The 2023 NATO Vilnius Summit wrapped up on July 12. The summit was unanimously targeted at China, a word that appeared 14 times in the joint communique released after the meeting as the object of slandering and smearing. This, however, has revealed a truth to the international community – it is NATO that's the true war machine while China is the messenger of peace.
Who's the war machine?
The Gulf War, Bosnian War, Kosovo War, Iraqi War, Afghanistan War, air raid on Libya, Syrian civil war, and Ukraine crisis…NATO has managed to get involved in each and every major armed conflict that has broken out worldwide after the Cold War. In an era themed peace and development, the organization doesn’t seem to be able to bury the hatchet. Instead, it has always played the role of initiator, instigator, and domineering bully in those wars.
What's worse, it always starts a war in the name of "freedom", wreaks havoc in the victim countries and then pulls out unscathed, leaving the local people in misery and ruins to pay the price of its wrongdoing.
Posing a sharp contrast is China and what it has done in the past 30 years – making solid efforts to pursue peace and development and never fighting a single war. Now the militant bloc is accusing a country that has worked hard to provide the whole world with fair-priced and quality goods of threatening its security interests. How hilarious! How ridiculous!
Who has civilians' blood on its hands?
The mass killing of innocent lives by NATO troops is staggering.
According to a report issued by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University on May 15, after the "9•11" Incident, the US has waged wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Pakistan, killing 4.5-4.6 million people, equivalent to the whole population of a small north European country. Among them, 387,000 civilians died from the violence directly, more than the population of Iceland, and up to 3.6-3.7 million died indirectly.
The then Afghan president Hamid Karzai couldn't hold his tears when recalling the violence by NATO troops. He lamented for the powerlessness of Afghanistan to protect their children from being slaughtered when International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the US-led military alliance were using force in an extreme and disproportionate way. Moreover, the wars have left 7.6 million local children under the age of five suffering from serious malnutrition.
While NATO is busy waging and fighting wars, China is busy taking part in international peacekeeping missions, being the largest peacekeeper contributor among the permanent members of the UN Security Council. The Chinese naval hospital ship Peace Ark has sailed to tens of countries, providing medical services and organizing medical exchanges that have benefited hundreds of thousands of people.
Who is irresponsible on the nuclear weapon issue?
Article 1 of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) states, "Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly." The US, the UK and France – all nuclear-weapon State Parties – should abide by this article.
But the US and the UK have followed another playbook in handling the nuclear weapon issue. London's only Trident nuclear warhead is a copycat of America's W76; later it purchased some parts and components from the US for upgrading in reference to America’s W76-1. London also uses America's Trident ballistic missile as the carrier vehicle and uses American technology for its ignition control system and navigation system. The two countries have jointly carried out subcritical nuclear tests in the Nevada Test and Training Range. Some British parliamentary member proposed to reexamine the UK-US nuclear weapon cooperation program, but that went nowhere.
The two countries are now planning to assist Australia in building nuclear submarines, which is a blatant violation of the NPT and a gross erosion of the nuclear non-proliferation mechanism. Moreover, NATO is implementing the nuclear sharing policy, under which the US has placed over 100 low-yield nuclear weapons in the five countries of Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. A member of the White House National Security Council said the nuclear sharing program has turned non-nuclear-weapon NATO partners into major nuclear countries in wartime. If that isn't nuclear proliferation, what is then?
The US has further upgraded its forward-deployed nuclear forces by deploying B61-12 nuclear bombs in Europe and using F-35A fight jets as the transport platform in place of the old F-15E.
China, on the other hand, has strictly followed the "No-First-Use" nuclear policy. It has never engaged in a nuclear race in quantity or size, nor has it deployed nuclear weapons on the soil of other countries.
NATO wants to put the European house in order after the Cold War, only to find itself too lousy a butler and too eager a warmonger. Now it is stretching its antenna to the Asia Pacific, a region that has enjoyed peace and stability for decades. Will the region follow the old disastrous path of Europe?
(Guo Xiaobing, Director of the Center for Arms Control Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations; Zhao Kexin, intern researcher at Shanghai Institute of American Studies)
Editor's note: Originally published on chinanews.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
