The European Union is following the US and looking to increase influence in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China. The 27-member bloc released a strategy paper on Monday that calls for the EU to focus more on the region.
EU foreign ministers released a statement on the strategy. Borrowing language from the US, the ministers said the EU should “reinforce its strategic focus, presence and actions in the Indo-Pacific … based on the promotion of democracy, rule of law, human rights and international law.”
In a 10-page document that outlines the strategy, the EU claims that the “universality of human rights” is “being challenged” in the Indo-Pacific region. The document says the EU will bolster cooperation with “like-minded” countries in the Indo-Pacific.
The document also calls for an EU military presence in the region. “Member states acknowledge the importance of a meaningful European naval presence in the region.”
The EU plans to expand Operation Atalanta, a naval operation that was established to counter piracy off the coast of Somalia. “The EU will organize more joint exercises and port calls between Indo-Pacific naval units and the EU counter-piracy Naval Force Operation Atalanta,” a fact sheet on the strategy says.
The EU is not only following the US in its shift to Asia but also NATO. The North Atlantic military alliance released a paper last year that outlined a strategy for NATO to focus more on countering China by working with “like-minded” countries in the region, like Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
According to Reuters, EU diplomats insisted that the new strategy was not meant to be “anti-China,” and the document did call for the bloc to sign an investment deal with Beijing. But the EU has been clear with recent actions that it is keen to join the US in at least some anti-China actions.
Last month, the EU, US, Canada, and the UK coordinated sanctions against Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The Western blitz sent a clear message and resulted in retaliatory sanctions from Beijing.
Maybe China and Russia should increase their military influence in the “Euro-Atlantic” theater to counter the EU.
They have, and they are more.
Escalation is not the route to peace, not even for those being abused by warmongers. And yes, the US is still led by warmongers.
It is when appeasement by Russia and China haven’t worked.
It is when appeasement by Russia and China haven’t worked.
” “universality of human rights”
Today they are being abused everyday in the US and Occupied Palestine without a hum from the EU. We see what we want to see, and if there is none, we simply make it up,
The headline phrase including India is telling.
India is not really threatened. Skirmishes in the world’s highest mountains are not really vital national interests and don’t really threaten. They are symbolic.
India is being courted, by those who seek to use it against their enemies.
India knew better than to join in such things when it instead led the Non-Aligned Movement to keep the Indian region out of the Cold War.
It can and should do the same again.
The whole West is racist and practicing a double standard policy.
Australia treats their aborigines worst then China treat their minorities. These are gross violation of human rights. Yet the whole Western world: the US, Canada, Europeans are turning a blind eye to such violation of human rights.
I lived in Australia and these are what I saw:
1. Group of aborigine kids, all less than 10 years of age walked into this white neighborhood in Perth, Western Australia. I was walking away from the deli owned by my friend’s family. The kids were walking towards it as one of the toddlers crying for a drink. I saw a police car passed the main road, back their car and drove to the kids. Two officers came out, grabbed the 2 year old kid from the sister by the hair and rammed the toddler’s on the car rim till blood flowed out of the toddler’s head. They then used baton and beat the hell out of the other 4 kids, roughly threw them at the back of the car. This was for walking into a white neighborhood!
2. I was sitting in this part of the city one Sunday, infront was this fat aborigine male around 6ft sitting and smoking. The dude did nothing but stared at the floor in a depressed look. Three officers patroling, saw the man and radio their colleagues. For no reason, they beat the poor fellow up, later joined in by their colleagues.
3. Not something I witness but from the news decades ago. Aborigine family found walking in the outback outside their reserve. Some Australian authorities forced them into the trucks and drove then hundreds of miles into the desert and left them there. The whole family perished in the desert, the authorities involved claimed their action is base on aborigines since beginning of time can survive in desert so they left them there.
The whole Western world: the US, Canada, Europeans NEVER cares about aborigine lives and turn a blind eye.
Then comes the war on terror. Thousand of Muslims were been kidnapped by the US and it allies. They are been abused. Do we see the West do anything like prosecuting the abusers, sanction countries that involved in the kidnapings and imprisonment. None has been done. Those are human right violations.
The invasion, regime change, bombing of innocent Muslims in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Africa. We still see no prosecution, sanction, etc. No mention of human rights here again.
The exposure of western troops commiting war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Do we see the West do anything like prosecuting the abusers, sanction
countries that involved in the kidnapings and imprisonment. None has
been done. Where are the care for human rights here.
Where are all those rule of law, human rights and international laws that they are promoting. Not on applied themselves despite violating them countless times but applied on non-White nations like Asia, Africa and Latin Americas.