A meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) defense ministers is held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on June 14, 2024. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe)
By Dong Yue
After NATO called China a "systemic challenge" in its 2022 Strategic Concept, it once again maliciously bombarded China at this year's NATO Summit in Washington D.C. The three-day summit was fraught with Cold War mindsets and war-mongering remarks. Its so-called declaration hyped up the tension in the Asia-Pacific, and its China-related discussions were teeming with prejudices, smearing, and provocations. Under the American baton, NATO, the "Frankenstein" born with Cold War genes, once again revealed its hideous nature of wreaking havoc with the world. Serving as a military tool to maintain America's global hegemony, its outreach to the Asia-Pacific will pose greater threats to regional security and stability as well as world peace.
The attempt to blame China for the Ukraine crisis at the latest summit is truly ridiculous and outrageous. NATO is bent on spreading the disinformation fabricated by the US and shifting the blame to China in its declaration. China didn't start the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a concerned party in it. Yet it hasn't stood by with folded arms either but has instead made active efforts to promote peace talks and a political solution. It never pours fuel on flames or fishes in troubled waters, much less provides weapons to any conflicting party. China's objective and just position and its constructive role have been widely recognized in the international community.
In contrast, the US-led NATO has kept escalating the situation without ever reflecting on how the crisis broke out and what role it has played in it. During the summit, the US continued to coax and coerce several countries to commit to providing more weapons and funds for Ukraine. At the moment, the international community has reached a basic consensus on what caused the conflict – it is the constant eastward expansion of the US-led NATO that has reignited the flames of war on the European continent, the protraction of which has increasingly revealed America's geostrategic goals behind the whole thing, namely to control Europe, cripple Russia, shift the blame by smearing China's image through the manipulation of international public opinions, sow discord between China and Europe, and tank their cooperation. The international community sees clearly who is behind the scenes of the lingering Ukraine crisis.
The recent summit was calling black white when hyping up the so-called "China threat", which was just creating an excuse for NATO to meddle in the Asia-Pacific affairs. China has the best track record when it comes to peace and security. It has never invaded another country, never engaged in a proxy war, never threatened other countries by force, never exported its ideology, and never interfered in other countries' internal affairs. It has never formed or participated in a military bloc and has always opposed the use of force or the threat of force in international relations.
The US-led NATO, on the other hand, has kept urging its member states to increase military spending, expanding boundaries and claiming more rights, and stirring up confrontation in the Asia-Pacific for all its claim to be a defensive alliance. It is all talk about defending the "rules-based international order", while in fact it is meddling in other countries' internal affairs, mongering security anxiety, and instigating conflicts and war in total disregard of international law and the fundamental norms governing international relations. While defining itself as a regional organization, NATO has constantly reached out beyond the geographical boundary prescribed in its own charter and is now messing up Asia-Pacific after it has turned Europe into a pandemonium. Countries in the Asia-Pacific should be highly vigilant and strongly opposed to this tendency.
The Asia-Pacific is a highland of peace and development, not an arena for geopolitical games. Most countries in the region have an unequivocal position on relevant issues: we are opposed to forming various military blocs in the region, we don't welcome NATO putting its fingers in Asia, we don't accept bloc confrontation in the region, and we won't allow any war, cold or hot, to recur here. Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen warned about NATO's worrisome tendency to expand its clout to Asia-Pacific. Even some NATO members are worried about the organization's constant meddling in out-of-region affairs and trying to replicate its old trick of instigating or even creating confrontation from Europe to Asia-Pacific amid the current international security whirlwind. French President Macron warned that the expansion of the alliance's geographical scope beyond the North Atlantic region "will be a big mistake". Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said Hungary doesn't wish NATO to become an anti-China bloc and won't support that either.
As the world's largest military bloc, NATO is essentially a tool to maintain America's hegemony. It should have been dissolved with the end of the Cold War, but the US, out of its selfish interests, has saved it even at the price of creating imaginary enemies everywhere and stirring up conflicts and confrontation. It has become a self-evident fact that wherever NATO goes, there is turmoil and chaos. Take a look at the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… These countries and regions, along with many more, are all victims of NATO's military operations.
Incomplete statistics show that since 2001, the wars either waged or joined by NATO have cost hundreds of thousands of lives while driving tens of millions homeless. The organization's endless eastward expansion over the years, which has seriously squeezed Russia's geographical space and damaged the security situation in Asia and Europe, has eventually caused and escalated the Ukraine crisis. Facts have shown that NATO's so-called security comes at the expense of other countries' security and that it is the real source of danger threatening global peace and stability.
Peace, development and win-win cooperation are the mainstream voices in the international community today, but the US-led NATO is moving against the historical trend with an attempt to manipulate a "new Cold War" and agitate war in Asia-Pacific. Its backpedaling behaviors are doomed to come to nothing.
Editor's note: Originally published on the Xinhua news app, 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.
