NATO NO NO NO
Washington Summit Declaration, NATO’s increasing role in Ukraine, Cold War mentality & belligerent rhetoric, NATO’s role in Ukraine conflict dangerous, irresponsible, Time for Multipolar Peace
Cold War mentality
Cold War mentality refers to the security perception conceived and prevalent during the Cold War era. It in essence stemmed from the confrontation of the two bloc and the competition of the two superpowers to seek world hegemony. Rooted in such a rivalry, this perception regarded the growth of strength of an adversary as a threat to one’s own security and even more so if an adversary followed a different social value. It suggested that national security should be attained through military superiority and considered security a zero-sum game. Two approaches were thus adopted: one was to increase military capability by expanding military build-up or strengthening military alliance, the other was to pursue a policy of containment of an adversary or competitor. Such a security perception led to four decades of Cold War characterised by confrontation and rivalry between the USSR and the United States. This afore-mentioned security perception is therefore called ColdWar mentality.
(Capie, D. and Evans, P. 2002. Cold War Mentality. The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, pp. 45-47. https://doi.org/10.1355/9789812307071-009)
Washington Summit Declaration
Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. 10 July 2024
We, the Heads of State and Government of the North Atlantic Alliance, have gathered in Washington to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our Alliance. Forged to preserve peace, NATO remains the strongest Alliance in history. We stand in unity and solidarity in the face of a brutal war of aggression on the European continent and at a critical time for our security. We reaffirm the enduring transatlantic bond between our nations. NATO remains the unique, essential, and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate, and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security. NATO is a defensive Alliance. Our commitment to defend one another and every inch of Allied territory at all times, as enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, is iron-clad. We will continue to ensure our collective defence against all threats and from all directions, based on a 360-degree approach, to fulfil NATO’s three core tasks of deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security. We are bound together by shared values: individual liberty, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. We adhere to international law and to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and are committed to upholding the rules-based international order.
We warmly welcome our thirty second and newest Ally, Sweden. The historic accession of Finland and Sweden makes them safer and our Alliance stronger, including in the High North and the Baltic Sea. Every nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements. We reaffirm our commitment to NATO’s Open Door Policy, in line with Article 10 of the Washington Treaty.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shattered peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area and gravely undermined global security. Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security. Terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, is the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of our citizens and to international peace and prosperity. The threats we face are global and interconnected.
Strategic competition, pervasive instability, and recurrent shocks define our broader security environment. Conflict, fragility and instability in Africa and the Middle East directly affect our security and the security of our partners. Where present, these trends, among others, contribute to forced displacement, fuelling human trafficking and irregular migration. Iran’s destabilising actions are affecting Euro-Atlantic security. The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values. The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern. We are confronted by hybrid, cyber, space, and other threats and malicious activities from state and non-state actors.
At this 75th anniversary Summit, we are taking further steps to strengthen our deterrence and defence, bolster our long-term support to Ukraine so it can prevail in its fight for freedom, and deepen NATO’s partnerships. We warmly welcome President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union.
We welcome that more than two-thirds of Allies have fulfilled their commitment of at least 2% of GDP annual defence spending and commend those Allies who have exceeded it. Allies are stepping up: defence expenditure by European Allies and Canada has grown by 18% in 2024, the biggest increase in decades. They are also investing more in modern capabilities, and increasing their contributions to NATO operations, missions, and activities. We reaffirm our enduring commitment to fully implement the Defence Investment Pledge as agreed in Vilnius, and recognise that more is needed urgently to sustainably meet our commitments as NATO Allies. We reaffirm that, in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing shortfalls and meet the requirements across all domains arising from a more contested security order.
Full text PDF below.
Cold War mentality & belligerent rhetoric
Spokesperson of the Chinese Mission to the EU Speaks on a Question Concerning the China-related Content in the NATO Washington Summit Declaration
Q: On 10 July, the NATO Washington Summit Declaration claims that China’s ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge NATO’s interests, security and values. It hypes up China-Russia relations undercutting and reshaping the rules-based international order, and asserts that China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine and poses systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security. The Declaration also argues that developments in the Indo-Pacific directly affect Euro-Atlantic security and makes accusations against China on cyber, space, nuclear and other issues. What is China’s comment?
