On June 28, local time, in Madrid, the capital of Spain, police patrolled the streets before the NATO summit began. To ensure the security of the summit, Spain invested more than 10,000 police forces. Courtesy of Visual China
From June 29 to 30, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held a summit in Madrid, Spain, attended by the leaders of 30 member states. In addition, NATO also invited the leaders of four Asia-Pacific countries from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to participate in the meeting as "partner countries" for the first time, and this summit can be called the largest annual conference held since the establishment of NATO. China and Russia are not participants in the NATO "expansion summit", but in the summit topic, China and Russia are almost everywhere.
The first issue is the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
In addition to the large scale of the NATO Summit in Madrid, the agenda is also quite complex, and the first topic is the current situation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Although there are different voices within NATO on the duration of the war, the manner in which it ends, and the costs paid by NATO and its European allies, during the 29-30 session, the 30 NATO member states will still issue a unified statement on Ukraine. Corey Shaq, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said: "The unification statement will show the unity of the West, especially the unity of the United States with Europe. ”
In connection with this, another important topic of the NATO summit will be to vigorously strengthen NATO's military strength on the eastern flank of Europe, including the deployment of more troops and heavy military equipment such as tanks and artillery on the side closest to Russia and Belarus. NATO has deployed four new battalion-sized multinational force battle groups in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia to complement the multinational battle groups established by NATO in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in 2017. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently revealed that NATO members will agree to "strengthen the East Wing Battle Group to brigade level." U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce the deployment of one or two additional brigade-sized combat units, increasing the U.S. presence in Europe from about 70,000 to about 100,000.
NATO's new strategic document, The Strategic Concept of Alliances, which will be updated for the first time in nearly 12 years, is also of great concern. This is NATO's most important working document of 1949, and the security assessment is revised approximately every 10 years to reset NATO's security agenda. Still, NATO's "strategic concept" has not been updated since 2010. At the summit, NATO is expected to approve an updated strategy document that describes the world as "full of new dangers."
During the summit, the leaders will also discuss Ukraine and Georgia's accession requirements and NATO's increased military spending, its own budget and burden sharing.
For the first time, four Asia-Pacific countries were invited to participate
The NATO summit is held every year, but this year's Madrid summit is very different from the past, because this summit for the first time invited the leaders of The Asia-Pacific countries of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which are not members of NATO, to participate in the meeting, connecting these four countries with a "collective security system" centered on the United States and Europe.
Kim Sung-han, director of South Korea's State Security Office, said a few days ago that President Yoon Seok-wook's participation in the NATO summit "south Korea took this opportunity to strengthen value sharing with these countries." The South Korean government also announced that it will take the opportunity of this meeting to set up a new representative office in Brussels, Belgium, where NATO headquarters are located, in preparation for the conclusion of a cooperative partnership with NATO in the second half of this year.
Takai Shin, former director of the Research Institute of Japan Defense and chairman of the Japan Institute for Security and Security Strategy, said that on the eve of the House of Representatives election on July 10, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio rarely rushed to Europe to attend the NATO summit because "the Russo-Ukrainian war made Japan feel the need to strengthen its defenses."
Taking the opportunity of participating in the meeting to expand cooperation with NATO and "jointly check China" with NATO should be the main purpose of Kishida's visit. Speaking about the situation in Ukraine at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Germany on June 26, Kishida said that "Ukraine today, possibly Tomorrow's East Asia", "unilateral changes to the status quo by force" are not allowed. To this end, Japan will comprehensively strengthen its defense capabilities within five years and ensure a considerable increase in defense expenditure. Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported on June 22 that in consideration of "China's strengthening activities in the East and South China Seas," Japan and the United States will once again confirm their joint efforts to promote a "free and open Indo-Pacific" during the NATO summit. Takai also revealed to the media a few days ago that Kishida Hadhio had proposed to the leaders of South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to take advantage of the opportunity of participating in the NATO summit to hold quadripartite talks to discuss cooperation in dealing with the "China threat." However, the "four-party talks" are not included in the schedule of Yoon Seok-yue's visit to Europe announced by the South Korean media, and Kishida's proposal is likely to fail.
