{"id":216430,"date":"2022-07-11T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=216430"},"modified":"2022-07-10T07:44:20","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T06:44:20","slug":"by-making-china-the-enemy-nato-is-threatening-world-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/07\/by-making-china-the-enemy-nato-is-threatening-world-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"By Making China the Enemy, NATO Is Threatening World Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

8 Jul 2022 – NATO\u2019s new posture towards Beijing brings into question its whole claim to be a \u2018defensive\u2019 alliance.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The West has the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato<\/a>), a self-declared \u201cdefensive\u201d military alliance<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 so any country that refuses its dictates must, by definition, be an offensive military threat.<\/p>\n

That is part of the reason why Nato issued a new \u201cstrategic concept\u201d document<\/a>\u00a0last week at its summit in Madrid, declaring for the first time that China poses a \u201csystemic challenge\u201d to the alliance, alongside a primary \u201cthreat\u201d from Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beijing views this new designation as a decisive step by Nato on the path to pronouncing it a \u201cthreat\u201d too \u2013 echoing the alliance\u2019s escalatory approach towards Moscow over the past decade. In its previous mission statement, issued in 2010, Nato advocated<\/a> \u201ca true strategic partnership\u201d with Russia.<\/p>\n

According to a report in the New York Times, China would have found itself openly classed as a \u201cthreat\u201d last week had it not been for Germany and France<\/a>. They insisted that the more hostile terminology be watered down so as to avoid harming<\/a> their trade and technology links with China.<\/p>\n

In response, Beijing accused<\/a> Nato of \u201cmaliciously attacking and smearing\u201d it, and warned<\/a> that the alliance was \u201cprovoking confrontation\u201d. Not unreasonably, Beijing believes Nato has strayed well out of its sphere of supposed \u201cdefensive\u201d interest: the North Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Nato was founded in the wake of the Second World War expressly as a bulwark against Soviet expansion into Western Europe. The ensuing Cold War was primarily a territorial and ideological battle for the future of Europe, with the ever-present mutual threat of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n

So how, Beijing might justifiably wonder, does China \u2013 on the other side of the globe \u2013 fit into Nato\u2019s historic \u201cdefensive\u201d mission? How are Chinese troops or missiles now threatening Europe or the US<\/a> in ways they weren\u2019t before? How are Americans or Europeans suddenly under threat of military conquest from China?<\/p>\n

Creating enemies<\/h3>\n

The current Nato logic reads something like this:\u00a0Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a> in February is proof that the Kremlin has ambitions to recreate its former Soviet empire in Europe. China is growing its military power and has similar imperial designs towards the rival, breakaway state of Taiwan, as well as western Pacific islands. And because Beijing and Moscow are strengthening their strategic ties in the face of western opposition, Nato has to presume that their shared goal is to bring western civilisation crashing down.<\/p>\n

Or as last week\u2019s Nato mission statement proclaimed<\/a>: \u201cThe deepening strategic partnership between the People\u2019s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if anyone is subverting the \u201crules-based international order\u201d, a standard the West regularly invokes but never defines, it looks to be Nato itself \u2013 or the US, as the hand that wields the Nato hammer.<\/p>\n

That is certainly the way it looks to Beijing. In its response, China argued<\/a>: \u201cThirty years after the end of the Cold War, [Nato] has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating \u2018enemies\u2019 \u2026 It is Nato that is creating problems around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

China has a point. A problem with bureaucracies \u2013 and Nato is the world\u2019s largest military bureaucracy \u2013 is that they quickly develop an overriding institutional commitment to ensuring their permanent existence, if not expansion. Bureaucracies naturally become powerful lobbies for their own self-preservation, even when they have outlived their usefulness.<\/p>\n

If there is no threat to \u201cdefend\u201d against, then a threat must be manufactured. That can mean one of two things: either inventing an imaginary threat, or provoking the very threat the bureaucracy was designed to avert or thwart.\u00a0Signs are that Nato \u2013 now embracing 30 countries \u2013 is doing both.<\/p>\n

