Liu Chang 

The NATO summit is held in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Under the manipulation of the U.S., NATO continues to view regional and international hotspots through the prism of outdated Cold War mindset, pushes forward the process of "Indo-Pacificization", stirs up camp confrontation, and casts a dark shadow over peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia-Pacific region is a crucial part of the U.S.'s implementation of its Indo-Pacific Strategy. This summit invited leaders from four Asia-Pacific partners (AP4) including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand to participate in the meeting following last year's Madrid Summit. It demonstrates the U.S.'s gradual transformation of NATO into one of the mechanized platforms for implementing its Indo-Pacific Strategy and highlights the fact that the U.S.'s manipulation of NATO has accelerated the strategic layout of NATO's expansion into the Asia-Pacific region and the "Indo-Pacificization" of NATO. The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to shift the strategic focus of European allies towards the Indo-Pacific region through NATO and deeply bind Eurasian allies to jointly share the cost and pressure of implementing the Indo-Pacific Strategy to contain and encircle China. Since last year, NATO has significantly increased its security cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand and has targeted China more explicitly in areas such as cybersecurity, maritime security, emerging technologies, network and climate change through a tailor-made partnership program.

NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia-Pacific region will arouse countless problems. As a legacy of the Cold War, NATO's continued existence more than 30 years after the end of the Cold War is essentially achieved by creating enemies and confrontations.

The Cold War era has ended for over 30 years, NATO the legacy of the era, however, continued to exist by creating enemies and confrontation.

Not only does this fail to bring sustainable security, but it also generates endless conflicts and suffering in Europe and the world. Looking back at NATO's history after the Cold War, one can identify a fundamental rule: the more NATO expands, the less secure Europe becomes, and the more unstable the world becomes. The Ukraine crisis is a clear example. It can be predicted that NATO's expansion into Asia-Pacific will surely generate conflicts and chaos. As a result, it will incite more contradictions and military confrontations in the Asia-Pacific region, and add more complex uncertainties to the process of global economic recovery.

NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia-Pacific region disrupts regional order. Since the end of the Cold War, there has never been a large-scale armed conflict or a refugee crisis in East Asia although there have been challenging issues such as the DPRK nuclear issue. The long-term peace in East Asia is rooted in the abandonment of the Cold War-era camp-based confrontation and zero-sum thinking, and the promotion of a regional security order based on deep mutual interdependence and regional integration. NATO's expansion into Asia-Pacific precisely undermines the critical framework and positive factors for regional peace and stability, shakes the foundation of the regional order and provides more opportunities and space for its meddling in the Asia-Pacific region. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's claims that "What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow" completely ignores the fact that the security orders in Asia and Europe are based on two different concepts and mechanisms and attempts to cover up NATO's strategic ambitions to overthrow the existing order in the Asia-Pacific region.

As the Ukraine crisis becomes increasingly protracted, NATO's reliance on eastward expansion and military showmanship to gain a sense of security is increasingly unpopular. The further expansion into the Asia-Pacific region exposes its strategic ambitions and will meet with inevitable resistance from Global South countries.

(The author is an assistant researcher at the Department for American Studies, China Institute of International Studies)

Editor's note: Originally published on people.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.