On Tuesday, China said it hopes to engage in dialogue with NATO after news of a new report from the alliance that identifies China as an emerging threat. Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said Beijing does not practice coercion and intimidation as the NATO report suggests.
The report titled “NATO 2030” identifies Russia as NATO’s top threat but calls for the alliance to increase its focus on China. “China has an increasingly global strategic agenda, supported by its economic and military heft,” the report reads.
The report says China “has proven its willingness to use force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region.”
One of the recommendations of the report is that NATO should build stronger relationships with countries in Asia, like Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. The report calls for internal NATO discussions about forming a partnership with India, saying the South Asian country “shares
fundamental interests and values with the alliance.”
The US, Australia, Japan, and India make up the informal alliance known as the Quad. The NATO report says the alliance could form stronger ties with the Quad to coordinate on China’s rise.
Some US officials have suggested that the Quad could be the foundation for a NATO-style military alliance in Asia to counter Beijing. The four Quad countries recently held military drills together for the first time in over a decade, a clear message to China.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg discussed the rise of China at a news conference on Monday. “China is investing massively in new weapons. It is coming closer to us, from the Arctic to Africa. China does not share our values … and tries to intimidate other countries,” he said.
NATO says, not the EU says.
That means the US said, and once again the EU just said, “Yes, sir.”
However, the “obedience” of the EU is in name only, and they undermine that at every step of implementation.
Yes, I think that’s a big problem for our war-gamers, -will any of our “allies” actually put blood on the line?
The world is sick of Washington’s high hand, and brutal stupidities. Its “leadership” has zero moral standing, only mercenary loyalties. And when it comes to it China will afford the greener prospect. We are cruise’n for a bruse’n.
Just who do we think we are, some sort of exceptional human creatures? Stoltenbergs remarks about “China does not share our values” remind me of Netanyahu, when the latter was referring to Arabs and others as “they are not like us, all they understand is brute force”. I can assure you that all of us that share this planet value life just as much or more then the assassins who claim to be leaders of the so called free world.
Far from the ***North Atlantic*** Treaty Organization being surrounded by Russia and China, the reverse is true. Russia is bordered by full NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Poland and NATO partners (many in advanced NATO partnerships) Azerbaijan, Belarus, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Ukraine. Of the fourteen nations bordering Russia only two, China and North Korea, are not NATO members or partners. China is bordered by NATO partners Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Tajikistan, with NATO having other Asian-Pacific partners like Australia, Iraq, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (as well as having had troops from Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Tonga serving under its International Security Assistance Force command in Afghanistan). The partners bordering China are members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, used to groom NATO’s fourteen new members inducted since 1999 – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan – or among the ***North Atlantic*** Treaty Organization’s Partners Across the Globe: Afghanistan, Mongolia and Pakistan (as are fellow Asian-Pacific nations Australia, Iraq, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea).
That is an impressive list of “countries.” Yet look closer.
Per the us.gov site CIA Factbook, Estonia is 1.2 million people, Latvia is 1.8 million people, and Lithuania is 2.7 million. The total of all three countries is 5.7 million.
That is just 2/3 the population of NYC (8.4 million).
It is less than just the 6 million Jewish ethnic group in Israel, and far less organized to defend itself.
All it really offers is bases from which the US could fight. And the US has no forces in those bases, nor any forces to put there given all the forces it has scattered over the world. The US rotates through small units for exercises.
Much the same utter uselessness as fighting allies is true of every other nation listed surrounding Russia. They offer bases the US can’t actually use, and vulnerability the US can’t actually defend.
They are US over reach, inviting trouble the US can’t handle.