Each anniversary of NATO's founding since the end of the Old Cold War has been met with calls by many activists across the world to dismantle the alliance that they say has outlived its original purpose, and the 70th one is no different in this respect. The wishful hopes that these people have is that the US will voluntarily abandon the platform that's become indispensable to its power projection across the world, something that will never happen in reality even though America's relations with the bloc's other members are currently changing in ways that might ultimately make the alliance unrecognizable in the future. That's actually the point, however, since the US keenly understands the need for the old organization to rebrand under a new narrative that makes it functionally relevant in the present day.

There's no doubt that NATO began as an anti-Russian alliance, but the reason for this had more to do with geopolitics than the ideological motivation that many have since been led to believe was the cause for its inception. The USSR presented the most profound challenge to America's global dominance after the end of World War II, and it made sense for the US to extend its nuclear umbrella over the Western European countries through the mutual defense obligation enshrined in Article 5 as it sought to entrench its influence in this strategic end of the Eurasian supercontinent. About that, NATO also simultaneously functions as both a captive market for American arms and as an instrument for controlling partner states through proxy via the military and intelligence wings of their "deep states".

It still continues to fulfill this purpose even though the Soviet Union's successor of the Russian Federation doesn't present anywhere near the global challenge to America's global dominance that its predecessor did, ergo the calls by many for NATO's dismantlement. What many in West don't understand is that the bloc was never truly intended to be a platform for "protecting democracy" despite their governments' successful decades-long indoctrination campaign convincing them that this was the case. Actually, NATO has always been a means for the US to institutionalize its hegemony, but Washington never wanted to publicly acknowledge this for "politically correct" reasons, which is why it's tried to rebrand the bloc several times since the end of the Old Cold War.

The first such effort saw the US portray the alliance as the vanguard of "humanitarian interventions" in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, after which it was rebranded as an "anti-terrorist" force following 9/11. In recent years the US has sought to "go back to the basics" by returning to NATO's original anti-Russian mission after fearmongering about Moscow's geopolitical motives following an extensive fake news campaign against it that first began during Russia's 2008 defensive operation that was launched in response Georgian aggression against its peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Due to the current "hybrid war" hysteria, however, NATO has nowadays tried to rebrand itself as a multifunctional organization capable of thwarting all manner of threats in every dimension, especially the informational and cyber ones.

Whatever form its next iteration takes, it can all but be assured that it won't be an aggressively anti-Chinese one no matter how much the US might want this to happen. Although China is the only country capable of challenging America all across the world in the New Cold War just like the USSR did during the Old Cold War, the key difference between Beijing and Moscow is that the former is enmeshed in a relationship of complex economic interdependence with the West whereas the latter was never able to achieve such pivotal ties with its adversaries. This key realization works as a safeguard of sorts for "regulating" Sino-Western relations, but it's also the reason why Trump is so serious about his so-called "trade war".

The President believes that this unbalanced relationship is against America's grand strategic interests, which is why he's worked so hard to change it since entering into office. His administration thinks that China takes advantage of this by relying on the Damocles' sword of devastating economic consequences in response to any hostile actions against its global interests, which therefore prevents NATO members from marching in lockstep with the US' economic demands against the People's Republic such as prohibiting Apple's chief competitor Huawei from setting up their 5G networks. If the US could "restore balance" to the West's trade ties with China, the thinking goes, then it'll be able to more confidently succeed with its overall anti-Chinese hegemonic designs in Europe.

Bearing this in mind, the US might seek to build upon NATO's recent "hybrid war" rebranding by incorporating an anti-Chinese element to it by way of implying that Beijing is weaponizing its unbalanced trade relationship with the West in order to wage "hybrid war" on Europe, especially in connection with Washington's accusations that Huawei is merely a means for the military-intelligence component of its main Great Power challenger's "deep state" to silently take over the EU. What the US is really afraid of, however, is that Huawei's 5G expansion to Europe could undermine the NSA's presently existing covert control of the continent that sees America using information obtained through its clandestine surveillance efforts to blackmail politicians into supporting its agenda.

Russia has no realistic means of challenging the US in this respect anywhere in the world, though China does, which is another reason why the US regards it as such a threat to its hegemony because of the potential capabilities of its "deep state" via Huawei and the country's unbalanced trade relationship with the West. It therefore makes the most sense for the US to attempt to turn NATO into a platform for confronting this challenge, but it might already be too late because of just how entrenched China's direct and indirect influence is as a result of the complex relationship of economic interdependence that it's already in with most of the bloc's members, America included, which is something that simply rebranding the old organization of NATO with a new narrative isn't going to change.

DISCLAIMER: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.