Remember that Nato should have dissolved itself after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. But three decades later, it is bigger and more resource-hungry than ever.<\/p>\n

Against all advice, and in violation<\/a> of its promises, Nato has refused to maintain a neutral \u201csecurity buffer\u201d between itself and Russia. Instead, it has been expanding right up to Russia\u2019s borders, including creeping furtively into Ukraine, the gateway through which armies have historically invaded Russia.<\/p>\n

Offensive alliance<\/h3>\n

Undoubtedly, Russia has proved itself a genuine threat to the territorial integrity of its neighbour Ukraine by conquering<\/a> its eastern region \u2013 home to a large ethnic Russian community the Kremlin claims to be protecting. But even if we reject Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s repeated assertion that Moscow has no larger ambitions, the Russian army\u2019s substantial losses suggest it has scant hope of extending its military reach much further.<\/p>\n

Even if Moscow were hoping to turn its attention next to Poland or the Baltic states, or Nato\u2019s latest recruits of Sweden and Finland<\/a>, such a move would clearly risk nuclear confrontation. This is perhaps why western audiences hear so much from their politicians and media about Putin being some kind of deranged megalomaniac<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The claim of a rampant, revived Russian imperialism appears not to be founded in any obvious reality. But it is a very effective way for Nato bureaucrats to justify enlarging their budgets<\/a> and power<\/a>, while the arms industries that feed off Nato and are embedded in western capitals substantially increase their profits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The impression that this might have been Nato\u2019s blueprint for handling Moscow is only underscored by the way it is now treating China, with even less justification. China has not recently invaded any sovereign territories, unlike the US and its allies, while the only territory it might threaten \u2013 Taiwan \u2013 is some 12,000 kilometres from the US mainland, and a similarly long distance from most of Europe.<\/p>\n

The argument that the Russian army may defeat Ukraine and then turn its attention towards Poland and Finland at least accords with some kind of geographical possibility, however remote. But the idea that China may invade Taiwan and then direct its military might towards California and Italy is in the realms of preposterous delusion.<\/p>\n

Nato\u2019s new posture towards Beijing brings into question its whole characterisation as a \u201cdefensive\u201d alliance. It looks very much to be on the offensive.<\/p>\n

Russian red lines<\/h3>\n

Notably, Nato invited to the summit<\/a> for the first time four states from the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.<\/p>\n

The creation of a Nato-allied \u201cAsia-Pacific Four\u201d is doubtless intended to suggest to Beijing parallels with Nato\u2019s gradual recruitment of eastern European states starting in the late 1990s, culminating<\/a> in its more recent flirting with Ukraine and Georgia, longstanding red lines for Russia.<\/p>\n

\n

There are already clear signs of that. In May, US President Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0vowed that the US \u2013 and by implication Nato \u2013 would come to Taiwan\u2019s aid militarily<\/a> if it were attacked. Beijing regards Taiwan, some 200 kilometres off its coast, as Chinese territory.<\/p>\n

Similarly, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called last week for Nato countries to ship advanced weapons to Taiwan, in the same way Nato has been arming Ukraine, to ensure<\/a> the island has \u201cthe defence capability it needs\u201d.<\/p>\n

This echoes Nato\u2019s narrative about its goals in Ukraine: that it is pumping weapons<\/a> into Ukraine to \u201cdefend\u201d the rest of Europe. Now, Nato is casting itself as the guardian of the Asia-Pacific region too.<\/p>\n

\u2018Economic coercion\u2019<\/h3>\n

But in truth, this is not just about competing military threats. There is an additional layer of western self-interest, concealed behind claims of a \u201cdefensive\u201d alliance.<\/p>\n

Days before the Nato summit, the G7, a group of the seven leading industrialised nations that form the core of Nato, announced their intention<\/a> to raise $600bn to invest in developing countries.<\/p>\n

This move wasn\u2019t driven by altruism. The West has been deeply worried by Beijing\u2019s growing influence on the world stage through its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative<\/a>, announced in 2013.<\/p>\n

