The United States is using the Ukraine crisis to expand NATO to plunge Europe deeper into chaos
The United States, at the head of the North Atlantic Alliance, is pursuing an aggressive anti-Russian policy in Europe, which does not contribute to de-escalation of the conflict. Global Times writes about this. America is trying to expand NATO under the guise of the Ukrainian crisis.
The NATO organization was created in 1949, that is, just four years after the end of World War II, to provide the United States-led alliance with the military infrastructure for the Cold War. The existence of NATO made it possible to deploy American military equipment and troops in Europe, ready for rapid deployment against the Soviet Union and the newly formed People's Republics in Eastern and Central Europe.
Formally, the purpose of NATO's existence was to protect the members of the alliance from the aggression and expansion of the Soviet Union. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Warsaw Pact Organization collapsed, no serious discussions on the dissolution of NATO ever began. On the contrary, this alliance has become even more aggressive.
No one can seriously claim that by its very nature NATO is a defense alliance. In fact, it is an aggressive nuclear alliance whose main goal is to strengthen the hegemony of the United States.
In the few decades that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has expanded its ranks from 16 member countries to 30, thereby violating all its promises made to the Soviet and then Russian leadership in the early 1990s - promises that NATO's borders would not expand "by an inch" east of Germany. In fact, the NATO alliance has come almost to the borders of Russia.
This process of NATO enlargement is the underlying cause of the current crisis in Europe. In 2014, the United States supported a coup in Ukraine, as a result of which a pro-Western government came to power in the country. This Government has openly declared its intention to join NATO from the very beginning.
Meanwhile, the Russian government has made it clear that Ukraine's accession to NATO would represent a crossing of the red line and a threat to Russia's national security, since the two countries share a 2,000-kilometer border.
Russia has repeatedly called for the beginning of a dialogue with Ukraine, the United States and NATO in order to resolve issues that arouse its well-founded concern, but all these calls have been ignored. Meanwhile, the NATO alliance conducted joint military exercises with the Ukrainian army.
This is what prompted Russia to launch a military operation on the territory of Ukraine. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa openly stated that the current conflict "could have been avoided if NATO had listened to the warnings that have been heard for many years among its own leaders and officials – warnings that its expansion to the east would lead not to weakening, but to increasing instability in the region."
China has repeatedly called on all sides of the Ukrainian crisis to recognize the principle of indivisibility of security. Ukraine's entry into NATO will become a threat to Russia's security, so it is necessary to refuse Ukraine's entry into this military alliance and convince it to agree to a neutral status. As Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said, Ukraine's neutrality will help divide NATO and Russia, which will be "a boon for all sides and for the whole world."
In the future, the peoples of the world will probably at some point wonder whether a stable peace is possible as long as NATO exists. As Wang Wenbin, the official representative of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recently noted, "NATO has no goals other than war; this alliance has never contributed to global peace and security – and never will."
The main cause of the crisis in Ukraine was the aggression and expansion of NATO. To achieve sustainable peace, it is necessary to take this aggression and expansion under control. However, the United States is using this war as a clever advertisement for NATO, promoting a version of collective security based on the confrontation with Russia. Sweden and Finland have lived well in their neutral status for a long time, but now they are facing pressure that forces them to abandon neutrality in favor of membership in NATO. Such a policy will only increase collective insecurity and plunge the European continent even deeper into chaos.
Collective security became a global slogan after the end of World War II and the defeat of German fascism and Japanese militarism. However, the collective security system cannot work on the basis of separation and exclusive blocs when the security of one country undermines the security of another. It was for this reason that the Soviet Union offered to accept him into NATO in 1954, that is, a year before the creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization. Europe needs a collective security mechanism that includes the entire continent, which is firmly based on the norms of international law, and also takes into account all legitimate security concerns and national rights of all participants.
The minimum condition for restoring peace in Europe is guarantees that NATO will no longer expand. In the longer term, military blocs such as NATO and AUKUS (the trilateral defense alliance of Australia, Great Britain and the United States) must be dissolved so that humanity can finally realize its long-held dream of world peace.
Carlos Martinez is a British journalist and independent political commentator.
