Stoltenberg guarantees that NATO will act as a malevolent tool of Washington: China Daily editorial

Imitation, so it is said, is the sincerest form of flattery. That is perhaps why NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg feels no qualms about directly parroting the US rhetoric on China.

His latest ingratiating mimicry is his signed article, A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World, that Foreign Affairs published on Monday. This is a crystallization of the stance he and US President Joe Biden will adopt at the transatlantic alliance's 74th summit that is being held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It is a stance that has taken the world back to the days that he and Biden seem to view as a lost golden age. In clinging to the past, these Cold War brain-fogged warriors are willing to drain the last drop of blood in Ukraine to weaken Russia, and to expand NATO to the "Indo-Pacific" to "engage with" China.

While claiming that "NATO does not see China as an adversary", Stoltenberg makes no bones about the fact that the bloc wears the same uniform pants as the US, alleging in the article: "The Chinese government's increasingly coercive behavior abroad and repressive policies at home challenge NATO's security, values, and interests. Beijing is threatening its neighbors and bullying other countries."

"It is not our adversary, but it must be treated as one" is the Catch-22 logic the Biden administration has drafted for its China policy. Stoltenberg has been increasingly brazen in singing from the Biden administration's hymn sheet since NATO adopted a guideline policy that identified China as a strategic challenge to the alliance at its summit in Madrid in June last year. The article shows that Stoltenberg and Biden are aiming to forestall any wavering from the other members which may be having doubts about falling in behind them.

Neither France nor Germany, for instance, defines China, a major economic and trade partner of both of them and a collaborator in addressing global challenges, as a "strategic challenge". But within NATO, they have come under huge pressure to toe the US' line.

That Stoltenberg has invited the leaders of Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Australia to attend the Vilnius summit is not with the aim of upholding peace and security in the Asia-Pacific, but because the Biden administration views them as useful reinforcements to bolster its plan to push NATO into the region.

The haste with which Stoltenberg openly endorsed NATO opening a "liaison office" in Japan in January — when his tenure was thought to be drawing to an end — even before an agreement was reached among all members, was a telling sign that he was intent on at least laying the groundwork for this before leaving office.

Now that he has been granted a fourth extension, the Vilnius summit bodes ill for the world, as he looks set to show his gratitude to Washington by keeping the fires of the Ukraine crisis burning and accelerating the bloc's expansion into Asia.