Opinion | NATO, what are you doing in Asia?
By Philip Yeung, a university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Ever since I was in my diaper, NATO has always stood for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Now, suddenly, it has canceled geography and poked its nose into Asia Pacific, as if we didn't have enough headaches here. It has corralled four Asia-Pacific countries into its orbit, with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea as its new adjunct additions.
For years, NATO was an irrelevance. But it has found its second wind when Russia invaded Ukraine. And now it has found the excuse for an eastward enlargement.
Maybe, NATO should now rename itself The North Asia Treaty Organization.
Frankly, the Pacific is getting overcrowded. It is already crawling with a cluster of American-led alliances, AUKUS, Five Eyes and QUAD. How many coalitions does it take to contain China?
This is strategic overkill.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's justification is that today's challenges are too big for any nation to face alone. But China is facing an array of American allies, all alone. Now, you understand why China is reluctant to condemn Russia for its Ukraine invasion, because it cannot afford to have no ally against American encirclement. Ironically, Stoltenberg cited China's refusal to rebuke Russia for its invasion as evidence of the looming China threat.
His logic is circular and marked by hypocrisy and inconsistency. While Stoltenberg is on record as saying that NATO does not consider China an "adversary", he considers China a global problem that calls for a global solution.
At the NATO summit, Stoltenberg cited several reasons for his changed China policy. Apart from China's neutrality towards the invasion, he took aim at China's "coercive" policies towards its neighbors, including Australia, forgetting that under Scott Morrison, Australia became a US attack dog, nosing into its internal affairs in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang, and calling for an investigation into the origins of Covid to smear China. Australia has grown fat thanks to its trade with China. But Morrison decided to bite the hand that feeds his country.
What is China to do? Ignore the insults, hold its nose and trade with a hostile country which broke its nuclear non-proliferation obligations to acquire nuclear submarines targeting China as the imaginary enemy? If China's retaliations are "coercive", then Morrison asked for it. By contrast, New Zealand, its neighbor, has adopted a strategically balanced approach, side-stepping any unnecessary confrontation. The little Kiwi has something to teach the big kangaroo.
The bedrock principle of Chinese diplomacy is reciprocity. China treats its neighbors and trading partners with civility and generosity.
But as a self-respecting nation, China does not believe in "turning the other cheek". America and its allies are no different. So, why hold China to a double standard?
What NATO and its members fail to realize is that, alarmed at China's ascendancy, America is forcing every country to take sides in its fight for supremacy. You are all pawns in America's chess game.
The West, I fear, has totally misread China's intentions. Deng Xiaoping, who fathered the open-door policy, declared that China does not want to be number one, with all its conflicts. China is content being a major power without becoming a superpower. That policy hasn't changed. China is comfortable in a chasing number two position. It hankers after a peaceful rise.
China's ascendancy and even its "coercive policies" do not threaten any country's security. It is simply defending its own dignity as a nation.
Stoltenberg himself is a walking contradiction. While saying that NATO doesn't see China as an adversary, he sees the threat that an assertive China poses. In one breath, he stresses the need to engage with China. In the next, he asks for a global solution to a global problem. He has a strange way of engaging China by enlarging NATO to complete its encirclement. He dislikes China and Russia getting closer together, not realizing that China itself is an accidental victim of the Ukraine war, given its guilt-by-association effect. But whose fault is this? It is America's China containment policy that has pushed this peaceful power into the arms of the Russian bear.
The South China Sea is in Stoltenberg's subtext. To him, as to other Western leaders, China's militarization of the South China Sea islands is prima facie evidence of its aggressive intentions and territorial ambitions. But he didn't see China having been forced into a corner by America. Without the island military outposts and military muscle, China is at America's mercy, with its vital sea lanes for commerce facing choke-off. It is sheer survival, not territorial gains.
China's military thinking is entirely defensive. Its build-up is correlated with the intensity of American hostility.
One final point. At the root of the West's misunderstanding is China's ideological veneer. Stoltenberg and Western leaders see China as an "oppressive" communist regime, all itching to come to the rescue of Chinese people.
Well, don't ever speak for China's citizens. They are not oppressed and they don't need your sympathy or salvation. The Chinese are grateful to a government for lifting 800 million of them out of poverty. China is united as a nation.
The Hong Kong riots were organized by the politically misled, no different from Trumpian rioters in the Capitol insurrection. There's a domino effect at play—with Hong Kong's One Country Two Systems discredited, Taiwan's separatist leader rediscovered her political survival. As for Xinjiang, its re-education centers are two hundred times better than Guantanamo, with its indefinite brutal detentions.
This is the way America leads the world: "Do as I say, not as I do." This selfish superpower is tearing up the so-called "rule-based" global order.
The poacher is becoming the self-appointed gamekeeper. The real tragedy is that America's allies are too blind to see that they are aiding and abetting an aggressor who is hell-bent on keeping its number one status at their expense.
The trouble is, it's also making the world mad again.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | Nancy Pelosi, Asia doesn't welcome you
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