My Take | Ambitions of Nato in Asia are simply a delusion of grandeur
- The North Atlantic military alliance has no business in the continent and it should just stop going on about the so-called China threat
As Nato and its boss, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, keep banging on about “the China threat”, you really have to wonder what the real game plan is.
A joint communique by Nato’s 31 member states has rebuked China for “coercive policies”. Are those like the severe unilateral sanctions imposed on dozens of countries around the world by the United States and to a lesser extent, the European Union, usually in defiance of international law?
It blasts China for “deepening strategic partnership” with Russia. Is that like Finland and Sweden joining Nato, or inviting South Korea and Japan to deepen relations?
Speaking to the press, Stoltenberg himself singled out China for “increasingly challenging the rules-based international order, refusing to condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine, threatening Taiwan and carrying out substantial military build-up”.
Sometimes you just wish Western leaders could use more creative or at least different terms and phrases rather than repeating the same tiresome billboard slogans.
“Rules-based international order”? Like the one imposed and enforced by the same select few of the leading Nato member states? I got a kick recently out of reading the headline of a critical op-ed, “The West’s ‘international community’ consists of only 10 countries”. Well, just about, plus or minus a handful depending on the international situation in question.
