NATO is a hegemonic tool for the United States to create world turmoil

【Mingdi】

As a product of the Cold War, NATO has always served as a military tool for the United States to maintain its hegemony. Through NATO, the United States creates security threats around the world, even at the expense of provoking conflicts and wars, in order to demonstrate its so-called hegemonic power, both to deter adversaries and to tighten its control over its allies. Even though the Cold War is long over, the United States and its nato-led NATO still cling to the Cold War mentality. In recent years, in the face of the decline of its own strength, the United States has relied more on NATO to consolidate and expand its strategic space, and it is more necessary to rely on NATO to create disasters everywhere, bluffing to "show muscles" and "brush the sense of existence." The hegemonic behavior of the United States in using NATO tools to create turmoil everywhere completely deviates from the trend of the times in which the people of all countries in the world want to develop, cooperate, and live in peace, and NATO and the hegemonism and power politics it represents will eventually be swept into the garbage heap of history.

NATO's history is marked by bad records

NATO claims to be a defensive military organization that maintains the security of its members, but in fact, it has repeatedly violated international law and the basic norms governing international relations, frequently provoked regional contradictions, disputes and conflicts, wantonly launched wars against sovereign countries, seriously undermined world and regional peace and stability, led to long-term division and political turmoil in relevant countries, and killed or displaced a large number of innocent civilians.

On March 24, 1999, NATO began 78 consecutive days of indiscriminate bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the approval of the United Nations. NATO flew 1,150 warplanes, carried out more than 2,300 air strikes, and dropped nearly 420,000-ton bombs weighing 22,000 tons, including depleted uranium bombs and cluster bombs. NATO not only bombed all military targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but also civilian facilities such as bridges, railways, roads, factories, and television stations. According to incomplete statistics from the Serbian government, NATO's large-scale airstrikes have killed about 2,500 civilians, displaced nearly 1 million people, and lost more than 2 million people to their sources of livelihood. On May 7, 1999 local time, the US-led NATO brazenly bombed the mainland embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, causing the unfortunate death of three mainland journalists, the injury of more than 20 diplomats, and the serious damage to the embassy building.

In addition, nato countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have launched wars against sovereign countries such as Iraq and Syria using only a tube of laundry detergent and posing videos as "evidence". According to incomplete statistics, the wars launched and participated in by NATO after 2001 alone have killed 900,000 people, including nearly 400,000 civilians, and displaced tens of millions of refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. These facts clearly show that NATO has never been a passive defensive organization, but a war machine that is full of crimes and is not subject to international law.

Multiple rounds of eastward expansion have buried hidden dangers

In July 1991, the Warsaw Pact, established by the Soviet Union in response to the NATO threat, was officially dissolved. Theoretically, NATO should also lose its relevance with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. However, under the leadership of the United States, NATO not only did not disband, but continued to expand eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union, absorbing the former Warsaw Pact member states to join. Up to now, NATO has not only launched five rounds of eastward expansion, but also brewed new expansion.

In September 1996, NATO published the "Research Report on the Eastward Expansion Plan". In July 1997, nato's Madrid summit decided to admit Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to NATO for the first time, and in March 1999, the formal admission ceremony of the three countries was held in Missouri, USA. In March 2004, NATO undertook its largest expansion since its inception, deciding to admit Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria as full members. In April 2009, Croatia and Albania also formally joined NATO. In June 2017 and March 2020, Montenegro and North Macedonia officially became members of NATO. NATO's 14 new members are all from Eastern European countries, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which border Russia. NATO is also considering joining Sweden, Finland and other countries.

The European continent is a key region that determines world peace, which has been devastated by two world wars, and European security has attracted much attention. In the name of pursuing "absolute security," NATO has expanded vigorously in Europe, not only failing to build a security barrier for Europe, but sowing the seeds of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and bringing war and turmoil to the European continent. The Ukraine crisis has re-energized the international community that NATO's pursuit of absolute security necessarily brings absolute insecurity.

Tigers see the Asia-Pacific region as a culprit

In recent years, the United States has pursued the "Indo-Pacific strategy" under the banner of promoting regional cooperation and engaged in group politics and geopolitical games. In order to maintain the hegemonic system led by the United States, the United States has strengthened the "Five Eyes Alliance", peddled the "four-sided mechanism", cobbled together a trilateral security partnership, and tightened the bilateral military alliance in an attempt to engage in the "Indo-Pacific version of NATO". This kind of deliberately patchwork, closed and exclusive "small circle" and "small clique" will only cause trouble everywhere and push the region to the evil road of fragmentation and camping, and its danger is no less than that of NATO's eastward expansion. If left unchecked, it will ultimately only push the Asia-Pacific region into a fire pit of conflict and war.

At the same time, some Western think tanks have clamored for the establishment of a "global NATO," and NATO is also frequently involved in Asia-Pacific affairs, extending its black hand to the Asia-Pacific region. In April, NATO held a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss NATO's new strategic vision. Under the name of "Global Partners", the conference invited the foreign ministers of four Asia-Pacific countries of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand for the first time. NATO has made it clear that it wants to deepen cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries to prevent China from "supporting Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict." NATO's intention to use the Ukraine issue to contain China and extend its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific region is clear.

The Asia-Pacific region is an anchor of peace and stability, a pole of development and growth, a new highland of cooperation, and a region with the greatest development potential in the world today. The development of the Asia-Pacific region is inseparable from a peaceful and stable regional and international environment. The crisis in Ukraine provided a mirror for the security situation in the Asia-Pacific region. Pursuing the Cold War mentality and engaging in military alliances will not be conducive to peace and tranquility in the Asia-Pacific region and will only undermine the hard-won development situation.

The world needs a new concept of security

At present, the common aspiration of the people of all countries in the world is to seek peace, seek cooperation and promote development. What the US-led NATO has done since the end of the Cold War has fully demonstrated that its so-called pursuit of "absolute security" of its members and the maintenance of Peace in Europe are nothing more than a cover to deceive the world. NATO has become a tool for the United States to maintain its hegemonic position and create turmoil everywhere, and is undoubtedly a saboteur of the cause of world peace. Today, NATO's Cold War mentality is on the rise and intensifying, and power politics and bullying are rampant, putting the hard-won world peace for a long period of time to the test. In order to achieve universal security for all mankind, all countries must establish a common, integrated, cooperative and sustainable security concept, and must break the old security concept that NATO has long adhered to.

In the era of globalization, the diversity, transnationality and linkage of security issues are becoming increasingly prominent, and the insecurity and instability within a country will also spread rapidly to other countries and the world, resulting in a wider range of insecurity and instability. In other words, as long as there is turmoil in the world, no country can achieve its own absolute security. Therefore, security is universal, and we cannot have one national security while other countries are not safe, and some countries are not safe while other countries are not safe, let alone sacrifice the security of other countries to seek their own so-called absolute security.

How to maintain world peace and stability is becoming an urgent question for the international community to answer in the current era. In this regard, Chinese President Xi Jinping's global security initiative at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022 gave the answer. Guided by the new security concept, followed by mutual respect as the basic principle, with security indivisibility as an important principle, and with the long-term goal of building a security community, we will embark on a new type of security path of dialogue without confrontation, partnership rather than alliance, and win-win results rather than zero-sum.

(Author: Xu Xiujun, Research Fellow, Research Center of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Researcher of National Global Strategy Think Tank)

Source: Guangming Daily