputation of the United States will inevitably face further domino style collapse.

It is evident that the United States is strong on the outside but weak on the inside, and NATO is fierce on the inside.

From a bilateral perspective, on May 5, 2022, South Korea became the first Asian country to join the NATO Cooperation Network Defense Excellence Center; At the Vilnius summit, NATO had originally planned to include the content of a new liaison office in Japan in the relevant documents passed, but it was rejected by French President Macron.

From a multilateral perspective, NATO is intensifying its contacts with so-called Indo Pacific partners. In April 2022, NATO and its partners agreed on the Agenda for Addressing Common Security Challenges to deepen cooperation in a range of areas, including cyber defense, new technologies, and mixed threats; In June 2022, NATO unprecedentedly invited these countries to participate in the Madrid Summit and adopted the core policy document, the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

Based on the agenda of this summit, leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea attended the summit, and NATO will also engage in closer cooperation with the four countries in areas such as cybersecurity, maritime security, and emerging technologies.

What is the possibility of these grandiose promises being implemented?

Europe doesn't know, Indo Pacific partners don't know, maybe only the United States, who is beating their hearts, knows.

The overall situation of the world is a vast soup.

After the end of the Cold War, NATO should have died, but it has been seeking legitimacy for its own existence. Messing up Europe and now undermining peace in the Asia Pacific region, the righteous will certainly not agree.

Hegemony is unpopular and destined not to last long.

There are 31 NATO member states, and they have never been one piece. There are differences on many international issues. The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has provided a new impetus for the transformation and expansion of NATO, but this cannot hide the multiple contradictions of leadership and financial expenditure within NATO as a military alliance.

How far can a group that moves against the trend and has its own ulterior motives go?