EASTERN FRONT
Nato pivots East as counter-offensive fails, Charles III and Joseph I try to dominate NATO, Two stern warnings for NATO, NATO mindset is the cause of war.
UPDATE: Against the backdrop of problems on the Ukrainian front, the United States is trying to hastily change the theme of the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius. After all, the ‘counteroffensive’ is stalling, no one promises Ukraine membership in NATO. And there is a real split within the alliance due to the supply of cluster munitions – with Germany, Britain and Spain, who opposed Biden.
Chinese analysts say that the US and the UK are trying to coordinate on how to further dominate and retain their dominance of NATO, and they will try to make their strategy of "preventing the Ukraine crisis from ending" the "consensus" of the military organization.
The NATO summit focus is on plans to "counter the threat" from Russia. Meanwhile, NATO's strategic impulse to meddle in the Asia-Pacific region with the four "Asia-Pacific partners" - Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is NATO trying to "deter China's strategic ambitions."
As Nato members and their Asia-Pacific allies convene, the Ukrainians are destined to be disappointed — Biden said it was “premature” to allow Ukraine to join in the middle of a war. “Bringing Ukraine into the alliance is tantamount to joining the war.” “If the war is going on, then we’re all in war,” Biden said, referring to the alliance’s commitment to mutual defence. “We’re at war with Russia.”
NATO Pivots East
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Four. Against the backdrop of problems on the Ukrainian front, the United States is trying to hastily change the theme of the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius. After all, the ‘counteroffensive’ is stalling, no one promises Ukraine membership in NATO. And there is a real split within the alliance due to the supply of cluster munitions – with Germany, Britain and Spain, who opposed Biden.
Now Washington is making a 180-degree turn – shifting the focus of the summit from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific region. "Observers" from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan were invited to Vilnius. Their task is to convince the Europeans to enter into a clinch with China.
NATO was created to deter Soviet tanks and missiles in Europe. Now it is also in the business of deterring China’s global ambitions, spurring concern among some members about mission creep and accusations by Beijing of inciting confrontation, informs ‘The Wall Street Journal’.
Leaders from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan — known as the Asia-Pacific Four — will attend the annual North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting for the second successive year. On the agenda at the summit, set for next week in Lithuania, is increased cooperation in areas such as maritime and cybersecurity, with challenges from China front of mind.
NATO leaders say China’s moves to assert control in the South China Sea, a transit point for trillions of dollars of global trade each year, as well as its growing nuclear arsenal and cyberwarfare capabilities are now as much of a concern for Europe and North America as for Asian nations.
“NATO is and will remain a regional alliance of North America and Europe," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told The Wall Street Journal at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “But this region faces global threats and we have to address them together with our global partners."
China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values," NATO said, citing Beijing’s military buildup and its efforts to use economic coercion, as well as its strategic partnership with Russia.
Last October, around a dozen NATO military officials visited Taiwan to talk with military officials there about China’s military capabilities and its just-ended Communist Party Congress, according to people familiar with the meetings.
A few months earlier, before the national leaders of the Asia-Pacific Four attended the NATO summit in Madrid in June, the four countries’ defense chiefs joined a meeting of the NATO Military Committee, the top advisory board to NATO commanders.
While worries about China are widespread among NATO countries, there are also concerns about an expanded role, particularly as the war in Ukraine erodes members’ military resources.
Over the past few years, the U.K. and other NATO countries have sent warships for exercises in the Asia-Pacific region, but diplomats say some NATO members are wary of both losing focus on Russia and raising tensions with China.
“We have seen NATO bent on going east into this region, interfering in regional affairs and inciting bloc confrontation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in June.
Moves by NATO and the Asia-Pacific Four to take part in exercises together will also help prepare for future crises, said Yoko Iwama, a professor of international relations at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. The U.K. and Japan agreed earlier this year to allow their militaries to conduct more joint training.
Read more here.
Charles and Joseph on NATO
By Yang Sheng
Ahead of the NATO summit, which is scheduled to be held in Lithuania from Tuesday to Wednesday, US President Joe Biden has visited the UK, a key ally of Washington, and held a meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with Chinese analysts saying that the US and the UK are trying to coordinate on how to further dominate and retain their dominance of NATO, and they will try to make their strategy of "preventing the Ukraine crisis from ending" the "consensus" of the military organization.
President Biden arrived in London late on Sunday for the start of a three-nation tour that includes meetings with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and "a discussion on climate change with King Charles at Windsor Castle" on Monday, Reuters reported.
Analysts said the diplomatic activities ahead of the NATO summit will focus on strengthening coordination on handling the Ukraine crisis, as NATO is a key platform for the US-UK cooperation to influence the development of the ongoing geopolitical crisis that is affecting the whole of Europe.
