By Hai Jing and Liu Yuandong
The NATO Summit just concluded in Washington D.C., capital of the US. It not only marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the organization but also the first get-together of the 32 member states after the official entry of Sweden. During the summit, NATO members all pledged to provide more military assistance to Ukraine, and deliberately exaggerated the tension in Asia Pacific, once again laying bare the organization's ambition for expansion and confrontation and posing a serious threat to world peace and stability.
The summit urged efforts to enhance NATO's so-called deterrence and defense capability. The Washington Summit Declaration still labeled Russia as the most significant and direct threat to Allies' security, and asked the allies to enhance their combat capability in such areas as outer space, cyberspace, airspace, land, sea, and electromagnetic spectrums, especially strengthening the command and control system. The summit not only reached many agreements on the defense industry and military expansion but also reiterated the importance of nuclear deterrence as the cornerstone of Alliance security. NATO also planned to form the Integrated Cyber Defence Centre and release a new Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Besides, 17 NATO members signed the Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space (APSS) initiative to enable more effective air and space surveillance and integrated air defense and anti-missile systems.
The summit ramped up efforts to support Ukraine against Russia. One of the summit's aims was to place security assistance to Ukraine on an enduring footing, ensuring enhanced, predictable, and coherent support. While emphasizing that Ukraine's future is in NATO and unveiling a bridge to Ukraine's membership in NATO, NATO is also pushing the establishment of the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) to increase Ukraine's interoperability with the organization. Besides, multiple NATO members have released their new military assistance programs for Ukraine, further relaxing the limitations to their provision of weapons.
The summit strengthened the so-called global partnerships with Asia Pacific as the focus. Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand, the four leaders of NATO's Indo-Pacific partners, have been invited to the NATO summit for three years in a row. The organization vowed to strengthen its cooperation with them and launch flagship projects in the areas of supporting Ukraine, AI development, cyber defence, and countering disinformation. It will also support member states in cooperating with the four Asian Pacific countries to enhance their defense industries and hold more joint military exercises. It's worth noting that after Japan became an active "bridgehead" in NATO's Asian Pacific expansion, ROK plans to invite NATO members to participate in a cyber defense exercise hosted by its intelligence agency in Seoul this September.
Expansion is the keyword throughout NATO's 75-year history. After the Cold War ended, the organization that no longer had an opposite number has kept expanding to the east instead of being dissolved, and the number of its members has risen from 16 to 32 ever since. The latest summit once again showed the world that the organization, essentially a tool to maintain America's hegemony, is racking its brains in instigating confrontation.
In the Washington Summit Declaration, the US continued to monger security anxiety that it had ignited in the first place, unilaterally defined and abused the so-called aggressive hybrid actions, and repeatedly stressed its 360-degree security approach, all aimed to substantially lower the threshold for the exercise of NATO's collective defense. In the meantime, it has continuously hyped the inseparable security between Indo-Pacific and Europe-Atlantic, exaggerated the overspill effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and pushed for NATO's Asian Pacific expansion, attempting to move the "Ukraine model" to Asia Pacific and put the Eurasian security and order in danger.
In recent years, NATO, under the disguise of cooperative security, has sped up its steps to make itself a global organization. But its cooperative security is in fact a spurious, hypocritical concept that's essentially aimed at creating cliques based on ideology. Under America's manipulation and with the collusion with countries like Japan, NATO's so-called Indo-Pacific partnership, like its constant expansion in Europe, has displayed its inherent exclusivity and confrontation. Asian Pacific countries are facing mounting pressure to pick sides, which has gravely disrupted the process of regional integration, jeopardized regional countries' security independence, and squeezed the space for solving regional hotspot issues in peaceful ways.
NATO, a Cold War vestige and the world's largest military bloc, depends on terror, the creation of enemies, and intimidation for its very existence, and it will only lead to war and chaos. Sacrificing the security of other countries won't get it the absolute security it wants or mitigate its internal and external challenges. Its malicious actions against the historical trend under America's lead will eventually come back to burn itself.
