{"id":187292,"date":"2021-06-21T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=187292"},"modified":"2021-06-18T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T08:49:00","slug":"creating-enemies-china-reacts-to-nato-targeting-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/06\/creating-enemies-china-reacts-to-nato-targeting-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Enemies: China Reacts to NATO Targeting It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-187293 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image-1024x793.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"310\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image-1024x793.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image-300x232.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image-768x594.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/nato-vs-china-flags-image.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>15 Jun 2021 &#8211; <\/em>After months of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg mercilessly \u2013 tediously \u2013 denouncing Russia and China ahead of yesterday\u2019s summit, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/06\/14\/nato-summit-communique-confronting-china-russia-and-the-world\/\" >the communiqu\u00e9 issued after it<\/a> finally raised China\u2019s ire. Two of the document\u2019s 79 points addressed China. The second was conciliatory; the first was confrontational. It was the first time the 30-nation military bloc so overtly directed harsh language of that nature at China in an official publication.<\/p>\n<p>The opening sentence of section 55 contends that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cChina\u2019s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A threat to an individual member of NATO can result in the activation of its <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/06\/13\/bidens-message-to-nato-summit-u-s-maintains-sacred-commitment-to-article-5-war-clause\/\" >Article 5 war clause<\/a>. China was accused of endangering the security of the entire alliance.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, China was charged with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201ccoercive policies\u201d that are the antithesis of \u201cthe fundamental values enshrined in the Washington Treaty\u201d (NATO\u2019s founding document)<\/li>\n<li>expanding its stock of nuclear weapons and more sophisticated delivery systems \u201cto establish a nuclear triad\u201d [such as the U.S. and Russia have]<\/li>\n<li>being \u201copaque\u201d in modernizing its military<\/li>\n<li>being equally opaque in relation to what is called its military-civil fusion strategy<\/li>\n<li>lack of transparency<\/li>\n<li>use of disinformation<\/li>\n<li>engaging in military cooperation with Russia<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The last point is worth examining. Although the communiqu<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/cps\/en\/natohq\/news_185000.htm\" >\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0specifies concern about that cooperation including \u201cexercises in the Euro-Atlantic area,\u201d in general no distinction is made between a military exercise in, say, the Pacific Ocean and the so-called Euro-Atlantic area. To lecture a nation in regard to who it can engage in military cooperation with is overt <em>diktat<\/em>; is an insult to its sovereignty. The U.S. and its NATO allies regularly conduct military exercises in nations bordering China, the Khaan Quest exercise in Mongolia and the Steppe Eagle exercise in Kazakhstan, and in nearby Cambodia (Angkor Sentinel), as well as naval exercises with several neighboring nations off China\u2019s coast. China has not threatened local nations for participating in those. The NATO summit communiqu\u00e9 mentioned, for example, strengthening military ties with its Partners Across the Globe members Japan, South Korea and Australia: while attacking China for engaging in military exercises with its neighbor Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Neither has it threatened other Asia-Pacific nations for joining NATO military partnership programs, several of which nations border China: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Tajikistan.<\/p>\n<p>China responded accordingly, and quickly, to the above writ of indictment. The spokesman of the nation\u2019s mission to the European Union (China doesn\u2019t have a mission to NATO as many of its Asia-Pacific neighbors do) denied that China presents \u201csystemic challenges\u201d to other nations, much less to all of Europe and North America.<\/p>\n<p>NATO was accused of slander and of misjudging the current international political climate; in fact of mixing Cold War thinking and bloc mentality with normal state-to-state relations. The statement also ascribed the motivation for the attack to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/03\/26\/us-led-nato-still-owes-blood-debt-to-chinese-people-foreign-ministry\/\" >China already has a blood debt to settle with NATO<\/a>, one it has never forgotten, for the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/05\/08\/serbia-commemorates-nato-bombing-of-chinese-embassy-in-1999\/\" >military bloc\u2019s killing of three journalists and the wounding of 27 other Chinese in Belgrade in 1999.