A: The NATO Washington Summit Declaration is filled with Cold War mentality and belligerent rhetoric. The China-related paragraphs are provocative with obvious lies and smears. We firmly reject and deplore these accusations and have lodged serious representations with NATO.
It is known to all that China is not the creator to the Ukraine crisis. China’s position on Ukraine is open and aboveboard. We aim to promote peace talks and seek political settlement. This position is endorsed and commended by the broader global community. China is a country that keeps its words. We never provide lethal weapons to either party of the conflict, and exercise strict export control on dual-use goods including civilian drones. The normal trade flows between China and Russia does not target any third party, nor should it be subject to disruption or coercion. The Ukraine crisis has prolonged for so long. But who is adding fuel to the fire? Who is fanning the flames? And who is seeking selfish gains? The answer is clear to everyone. We urge NATO to listen carefully to the international community and heed just voices. Instead of scapegoating others, NATO should reflect on itself, take real actions to defuse the situation and solve the problem.
The Asia-Pacific region is a place for peaceful development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition. NATO keeps playing up the interlink between Europe’s security and the security in Asia-Pacific. What is the motive behind the scene? We urge NATO to stay within its role as a regional defensive organization in the North-Atlantic. NATO should not become the disrupter of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific or a tool used by certain power to maintain hegemony.
China is a force for world peace, a contributor to global development and a defender of international order. We ask NATO to correct its misperceptions on China, and abandon Cold War mentality and zero-sum approach. NATO should stop hyping up the so-called China threat and provoking confrontation and rivalry, and do more to contribute to world peace and stability.
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NATO’s increasing role in Ukraine conflict dangerous, irresponsible — Orban
The alliance "seems to be moving away from its original purpose, behaving more and more like a war organization," the Hungarian Prime Minister said
BUDAPEST, July 10. /TASS/. NATO’s role in the Ukraine conflict is increasing, which is perilous and even irresponsible, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on the sidelines of the North Atlantic Alliance’s summit in Washington.
"NATO was established 75 years ago with the goal of protecting the security of its members. Today, however, it seems to be moving away from its original purpose, behaving more and more like a war organization. One of the signs of this is that NATO is taking an increasingly active role in the Russian-Ukrainian war. In our opinion, this is dangerous and even irresponsible because no one can see how this will end or where we will end up," the prime minister said in a video posted on his X profile.
Orban said he "will argue that NATO should return to its original spirit." He added that the alliance "should not win the wars going on around it, but the peace." Orban reiterated that Hungary would not participate in the NATO-Ukraine mission, but would fully comply with its obligations to the allies.
Read more here.
Time for Multipolar Peace
By Warwick Powell (Peals and Irritations)
NATO has been shaping up to go global for quite some time. It has singularly failed as a so-called ‘defensive alliance’, having been involved in assorted bouts of warfare and bloodshed in Europe over the past three decades. Having come into existence ostensibly as a defensive bulwark against the threat of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 should have spelled the end of NATO. It didn’t.
Rather, NATO has – not unlike bureaucracies of times past – confected purposes for its perpetuation. Those purposes, much as was the case with its genesis, related to the presence of an external ‘enemy’ or ‘threat’. Without the Soviet Union, there would have been no NATO. Now, without the Soviet Union, there had to be someone else.
The ongoing eastward expansion of NATO – forsworn by the Americans in their negotiations with Gorbachev at the time – was pursued relentlessly in three rounds. Warnings about the risks to European peace and security were ignored; NATO and its American underwriter would insist that it was a ‘defensive’ alliance and no-one had anything to worry about.
Now, as NATO stares defeat in the face in Ukraine, it has set its sights on a global expansion. It has already had so-called ‘partners’ in Asia for some time. Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Australia all attended the NATO summit for the first time in 2022 where statements about the geopolitical challenges China poses were made. China was emerging as NATO’s new global bête noire. Russia was the immediate enfant terrible, but China was the real threat.
