Chinese Media Reveals Next Region NATO Plans to Destabilise

Decades of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and the US-backed 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev has culminated in the largest European security crisis since World War II. Now, a Chinese outlet fears that the crisis could be replicated closer to the People’s Republic’s own borders.

NATO’s decision to invite the foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand to its upcoming Madrid summit in June is evidence that the Western bloc is “expanding its tentacles” to the Pacific, and that the alliance’s US masters want to spread the contagion of the security crisis in Eastern Europe to Asia, China’s CGTN TV fears.

“Since the first bullet was fired at the Russia-Ukraine border, Washington-led NATO has been actively deepening ties with Asia-Pacific states”, an unsigned op-ed on the site’s English-language website noted.

Pointing to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement on regional nations’ participation in the NATO summit, and to UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’ comments last week about the bloc needing to have a “global outlook” to “preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific”, CGTN warned that it was obvious which country the US and its allies had in mind when talking about “threats”.

“The Western bloc has, on several occasions, labelled China as a ‘systemic challenge’ to regions ‘relevant to alliance security’ – a prelude to further actions for its ‘global outlook’”, the op-ed stressed.

Pointing to NATO’s destabilising role in world affairs, and to its “desperate” search for “new missions” after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, CGTN noted that instead of disintegrating in the 1990s, the Western bloc expanded eastward, enlarging five times since 1999 and nearly doubling its membership from 16 to 30, and sparking the current crisis with Russia.

“Now, the bloc is diverting attention from the Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific, repeatedly flexing muscles in the region over recent years. By inviting Japan to the summit, NATO, after dragging parts of Europe into a war zone, has taken a step further to mess up East Asia, where no bombs have been dropped since the end of the Cold War”, the TV channel warned.

Characterising NATO as a “tool” used by the US to try to uphold its global hegemony, and to Washington’s fears of being deprived of its position as the world’s sole superpower, CGTN stressed that the US would be “eager” to create a “united front to contain” the People’s Republic, with good-old NATO serving as “an ideal mechanism for this aim”.

Ultimately, the outlet suggested that given the historic record of the US' refusal to sacrifice its own national interests in favour of allies, Pacific nations now have “a choice between regional peace and NATO’s disastrous militaristic culture”.

‘Pretty Good Model’

CGTN’s comments come on the heels of remarks by US Indo-Pacific Command chief John C. Aquilino, who said last week that NATO was a “pretty good model” for the region “for those nations that value freedom.”

“All nations get a choice. A sovereign choice on what they like to do with other nations. And if nations want to come together and provide security and prosperity, then I don’t think it is necessarily bad”, Aquilino said, speaking at a security forum in India.

The commander suggested that “like-minded nations” in the region have already been “working together” for years. “So, we will see an increase in multilateral events from the partner nations, both in the region and out of the region”, he said.

The commander pointed to the upcoming Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) as an example. The drills, aimed at “strengthening peace and security” in the region, will be held later this year and involve over 40 ships, 170+ aircraft, and nearly 25,000 personnel from countries including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. The first RIMPAC drills were held in 1971, while the US was still busy "strengthening peace and security" by bombing the Southeast Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Beijing has long accused Washington of trying to create an “Asian NATO”, and Chinese officials have repeatedly criticised the North Atlantic Alliance over its growing Asian pivot alongside the United States.

In early February, Russia and China issued a communique expressing their joint opposition to NATO’s expansion, and to the Western bloc’s "Cold War approach" to international affairs.

The two countries expressed opposition to “the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region”, and said they “remain highly vigilant regarding the negative impact to peace and stability in this region of the US Indo-Pacific strategy”.

Last month, President Xi Jinping of China proposed a "Global Security Initiative" aimed at pushing back against the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, and to unilateralism and hegemony-seeking actions in geopolitics generally.