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And it has come in for an unrelenting barrage of insult and vilification from NATO in the months leading up to the summit: see <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/03\/24\/nato-headquarters-foreign-ministers-of-1-billion-people-throw-down-gauntlet-to-china-russia\/\" >here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/03\/17\/nato-chief-u-s-and-european-union-must-unite-to-confront-russia-and-china-globally\/\" >here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/05\/15\/nato-pontiff-invokes-cites-scripture-for-holy-war-against-russia-and-china\/\" >here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/04\/23\/nato-chief-issues-appeal-to-india-to-join-global-anti-chinese-anti-russian-alliance\/\" >here<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/03\/27\/upcoming-nato-summit-and-the-great-game-for-the-asia-pacific\/\" >here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In response to the above charges against China, <em>The Global Times<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globaltimes.cn\/page\/202106\/1226141.shtml\" >said this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThis NATO summit can be seen as a key point in the US and Europe\u2019s attitude toward China in the security arena. Washington has raised the curtain for a political mobilization campaign to use the NATO bloc to carry out strategic competition with China.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The EU mission spokesperson\u2019s comment also included a reminder that China\u2019s defense budget for this year is $209 billion (1.35 trillion yuan), which is 1.3% of the Chinese gross domestic product, less even than the 2% demanded of NATO member states. \u201cIn contrast, the 30-member NATO alliance has a total military spending as high as $1.17 trillion, making up over half of the global sum and 5.6 times that of China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statement also mentioned that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.china.org.cn\/world\/2021-06\/15\/content_77569076.htm\" >the world who knows which country\u2019s \u201cmilitary bases stretch all over the world, and\u2026 aircraft carriers are wandering around to flex their military muscle<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It also recalled that the U.S. alone has almost 20 times the amount of nuclear as weapons as China does, and invited NATO to match China\u2019s commitment to the no-first-use of nuclear weapons and \u201cunconditionally not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or zones.\u201d One knows what the answer to that offer will be.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese official said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cI would like to ask whether NATO and its member states, which are striving for \u2018peace, security and stability,\u2019 can make the same commitment as China?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One knows what the answer to that question would be.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.globaltimes.cn\/page\/202106\/1226163.shtml\" >The response to NATO also contained words particularly worth heeding:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cChina has been committed to peaceful development, but will never forget the tragedy of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, nor the sacrifices of our compatriots\u2019 homes and lives. We will unswervingly defend our sovereignty and development interests, and keep a close eye on NATO\u2019s strategic adjustments and policies toward China.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not content to have dragooned almost the entire European continent into its ranks, to have waged wars of aggression against countries in three continents (none of them remotely near the \u201cEuro-Atlantic\u201d area) and recruited forty partners to add to its thirty members, NATO is now challenging and confronting China.<\/p>\n<p>An opinion piece in <em>China Daily<\/em> (<em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chinadaily.com.cn\/a\/202106\/15\/WS60c84868a31024ad0bac6d83.html\" >No enemy? NATO will create one<\/a><\/em>) had this to say about NATO\u2019s throwing down the gauntlet to China, of moving from one adversary to another, from the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia to Libya to China:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cBy imposing their role of imaginary enemy upon China, NATO is hurting the interests of the whole world, its own members included. And the only side that benefits is NATO itself, because it finds an excuse to continue existing and spending the $2.5 billion collected from Western taxpayers\u2019 pockets.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The loss in treasure is great; the loss of blood may be far greater.<\/p>\n<p>_____________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Rick_Rozoff.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-185023\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Rick_Rozoff.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"90\" height=\"120\" \/><\/a><\/em><em>Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Coming to consciousness of the essential struggle of peace against war in the United States in the 1960s, I confess to having been afflicted with the prejudice that anti-war sentiment had been rare if at all existent in other ages and even in other nations. The Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico speaks in his <\/em>The New Science<em> of the conceit of nations and the conceit of scholars; he may have added the conceit of the times.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/antibellum679354512.wordpress.com\/2021\/06\/15\/china-reacts-to-nato-targeting-it\/\" >Go to Original &#8211; antibellum679354512.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>15 Jun 2021 &#8211; After months of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg mercilessly \u2013 tediously \u2013 denouncing Russia and China ahead of yesterday\u2019s summit, the communiqu\u00e9 issued after it finally raised China\u2019s ire. It was the first time the 30-nation military bloc so overtly directed harsh language of that nature at China in an official publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":187293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[244,803,120,91,2064],"class_list":["post-187292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism","tag-china","tag-competition","tag-conflict","tag-nato","tag-south-china-sea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}