NATO tried to set up an office in Japan but was rebuffed by the French Government in 2023. Undeterred, however, NATO has chipped away and has in recent times worked to drag China into the Ukraine conflict, accusing China of supporting Russia through the provision of dual-use equipment. Jens Stoltenberg accused China of “inciting the largest military conflict in Europe since World War 2”. The US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith had claimed that ‘China has taken a side”. The Wall Street Journal (from the News Limited stable) on 7 July 2024 headlined an article with this: “China’s Support for Russia’s War in Ukraine Puts Beijing on NATO’s Threat List’.
All these accusations came in a flurry of a little over a week, in the lead-up to NATO’s Washington confab (9 July). Clearly orchestrated, with the view of rationalising NATO’s impending globalisation.
Where ‘A’ once stood for Atlantic, it would now include Asia.
While NATO’s expansion to Asia may be welcomed by the ‘insecurity apparatuses of state’ in Japan, ROK, Australia and New Zealand, it actually poses a substantial risk to the future of peace and security in the region. What NATO has done in Europe, it can do the same in Asia.
The reasons are straightforward and endemic to the rationale of NATO’s existence and modus operandi. In short, it is premised on the limited and often flawed ideas of ‘military deterrence’ as the principal means towards security, stability and peace.
‘Military deterrence’ is an approach that can deliver, at best, a negative peace. That is, so long as other assumptions hold (on which more shortly), military conflict can be avoided (deterred / prevented / deferred). But, deterrence doesn’t contribute meaningfully to the forging of the conditions and institutions necessary for a sustained positive peace.
You can’t achieve peace through security, but you can achieve security through peace, once remarked Johan Galtung, an early proponent of peace studies as an antidote to a militarised framework of ‘security’. Achieving a peace requires strategy, and an approach that is inclusive rather than exclusive.
By definition, NATO’s modus operandi is exclusionary; its existence is defined against a ‘hostile other’. To maintain a negative peace, a deterrence strategy can only work while one party is obviously more powerful than the others, and that the others are cowered into subordination. That’s what is sometimes described as achieving a balance of power where the ‘balance’ is, oxymoronically, in the favour of one amongst many. Asymmetry is not a condition for sustained stability, let alone peace.
Deterrence in fact is a strategy that has a high risk of failure. The best that anyone can get out of deterrence is that it buys you time. But, it cannot forswear others building themselves up (catalysing a security dilemma / arms race); indeed, arguably, efforts to impose an asymmetric power relationship is a surefire recipe for generating resentment. At some point, the risk is that such resentments boil over. The failure of deterrence doctrine in Gaza is a recent case in point, as Lawrence Freedman pointed out. Despite Israel’s obvious preponderance in hard power terms, Hamas nonetheless launched an attack on Israel forces in October last year.
Deterrence can become self-defeating, as it avoids the underlying issues that germinate conflict and focus, instead, of manipulating a narrowly defined military risk environment. So long as I am stronger than the others, the sources of conflict can be ignored. The risk is not only of attacks such as those mounted by Hamas, for a general increase in the probability of terrorist attacks. Little wonder that American political scientists Graham Allison and Michael Morrell have recently warned of the intensification of terrorism risks against the US and its resources.
Out-escalating an opponent may work for a while, but it is no panacea. In the end, the risk is that others join forces and can match up.
Yet, this is precisely the NATO doctrine. No wonder it has failed miserably to bring stability and peace to Europe during the years of American (western) unipolar superiority. On the face of it, despite being in its most secure position in living memory, the fact that the US initiated more military interventions between 1990 and 2019 than in any previous era is a paradox. But, understood through the lens of ‘deterrence doctrine’ it isn’t incomprehensible at all.
And so, NATO is angling to come to Asia. The black thumb of death and destruction has been the US-led collective west’s calling card. It’s about to leave it on our region’s doorstep.
There are better ways. They are the ways of indivisible security, in which prosperity and peace are symbiotic. They are the ways of focusing on building a peace, rather than engaging in an arms war in the name of deterring war. They are the ways of a multipolar peace, in which security is found through peace and peace is built with collective prosperity.
A growing group of social media platforms have recently joined forces to amplify the voices of multipolar peace. We welcome the participation of others: