By Zhong Sheng, People’s Daily
NATO’s response to the Ukraine crisis clearly exposes its nature as a tool of the U.S. to maintain American hegemony.
The Meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs held on April 6 and 7 continued to exacerbate the tensions between Ukraine and Russia, just like what the NATO summit did in late March, trying to build a strategic pattern in Europe where Russia is comprehensively oppressed.
Meanwhile, the NATO again distorted China’s responsible stance on the Ukraine crisis that promotes dialogue and peace talks, and groundlessly hyped the so-called China threat, following the U.S. to smear and contain China with the crisis.
NATO survives on conflicts as a Cold War relic. It has never enhanced and will never enhance world peace. The outbreak of the Ukraine crisis is exactly the latest example of the military alliance provoking conflicts upholding Cold War mentality.
The world has gradually become peaceful since the end of the Cold War. However, NATO, led by the U.S., has expanded eastward five times to pursue its absolute security. It’s para-security, para-political and para-military practices in the economic, finance and cultural spheres are a potential danger threatening the security of Europe, and have led to a sense of insecurity for all.
Robert Wade, a political economy and development scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, sees through the NATO’s intention to seek and create an imaginary enemy. He said that to justify U.S. leadership, to present a unitary front in NATO and to justify big increases in western military budgets, Russia must be presented as the common enemy.
Peace is the only target that China sees on the Ukraine crisis. To reach the target, China has actively encouraged Russia and Ukraine to overcome difficulties and disputes, believing that the general direction of peace talks should be upheld until a ceasefire is reached and peace is restored. Such stance is highly consistent with the mainstream voice in the international society.
It is the NATO that lit the fuse for the Ukraine crisis, and is still fueling protracted conflicts. The military alliance is in no position to accuse China for the latter’s responsible stance on peace.
Twenty-three years ago, the NATO, without approval from the UN Security Council, arbitrarily launched a 78-day bombing against the sovereign country of Yugoslavia, killing thousands of innocent civilians, including three Chinese journalists. The military alliance’s war crime will never be forgotten by the Chinese people or the people in the rest of the world. The NATO is never qualified to oppress China with the “sovereignty principle” and “international order” rhetoric.
Nothing is more precious than peace. What’s the most urgent for solving the crisis is to strive for a cease fire. However, the practices of the NATO are extremely likely to escalate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, contradicting the common aspiration for reconstructing peace of the international society, including European countries.
The U.S., as an external force, is just fanning the flames and waiting to profit from the two countries’ fight. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine would make the NATO great again, said David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The U.S. is coping with the Ukraine-Russia conflict by enhancing Europe’s strategic dependence on the U.S. by dealing a heavy blow to Russia and plaguing Europe with the conflict-related refugee crisis and energy crisis.
George Galloway, former Member of the UK Parliament warned Europeans that the U.S.”is ready to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, in the end, it’s prepared to fight to the last drop of European blood.”
According to Portuguese newspaper Publico, the NATO should have been dissolved when the Warsaw Treaty Organization was, because only in this way can the EU establish its own defense policies and military power that conform to its own interests, rather than to those of the U.S.
The Ukraine crisis stemmed from the regional security contradictions accumulated over the years in Europe, and to address this root cause, reasonable concerns of all relevant parties shall be accommodated.
Facing the increasing spillover of the Ukraine crisis, European countries urgently need to come to grips with the consequences of themselves being strategically utilized by the U.S. and make rational analysis. Following the U.S. to offer arms, upgrade sanctions and fan up bloc confrontation would only worsen the situations in Ukraine and create more risks against international peace and stability, which will place the European people in miseries.
Cold War mentality cannot by applied to build world and regional security frameworks in today’s world. Security should be universal, equal and inclusive. Be it in Europe or other places in the world, countries should embrace a new vision of security featuring common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. Only by doing this can the security dilemma in international relations be resolved.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)