China is being aggressive, but so far only in exercising soft power. In the coming decades, it plans to invest in the infrastructure of dozens of developing states. More than 140 countries have so far signed up<\/a> to the initiative.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s aim is to make itself the hub of a global network of new infrastructure projects \u2013 from highways and ports to advanced telecommunications \u2013 to strengthen its economic trade connections to Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Europe.<\/p>\n

If it succeeds, China will stamp its economic dominance on the globe \u2013 and that is what really worries the West, particularly the US and its Nato military bureaucracy. They are labelling this<\/a> \u201ceconomic coercion\u201d.<\/p>\n

This week, the heads of the FBI and MI5 \u2013 the US and UK\u2019s domestic intelligence services \u2013 held an unprecedented joint news conference<\/a> in London to warn that China was the \u201cbiggest long-term threat to our economic and national security\u201d. Underscoring western priorities, they added that any attack on Taiwan would \u201crepresent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Unilateral aggression<\/h3>\n

Back in the Cold War era, Washington was not just, or even primarily, worried about a Soviet military invasion. The nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction meant neither had an interest in direct confrontation.<\/p>\n

Instead, each treated developing nations as pawns in an economic war over resources to be plundered and markets to be controlled. Each side tried to expand its so-called \u201csphere of influence\u201d over other states and secure a larger slice of the planet\u2019s wealth, in order to fuel its domestic economy and expand its military industries.<\/p>\n

The West\u2019s rhetoric about the Cold War emphasised an ideological battle between western freedoms and Soviet authoritarianism. But whatever significance one attributes to that rhetorical fight, the more important battle for each side was proving to other states the superiority of the economic model that grew out of its ideology.<\/p>\n

In the early Cold War years, it should be recalled, communist parties were frontrunners to win elections in several European states \u2013 something that was starkly evident<\/a> to the drafters of the Nato treaty.<\/p>\n

The US invested so heavily in weapons \u2013 today, its military budget exceeds the combined spending<\/a> of the next nine countries \u2013 precisely to strong-arm poorer nations into its camp, and punish those that refused. That task was made easier after the fall of the Soviet Union. In a unipolar world, Washington got to define who would be treated as a friend, and on what terms, and who a foe.<\/p>\n

Nato chiefly served as an alibi for US aggression, adding a veneer of multilateral legitimacy to its largely unilateral militarism.<\/p>\n

Debt slavery<\/h3>\n

In reality, the \u201crules-based international order\u201d comprises a set of US-controlled economic institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that dictate oppressive terms to increasingly resentful poor countries \u2013 often the West\u2019s former colonies \u2013 in desperate need of investment. Most have ended up in permanent debt slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China is offering them an alternative, and in the process it threatens to gradually erode US economic dominance. Russia\u2019s apparent ability to survive the West\u2019s economic sanctions, while those sanctions rebound on western economies, underscores<\/a> the tenuousness of Washington\u2019s economic primacy.<\/p>\n

More generally, Washington is losing its grip on the global order. The rival BRICS group \u2013 of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa \u2013 is preparing to expand<\/a> by including Iran and Argentina in its power bloc. And both Russia and China, forced into deeper alliance by Nato hostility, have been seeking to overturn the international trading system by decoupling it from the US dollar, the central pillar<\/a> of Washington\u2019s hegemonic status.<\/p>\n

The recently released \u201cNato 2030\u201d document<\/a> stresses the importance of Nato remaining \u201cready, strong and united for a new era of increased global competition\u201d. Last week\u2019s strategic vision listed<\/a> China\u2019s sins as seeking \u201cto control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains\u201d. It added that China \u201cuses its economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence\u201d, as though this was not exactly what the US has been doing for decades.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s greatest fear is that, as its economic muscle atrophies, Europe\u2019s vital trading links with China and Russia will see its economic interests \u2013 and eventually its ideological loyalties \u2013 shift eastwards, rather than stay firmly in the western camp.<\/p>\n

The question is: how far is the US willing to go to stop that? So far, it looks only too ready to drag Nato into a military sequel to the Cold War \u2013 and risk pushing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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