Home Opinion It’s time to stop OTAN’s eastward expansion

It’s time to stop OTAN’s eastward expansion

Ma XiaolinMa Xiaolin*

Despite the objections of Turkey and Croatia, it appears that Sweden and Finland will face little resistance in joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), although the process could take around a year to complete. The entry of the two countries will have a profound impact on geopolitics, as it would bring two Northern European countries into the bosom of NATO, reinforce the organization’s weaker northeast flank, and reorganize the continental security structure and relationship.

In addition to physical expansion, the accession of Sweden and Finland, should it materialize, will also have a significant impact on global security and the geopolitical structure of Europe, as the two countries rank 11th and 14th in the world in terms of income. per capita.

But NATO’s expansion will also exacerbate tensions and clashes with Russia, because Sweden and Finland, thanks to their considerable military, economic, financial, diplomatic and soft power, will increase the Organization’s strength in a non-linear and , thus intensifying the threat to Russia.

Furthermore, the risk of nuclear war in Europe is increasing. As soon as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict erupted, Russia warned Western powers about taking sides, reflecting its deep fear of the Western powers’ machinations and their war of attrition.

Furthermore, after the accession of Sweden and Finland, the length of the border between Russia and NATO will triple, increasing the threat to Russia’s national security and territorial integrity, as the two countries, especially Finland, will increase their defense budgets.

No wonder Russia has refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons for strategic containment. As Dmitry Medvedev, the vice president of Russia’s Security Council, said, there can be no more talks on a “nuclear-free” Baltic if the two Nordic countries join NATO.

The Ukraine crisis is essentially a creation of the United States. After the Cold War, the US has used every excuse to expand NATO to the East. It also prompted EU leaders to do the same, with the aim of alienating China from the international community and weakening Russia.

The time has come for the US to reflect on why it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to maintain their global hegemony. And it must understand that the world cannot be placed under American-style governance, and that it can no longer deceive the global public using double standards.

As for the European Union, it has more to ponder, because the war is the first such conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, and it made the mistake of facilitating NATO’s continued eastward expansion, ignoring Russian warnings.

Not only leaders of Germany and France, but also US strategists such as former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, George F. Kennan, and former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, warned NATO to avoid doing anything that could affect Russia’s strategic security. The Ukraine crisis is the result of ignoring these warnings.

Regrettably, the US and EU learned no lessons from the major strategic mistakes they made and instead continued their confrontational march, dividing the world.

The Ukraine crisis shows that the US can only be held back if countries ignore, or resist, its call to choose sides. Not only have Russia’s traditional partners such as Iran, Venezuela, Belarus and Serbia ignored the US call to indulge in the zero-sum game, but Hungary, India, South Africa and Israel have openly said they will not take sides. . Most countries may not agree with Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine, but they still do not want to be involved in the conflict.

Thanks to the war between Russia and Ukraine and subsequent US sanctions, energy and commodity prices soared, and inflation rose in all countries.

More importantly, countries such as Egypt face grain shortages as they used to source a large share of grain imported from Russia and/or Ukraine.

Furthermore, the US dollar’s monopoly position in the global monetary system is crumbling, despite the US and EU expelling Russian banks from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), freezing their assets and threatening to punish Russia’s trading partners with secondary sanctions. Such economies will certainly reduce their dollar-denominated assets, and slowly cleanse their financial system of that currency, thus weakening the dollar’s hold on the global financial system, which is the basis of US hegemony.

The fact that Ukraine has promised to put everything on the negotiating table, including the future of the Crimea and Donbass regions, indicates that this conflict could end with the failure of the US and the EU, even if Russia will also suffer huge losses.

In short, in order to restore lasting peace, European leaders must stop the expansion of NATO and the EU to the east, consider Moscow’s strategic security concerns, and say no to Washington’s instigation. And it is time for them to realize that only talks can promote peace and prosperity.

*The author is the dean and principal professor of the Institute of Mediterranean Rim Studies at Zhejiang University of International Studies.

*Dean and Principal Professor at the Institute of Mediterranean Rim Studies at Zhejiang University of International Studies

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