Redefined NATO strategy threat to world peace: China Daily editorial

While the Cold War may have provided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with cause to claim to be a defender of peace in Europe, there are no grounds for the redefining of its strategy to embrace the Asia-Pacific region.

The only motivation for the new Security Concept that the NATO leaders adopted at their summit in Spain last Wednesday is to render the organization into a tool to serve the interests of the United States in maintaining its status as the global hegemon.

The organization has compounded the misjudgment of its eastward expansion by listing China as the strategic priority in its new mission statement, showing that not only is the organization "brain dead" but it has sold its soul to the world's sole superpower because the other members want the US' umbrella of protection.

What is particularly noteworthy is the fact that, by redefining its strategy, NATO is in nature no longer a defensive military alliance; it has become an offensive geopolitical tool of the US.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine would not have taken place had NATO not relentlessly expanded eastward, for which there existed neither political nor military grounds after the end of the Cold War. Political and diplomatic efforts on the part of NATO and the US to mediate between Russia and Ukraine prior to the start of hostilities would have also greatly reduced the chances of a military clash between the two countries, but neither did anything of the sort.

What the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has done in restructuring the geopolitical map is what Washington sought to engineer to maintain its hegemonic status. Likewise, the revamping of NATO's Strategic Concept, which signals the organization's role now is to be the major accomplice of the US in its endeavors to re-commandeer the global system.

The upshot is, global development and peace are under even more serious threat as the US has NATO standing by its side no matter what it chooses to do to contain the rise of China or any other countries that the US considers a challenge to its interests and hegemony.

To maintain its hegemony, the US needs an enemy. That explains why Washington always talks about a threat from China despite the fact that Beijing has reiterated on many occasions the country's strategy of peaceful development.

China's cooperation with European Union countries, which is in the interest of both sides, and its Belt and Road Initiative that has brought about development opportunities for many developing countries, as well as its economic partnerships with an increasing number of countries, all point to the fact that China opts for multilateralism and cooperation as the best approach for its development.

NATO and the EU should be clear-eyed about the fact that China poses no threat to any country and there is profound mutual interest between China and the EU either in terms of the economic development of both sides or in terms of global governance for a better world.

NATO's jumping on the US' geopolitical bandwagon will bring nothing but trouble to the world in a wide range of areas.