NATO 's own mechanical flaws are obstacles that restrict its ambitions.
htmlOn June 26, thousands of people participated in a march against NATO and calling for world peace in the center of Madrid, the Spanish capital. Picture/Xinhua News Agency Text | Xu Lifan
Amid the protests of thousands of people in Madrid, Spain, the NATO summit will be held on the 28th local time.
This summit set up three main topics: discussing how NATO can continue to support Ukraine ; reviewing the issues of Sweden and Finland joining NATO; and adopting a new strategic concept to guide NATO's development direction in the next 10 years.
Compared with the first two lackluster issues, the new NATO strategic concept that will be adopted is more concerning. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has released a version of its strategic concept every 10 years. What is about to be adopted at the Madrid Summit is the fourth version of NATO's strategic concept. Compared with the 2010 version of NATO's strategic concept released in Lisbon in 2010, NATO's new strategic concept has a lot of changes filled with Cold War rhetoric.
Russia has been reclassified as a "collective security threat"
In the 2010 version of NATO's strategic concept, NATO believes that cooperation with Russia has "strategic significance" and hopes to establish a "true strategic partnership" with Russia.
NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg revealed on June 27 that NATO will list Russia as a "threat to collective security" in its new strategic concept for the next 10 years. This is basically equating Russia with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The relationship between Russia and NATO has always been bumpy.
In 1994, Russia joined the "NATO Partnership for Peace" plan, but in 1995, NATO released the "Research Report on the Eastward Enlargement Plan", which caused the relationship between the two parties to cool down. At that time, NATO had been claiming that NATO's eastward expansion was not aimed at Russia and did not arouse enough vigilance in Russia. In 1998, Russia established a permanent representative office in NATO; in 2000, Putin stated in an interview with BBC that the possibility of Russia joining NATO was not ruled out - of course there were many prerequisites.
After the "911" incident, out of the need for global anti-terrorism, the relationship between Russia and NATO further improved. The Russia-NATO Council was established in May 2002.
However, NATO’s five eastward expansions since 1999 have caused the relationship between the two parties to gradually deteriorate. After the Crimea incident in 2014, the relationship between Russia and NATO completely deteriorated. The 2016 NATO Warsaw Summit concluded that Russia would be the "main threat."
However, when the 2010 version of NATO's strategic concept was announced, the relationship between Russia and NATO had not yet completely deteriorated, so Russia was still defined as a possible "strategic partner." NATO's new strategic concept can be regarded as a reckoning with the Crimea incident in 2014 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022. Of course, NATO will not consider its eastward expansion to be a "threat".
htmlOn June 23, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to a reporter’s question and said that we urge NATO to stop provoking confrontation with ideological drawing lines, stop spreading false information and provocative remarks against China, and not try to start a new cold war. Photo / Ministry of Foreign Affairs website China is mentioned for the first time as showing signs of "global competition"
What is more noteworthy is that NATO's new strategic concept will mention China for the first time.
NATO is a product of the Cold War, and has always had the strategic mission of defending Europe and deterring the Soviet Union and Russia. China was not mentioned in the 2010 version of the strategic vision.
Before the new NATO strategic concept was released, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith and others had repeatedly said that China would be mentioned for the first time in the new strategic concept.
In fact, from the "NATO 2030: Unity Facing a New Era" released by NATO in November 2020, to the "Brussels Summit Communique" released by NATO in June 2021, and to the statements of various NATO figures this year, China It has become a high-frequency word, describing China's development as a "systemic challenge." The wording
reveals signs of trying to "compete across the board" with China.In the 2010 version of NATO's new strategic concept document "Active Engagement with Modern Defense", a general scope of "all-domain competition" has been drawn, including "network security", "trade channel security", "outer space technology" and "climate change". as the main areas affecting security.
NATO focuses on Europe as its defense focus, and most of its military resources are invested in Europe. However, in most areas of the above-mentioned "all-domain competition", it is likely to compete with China to a certain degree in the next ten years. In addition, it may also create trouble by wooing NATO's " global partnership " such as Japan and South Korea, as well as the "independent partnerships" in the Asia-Pacific region. We should be highly vigilant about this.
html On June 13, Swedish Prime Minister Andersson (right) and visiting NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg attended a press conference in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Stoltenberg said that the application process for Sweden and Finland to join NATO was more complicated than expected, and the specific time when the two countries were approved to join the NATO "cannot be determined." Picture/Xinhua News AgencyStrategic conception and actual operation are two different things
It should also be noted that NATO's own mechanism flaws are obstacles that restrict its ambitions.
For example, NATO member states have their own security interests, which are not completely consistent with NATO's collective security interests. The contradiction between France, TĂĽrkiye and NATO is an example.
In addition, the scientific and technological development paths of European Union member states in NATO are also different from those of the United States. In outer space, the EU space program competes with the US space program.
Moreover, the short-term political characteristics of NATO countries also restrict the execution of their strategic plans. Today, the Biden administration emphasizes the alliance system. If the next U.S. government emphasizes America first and uses "lone wolf tactics", NATO may fall back into suspicion, just like it did from 2016 to 2020.
planning is planning, implementation is implementation. The previous version of NATO's strategic concept failed to solve the military expenditure problem, the refugee problem, the problem in Syria, and the crisis in eastern Ukraine. It also made a hasty withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. What can the new strategic concept do?
writing/Xu Lifan (columnist)
editor/Xu Qiuying
proofreading/Chen Diyan