The US and UK, which are geographically far from the battlefield, are being impacted less by the conflict than those in continental Europe, so Washington and London are both encouraging Kiev to keep fighting rather than making mediation efforts for a ceasefire, and this will make the whole continent continue to suffer, experts said.
Song Luzheng, a Paris-based expert on European politics and a research fellow at the China Institute of Fudan University, told the Global Times on Monday that "Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic countries always welcome the US' presence in the region and firmly support Ukraine to continue fighting, even though some Western European countries are getting tired of this conflict and want to find a solution by seeking strategic autonomy and getting rid of US interference."
This means that by influencing the Eastern European nations, Washington and London are able to transform their will into the consensus of the whole of NATO, and use this to force major EU members like France and Germany to stay in line with them, and it will be hard to change this situation, Song noted.
However, the unity of the West is still facing challenges. The Associated Press said in a report on Monday that as the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues "with no end in sight," NATO's "much-celebrated unity" faces fresh strains when leaders gather for their annual summit this week in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The world's biggest military organization is "struggling to reach an agreement on admitting Sweden as its 32nd member. Military spending by member nations lags behind long-standing goals. An inability to compromise over who should serve as NATO's next leader forced an extension of the current secretary-general's term for an extra year," said the AP report on Sunday.
Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Monday that although Biden and Sunak will coordinate and try to strengthen their dominance over NATO, the upcoming summit will expose differences among the members in at least three fields - providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, Kiev's request for NATO membership, and NATO expansion to the Asia-Pacific region.
"For Paris and Berlin, as well as many other EU members, they care more about the security of Europe, which has already caused a huge headache, and are not interested in security issues in other regions that are far away from them, but Washington wants to make NATO more international, and replicate the bloc confrontation, which has caused a huge crisis in Europe, in the Asia-Pacific region. This risky move will definitely receive opposition from some other NATO members," the expert noted.
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Two Stern Warnings for NATO
The NATO summit is being held in Vilnius, Lithuania, from Tuesday to Thursday. The meeting focuses on plans to "counter the threat" from Russia, including discussions on NATO's expansion and Ukraine's future membership to NATO. Meanwhile, NATO's strategic impulse to meddle in the Asia-Pacific region is also imminent at this summit. Expanding cooperation with the four "Asia-Pacific partners" - Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - is another major topic of the summit. In this regard, the US media boldly stated that NATO is trying to "deter China's strategic ambitions."
This is the second year that Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have been invited to the NATO summit. In order to firmly rope in these four countries, NATO imitated the "Quad" mechanism of the US, Japan, India and Australia at last year's summit, and specially created a new name for these four countries called "Asia-Pacific Four (AP4)." This aims to institutionalize the cooperation between these four countries and NATO, and make them de facto new allies of "NATO+" in the Asia-Pacific region. According to sources, the joint statement to be issued in Vilnius will change the name of AP4 to "Indo-Pacific Four (IP4)," which is undoubtedly more in line with Washington's tone.
There are 31 NATO members, but they have never been monolithic and have different views on many international issues. However, they are in general dominated by the will of the US. Now they have been kidnapped by the panic and tension instigated by the US, becoming "Washington's axe, spears and shovels." Wherever NATO goes, wars are likely to break out. These are not only the subjective impressions left by NATO, but also objective facts to a large extent. This situation is actually more worthy of the high vigilance of those member states within NATO that have no intention of being passively involved in the war.
The outbreak and prolongation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, along with the chaos and changes in the world, have given NATO, which was once on the verge of brain death, an opportunity to breathe and extend its existence. However, it has also led NATO to make highly erroneous conclusions and judgments, resulting in an unprecedented expansion of its geopolitical ambitions after the Cold War, as evidenced by the NATO summit in Vilnius.
At the Vilnius summit, we saw NATO become more ambitious and aggressive. When NATO is being arrogant, we must sternly warn it of two points: Firstly, NATO must restrain rather than indulge its own impulse to expand, position itself correctly, and never cross the line; secondly, NATO must respect the legitimate security concerns and interest demands of major countries in the region, rather than offend and provoke them. Otherwise, it will lead to disastrous consequences. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a lesson. If NATO does not restrain itself but even aggravates its actions, more serious consequences will follow.
To put it more directly, NATO must promptly withdraw the black hand it has extended toward the Asia-Pacific region, and it should not even think about squeezing half of its body in the future. Apart from certain countries like Japan, which act out of dark selfish motives rather than considering the overall interests of Asia, the majority of countries in Asia not only do not welcome NATO but also see it as a terrible monster that should be avoided at all costs. This is because NATO only brings security risks, war threats, and development predicament to Asia.
Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating recently issued a statement, criticizing NATO and its Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg without reservation. He hit the nail on the head, saying "The Europeans have been fighting each other for the better part of 300 years, including giving the rest of us two world wars in the last hundred. Exporting that malicious poison to Asia would be akin to Asia welcoming the plague upon itself." He also called Stoltenberg, who exaggerates the China threat, a "supreme fool" who "conducts himself as an American agent more than he performs as a leader and spokesperson for European security."
Keating is a visionary and insightful politician. We highly agree with his statement. No one has criticized NATO more accurately and vividly than Keating. His words reflect a consensus among Asian countries. The transatlantic military alliance, which has been expanding and disrupting the security situation in Europe since the Cold War, is now extending its reach into the Asia-Pacific region. Its ulterior motives are well-known in the international community. Inciting division and hatred, creating group confrontations, and causing chaos in Europe, they now seek to disrupt the peace in the Asia-Pacific region. We firmly resist this, together with the majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
Japan, disregarding strong opposition from its neighbors, is stubbornly pushing its plan to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean. Now it is persistently introducing NATO's military and political troubles into Asia, which could be seen as Japan's second betrayal and crime against Asia after its fascist aggression. If there are consequences, Japan bears an undeniable historical responsibility. Given this, it is not excessive no matter how we condemn Japan.
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Nato War Mindset
By Thomas Fazi (edited)
As Nato members and their Asia-Pacific allies convene today to discuss the bloc’s expansion and future strategy, the Ukrainians are destined to be disappointed — insofar as membership is concerned at least. In an interview on Sunday, Biden said it was “premature” to allow them to join in the middle of a war. The reason is fairly obvious. As the former US Nato ambassador Ivo Daalderput it: “Bringing Ukraine into the alliance is tantamount to joining the war.” Their membership would risk a direct, potentially nuclear, conflict between Nato and Russia on European soil. “If the war is going on, then we’re all in war,” Biden said, referring to the alliance’s commitment to mutual defence. “We’re at war with Russia.”
Aside from a few Eastern Euripean and Baltic countries, this is a scenario no one is ready for — though the longer the war drags on, the greater its inevitability. Avoiding an all-out war hinges on Nato and Russia maintaining the fiction that the two sides aren’t already engaged in a proxy war — and one that Nato seems intent on escalating.
The United States did nothing to dispel this impression with its recent decision to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine, a weapon banned by a convention signed by more than 120 countries (including more than two-thirds of Nato members) due to its horrific track record of causing thousands of civilian casualties; in countries such as Laos, cluster bombs continue to maim and kill civilians, 50 years after the end of the Vietnam War. The US, Ukraine and Russia, which is also accused of having used cluster munitions in Ukraine, are among the few to have not signed the convention.
While Nato as a group is unlikely to endorse full Nato membership in Vilnius, it is however expected to reaffirm its commitment to providing long-term military assistance to Ukraine: Nato integration in all but name. In other words: more war. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail — and Nato has by far the world’s biggest hammer. Even though it encompasses just over 10% of the world’s population, it accounts for 55% of global military spending; it is by its very nature unable to conceive non-militaristic solutions to the ongoing conflict.
Yet if, as many have pointed out — and as even Fiona Hill, security advisor to several former US presidents, has admitted — no one can win this war and there is no alternative to a diplomatic solution to end the bloodshed, why are we continuing to rely on an organisation that evidently represents an obstacle to peace? Such questions are precisely the ones that will be carefully avoided during the two-day summit: has the Ukrainian-victory-at-all-costs strategy really benefited Ukraine? How do we bring an end to the war? And, most fundamentally, what is Nato for?
Nato presents itself as a purely “defensive alliance… working for peace, security and freedom”. The reality, however, is quite different. Aside from the fact that its most powerful member and de facto leader, the US, has bombed more countriesthan any other nation, Nato itself has a rather violent track record. In 1999, Nato began its 78-day illegal bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, the first act of aggression against a sovereign state committed in Europe since the Second World War. Many civilian targets were hit, including 48 hospitals, 70 schools, 18 kindergartens and 35 churches. Overall, hundreds of civilians were killed, including 81 children. Since then, Nato has been involved in several other conflicts, most notably Afghanistan and Libya. None had anything to do with defending its members from external aggression; in all these cases, Nato was quite clearly the aggressor.
