NATO major source of global instability: China Daily editorial

For Finland, formally joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the world's largest military alliance, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, would seem to provide the sense of security it desires given the situation in Europe after Russia launched its "special military operation" against Ukraine more than a year ago.

Finland, a relatively small Nordic country of 5.5 million people, clearly feels it needs shoulders to lean on as the situation in Europe has become increasingly volatile and uncertain. "From now on, we can rely on getting outside help should things get tough," Finnish Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen said in Brussels on Tuesday as the country became the 31st member of NATO.

Yet whether its accession to NATO actually makes Finland more secure is questionable. Although it fought a war against Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II, Finland has enjoyed peace along the 1,340-kilometer border with its giant neighbor over the past eight decades, thanks mainly to its military non-alignment policy and maintaining friendly relations with Moscow, even throughout the Cold War.

Given Russia's firm opposition to NATO's eastward enlargement and the fact that it has no territorial disputes with Finland, the latest move by NATO to give it membership could be seen as a provocation and another squeeze on Russia, especially because it will double the length of the US-led alliance's land border with Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry immediately warned that "it will be forced to take military-technical and other retaliatory measures" to a move that marks "a fundamental change in the situation in Northern Europe, which had previously been one of the most stable regions in the world". This obviously does not augur well for the security of Finland as well as Europe at large.

As a product of the Cold War, NATO should have been consigned to history books with the end of the Cold War and the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact. Yet it has nearly doubled the number of its members over the past more than 30 years to serve the hegemonic objectives of the United States. The argument that it is solely a defensive alliance and it is not a threat to any country was already disproved by its military interventions in Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011.

Now that Europe wants China to help hasten the end of the Ukraine crisis — European Union executive head Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron are reportedly going to discuss the issue with the Chinese leadership during their visit to Beijing this week — it should at least start rethinking the NATO policy of seeking absolute security at the expense of the security of others, which has become the main source of global instability.