A regular meeting of the North Atlantic Alliance's foreign ministers has been held in Brussels. It differed from last year's one only in engaging new US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and in discussing NATO's strategy until 2030 to be approved in the coming months at the summit of heads of Euro-Atlantic states. The strategy is nothing new, featuring issues like deterring Russia, fighting terrorism and cyber threats, as well as countering China, which is rapidly developing in economic and military terms. These messaging is shopworn, but the leaders of Western countries keep repeating them over and over again, having a strong presumption that manifold ineptitude and hoax folded up in rhetorical colorful wrappings will become a reality. And they apparently do have a remote chance.
Right after the foreign ministers' meeting, Anthony Blinken had talks with head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel, in the course of which the American and European officials agreed on jointly containing Russia and China. Small wonder, since the EU and NATO are basically one and the same thing. Only a few European countries are not yet members of the North Atlantic Alliance, although they do regularly engage in many of its events, like Finland and Sweden. This particularly concerns military drills in the name of "universal European security and defense" or "partnership for peace". The slogans may vary but the essence remains unaffected: the key enemies are Russia who fails to obey Washington-developed regulations, and (in the next decade) the equally inflexible China irritating the West with its successes.
We know that the alliance and the EU will confront us through tough sanctions, social engineering, diplomatic pressure, attempts to orchestrate color revolutions, society disintegration from within, all-season and round-the-clock rattling of caterpillar tracks at the borders, provocative flights by scout aircraft and strategic bombers with cruise missiles on board along the two countries' state borders with simulated attacks against their territories, as well as attempts to draw us into a devastative arms race.
NATO is not yet able to rattle its tracks at the Chinese border, with too much distance between the North Atlantic Alliance and China. But strategic aircraft and cruise scout flights over the Pacific Ocean off the Chinese coast, South China and Yellow Se voyages by American vessels with Tomahawks aboard have long been a daily practice. And recently, Brussels became concerned about China's build-up of nuclear potential. NATO stoutly supports nuclear arms control mechanisms and considers it necessary to adapt them so as to cover more countries, particularly China, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. He apparently recalled how 45th US President Donald Trump, refusing to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-3), demanded that China be included in it.
Interestingly, Stoltenberg like Trump doesn't say a word about other nuclear club members, for instance France or Great Britain. Specifically, London intends to increase its nuclear potential from 180 warheads to 260 in the coming years, but NATO Secretary General let this slide. He hunts his own line. "All Allies remain firmly committed to nuclear arms control," he says. "And all Allies welcome the recent decision [by Russia and the United States] to extend the New START Treaty. But we need agreements that cover more weapons and more nations like China. So the arms control regime must take account of new realities." This includes the importance of China's Эrise to NATO security", as China "is investing heavily in new modern military capabilities, including nuclear capabilities" and "is a country which used coercion against the neighbors in the region."
Both NATO and the EU I haven’t made up their mind yet about China. This issue will apparently become vital in the new NATO 2030 Atlanticist strategy. However, Brussels has contemplated sanctions against Beijing more than once. To this day, those are only declared to individual officials and organizations on the plea of suppressing democracy and freedom of speech, repression against residents of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, but the United States insistently demands economic restitution from Brussels.
The EU scratches its head, to put it bluntly, as either disobeying Washington or shooting itself in the foot is impossible. Europe's trade turnover with China has long exceeded that with the United States. Who will countervail the European enterprises' economic losses? The United States does not even compensate for the damage caused by sanctions against Russian enterprises and Russian counter-sanctions. Concerned about its competitive superiority, the United States seeks stifling the Nord Stream 2 gas project that is advantageous to the leading European countries. And who should take care of the Europeans? No one but themselves. Ways to enjoy the best of both worlds is highly questionable to the Old Continent's thinking public. Unless that it goes ahead with its aggressive rhetoric against both China and Russia.
But even here it is not cut and dried. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has already summoned the EU representative in Beijing to reprimand him about the country's being included in the EU-US confrontational list. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also responded to statements by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Addressing a press conference following the meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers, she commented upon his words about Moscow's "aggressive actions" and urged NATO to place greater focus on solving its own problems. "Deal with problems in your member states. They demand urgent interference: vaccination, crisis, human rights in NATO members," the diplomat said. "As soon as you address them, we will start studying your experience right away. But only the successful one."
It must be kept in mind that Jens Stoltenberg's rhetoric about "Moscow's aggressive actions" coincided with the 22nd anniversary since NATO’s 78-day aggression against Yugoslavia. People remember that the North Atlantic Alliance's wanton and flagitious violence against one of the flourishing European countries overrode the UN Security Council's decision, violated all the norms of international law, including the alliance's charter reading that "an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies." But Yugoslavia did not attack anyone, much less a NATO member.
The alliance's leadership said the primary objective of Operation Allied Force was to prevent genocide of the Albanian population in Kosovo. But it was actually a conspiracy of the United States and its vassals, including the newly admitted former Warsaw Pact countries (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic), aimed to demonstrate who's boss on the planet after the Soviet Union collapsed and that the powerful care little about all the international laws and rules formed after World War II. Washington would formulate the new ones to come into effect. American and NATO officials are still talking about some rules violated by Russia, China and some other insubordinate countries. But the UN Security Council has never approved of such.
The alliance itself says that the mentioned aggression involved some 38 thousand offensive combat missions, 10 thousand of which were heavy bombing campaigns. According to Serbian data, 3,5 to 4 thousand people were killed in those bombings, some 10 thousand were injured, with two-thirds of them being women, children, and the elderly. Tomahawks hit residential buildings, schools, kindergartens, power plants, hydraulic pump and distribution stations, sewers, trains and buses, bridges and TV studios... Tangible damage amounted to $100 billion. Within several weeks, 15 tons of depleted uranium were dropped in shells on the territory of Serbia. After that, the country came to rank Europe's first in the number of cancer diseases. During the first decade since the military aggression, about 30 thousand people developed cancer, 10 to 18 thousand of them died.
Yugoslavia was followed by Libya, twice Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, where American companies are now stealing Syrian oil under the protection of their troops. But the US and the alliance are uncomfortable about recollecting their crimes. They prefer to switch their own sins to other countries and their political leaders, accusing them of aggression and human rights violation.
As we can see, NATO's aggressive nature has not changed, despite all the rhetoric of its leaders, and it won't. It's like a perpetual diagnosis. We need to strengthen security and ties between Moscow and Beijing, although China surely does have people who will take care of this. Once the North Atlantic Alliance equates us, it's only right that we do this and have a rod in pickle, keeping our nuclear missile weapons at general quarters. NATO will never be able to defeat those who own them.