And so it’s far from clear how exactly Nato is providing “security” to Europe. On the contrary, some are convinced that Nato provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by aggressively expanding eastward, systematically ignoring Russia’s warnings over the years. This represented a gross violation of the principle that had inspired the entire European security architecture since the Seventies: the indivisibility of security — that is, the notion that the security of Nato states and the Soviet Union (subsequently Russia) was “inseparably linked to that of all the others”, and could not come at the expense of another state’s security. In other words, Nato played a crucial role in unravelling Europe’s security architecture and creating the conditions for the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World. How does this square with the notion that Nato is there to guarantee Europe’s peace and security — or that, today, it represents a “bulwark” against the very chaos that it helped create?
This is particularly disturbing given Nato’s stated intention of expanding its activity into the Indo-Pacific region, which will obviously antagonise China. The current Nato Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, is a well-known anti-China hawk. In February, he drew parallels between Russia’s invasions of Ukraine and China, saying “we should not make the same mistake with China”, implying that Beijing should be strategically circumscribed by the West.
To this end, Nato is strengthening its cooperation with its partners in the Indo-Pacific region — Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand — and is also hoping to open a Nato liaison office in Tokyo, the first of its kind in the region. The leaders of these four countries will also attend the Vilnius event to underscore their deepening relationship — as they did last year in Madrid. For the same reason, Germany will, for the first time, be sending troops to Australia as part of joint drills with some 30,000 service members from 12 other nations.
Beneath the surface, the creation of this “global Nato” is further evidence of the fact that the alliance’s strategy is increasingly indistinguishable from Washington’s — focused less on defence and more on great-power confrontation. In a scathing statement, Australia’s former prime minister Paul Keating labelled Stoltenberg a “supreme fool” for wanting to “export [Nato’s] malicious poison to Asia”. He wrote: “With all of Asia’s recent development amid its long and latent poverty, that promise would be compromised by having anything to do with the militarism of Europe — and militarism egged on by the United States… Stoltenberg conducts himself as an American agent more than he performs as a leader and spokesperson for European security.”
Moreover, Keating noted that Stoltenberg’s aggressive anti-China stance wasn’t shared by France, the largest EU state, which just a few days ago issued a statement insisting that Nato should remain geographically confined to the North Atlantic. Macron has been opposed to an increased Nato focus on China for years, arguing in 2021 that “Nato is a military organisation, the issue of our relationship with China isn’t just a military issue. Nato is an organisation that concerns the North Atlantic; China has little to do with the North Atlantic”.
But if Stoltenberg can so openly disregard the opinion of such an important member, who exactly does he represent? How does Nato actually work?
Nato’s principal decision-making body is the North Atlantic Council, which brings together representatives of each member country and “oversees the political and military process relating to security issues affecting the whole Alliance”. Formally, “all Nato decisions are made by consensus, after discussion and consultation among member countries”. In reality, however, neither the founding treaty nor any other Nato basic document prescribes a decision-making rule. This allows the alliance to present its decisions as unanimous and consensual even when they’re not. In theory, every member state has a de facto veto right, but in practice its use has been rare.
This relates to another of Nato’s myths: the equality of all member states. Countries such as Albania and Montenegro are hardly on an equal footing with the US. The US has been an uncontested leader of the Alliance and an informal grouping of big Allies has dominated many crucial Nato decisions. In fact, many believe that Nato has been one of the key institutions through which the US has exercised its control over post-war Western Europe. “Nato’s continued existence ensures that Europe remains a strategic subordinate to the US, which explains why the US, though it has complained often about inequitable burden sharing, has never demanded a dramatic increase in European military power, let alone a Europe with an autonomous defence policy”. It is no coincidence, in this sense, that Nato’s revamping on the heels of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has led to a greater degree of European “vassalisation”to the US than ever before.
In this sense, it is striking to note the deep ideological linkages between Nato and the European Union, another of the institutions through which Washington has historically exercised its influence over Europe. Ursula von der Leyen is dubbed “Europe’s American president” and has worked tirelessly to keep Brussels committed to Washington’s hawkish stance toward Russia and China — so it’s perfectly fitting that reports suggest she has been selected to take over as Nato’s next chief.
Given von der Leyen’s track record, she’ll make Stoltenberg look competent in comparison. During her time as the Germany’s defence minister, von der Leyen was accused of allowing lucrative contracts worth millions of euros to be improperly handed out to consultants — and then of deleting all the messages. Von der Leyen has systematically refused to release text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in which she negotiated €35 billion of Covid vaccines. Overall, we can probably expect Nato’s management under von der Leyen to be even less transparent — and more prone to America’s interests — than ever.
In the meantime, it is clear the Ukraine conflict has represented a boon for the US and for the transnational military-industrial interests represented by Nato. And that is in Washington’s every interest for the war to go on for as long as possible, and for Europe to be kept in a state of permanent instability. This is why, when it gathers today, we can expect Nato to continue pushing for an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. Why risk ending the war when you could be cashing cheques — both financial and diplomatic — for months and even years to come?
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