According to Australian media SBS, Australian Prime Minister Albanes claimed on June 26 when he left for Europe to attend the conference, "China should learn from the Russo-Ukrainian war." Russia has fallen into a strategic failure, and if Chinese mainland wants to unify Taiwan, it is likely to suffer a similar failure." In response to this remark, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded that Taiwan is not Ukraine, Taiwan is not a sovereign country, and there is no comparison between the two, "I hope that relevant politicians will not make irresponsible remarks."
Some analysts said that the United States has attracted a small number of Asia-Pacific countries to participate in the NATO summit, intending to take this opportunity to highlight the United States' concern for the Asia-Pacific region and further tighten the security linkage between Europe and Asia by tying its allies in Europe and Asia together. This reflects that NATO is trying to break through its traditional "area of responsibility" and extend its tentacles from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region, thus making NATO a "global NATO".
The participants were very divided on the high-profile hype of "confrontation with China" in the United States, Japan and other countries
Another highly interesting focus of the NATO summit is that for the first time in the new NATO strategy concept paper, "China's challenges to NATO's interests, security and values" will be formally mentioned. The NATO summit is not the first time that China has been addressed, but it will be the first time that the "China Challenge" has been written into a NATO strategic concept document. U.S. President's National Security Adviser Sullivan said the NATO strategy paper would "talk about the challenges China poses in an unprecedented way."
At the NATO summit last June, at the biden administration, the communiqué listed China for the first time as a "security threat," falsely claiming that China posed a "systemic challenge" to the international order and the security of the alliance. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg explained at the time that NATO does not see China as an enemy, but just does not share values; NATO still has the opportunity to engage with Beijing, especially on climate change and arms control issues. But this year, Stoltenberg's attitude has changed dramatically. In a public speech in February, he claimed that China and Russia were at the forefront of "opposing a rules-based international order," that China and Russia were "the main culprits undermining the world order," and that "NATO should step up its confrontation with China and Russia's hard power." On June 16, he said in Brussels that "China's desire to invest in newly modern military equipment and control Europe's critical infrastructure" makes it all the more important for NATO to take a tougher stance.
Some analysts believe that the United States intends to use this Madrid summit to show that no matter how much attention is paid to the situation in Russia and Ukraine, NATO will not take its attention away from China.
Although the United States, Japan and other countries have hyped up "confrontation with China", the participants in the NATO summit have great differences on this issue. France and Germany, for example, demand that a rising China be described as a "challenge" to the transatlantic security order, rather than a "threat" that has become apparent, as Russia has done. French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that NATO should not "distract itself" and form a "bias" on its relationship with China. Belgian Prime Minister De Croix also said on June 27 not to put China and Russia in the same "geopolitical basket" and treat China like Russia. A NATO diplomat told Reuters on June 28 that negotiators from all sides were consulting and fine-tuning how to describe the relationship between China and Russia, and that the Czech Republic and Hungary strongly opposed the use of "strategic convergence" to define Sino-Russian relations. Earlier, Lithuanian and Portuguese diplomats had expressed concern that NATO was "too focused on China" because NATO countries do not have any direct borders with China, unlike in Russia.
South Korea also seems intent on distance from NATO's anti-China and anti-Russian nature. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Choi Yong-shan said on June 28 that President Yoon Seok-wook's participation in the NATO summit was "by no means to exclude or oppose specific countries and regions." Yoon Seok-yue also said on June 24 that while strengthening trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the United States, and Japan, South Korea will further develop mutually beneficial cooperative relations between the two countries based on the spirit of mutual respect between South Korea and China. Some analysts said that this may indicate that yin Xiyue's government has not given up the line of "strategic ambiguity" between China and the United States.
Regarding the fact that NATO's new strategy document will be written into the "China Challenge" for the first time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on June 28: "NATO's so-called new strategy document is just a new bottle of old wine, and in essence, it has not changed the Cold War mentality of creating imaginary enemies and engaging in camp confrontation." ”
Beijing, June 29 (Xinhua) --
Source: China Youth Daily