Category: NATO

Zhang Weiwei: NATO is a relic of history that should have been disbanded long ago

In the video embedded below, Friends of Socialist China co-founder Danny Haiphong interviews Professor Zhang Weiwei, a Chinese professor of international relations at Fudan University and the director of its China Institute. The interview covers a wide range of topics, including the Western media portrayal of China as aggressive, the concept of the civilizational state, China’s preference for a peaceful approach to international relations, the conflict in Ukraine, China’s diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East, and the changing global balance of power.

Zhang Weiwei notes that, while the US and its allies insist on describing China as a threat to regional and global peace, China’s record of peaceful development speaks for itself. China has not fired a single shot in over 40 years, and is the only nuclear power to have a consistent policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. When the US was economically ascendant, it was already waging wars around the world. China however is now the world’s largest economy in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, and yet it maintains a powerful commitment to peace and to solving problems through negotiations. Zhang highlights China’s diplomatic breakthroughs this year with regard to Middle East politics, including its mediation of the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and its role in bringing together 14 Palestinian factions.

Professor Zhang points out that the conflict in Ukraine is mainly the result of US policy and the insistence on NATO expansion, stating that most Chinese feel that NATO is a relic of history that should have been disbanded long ago. China will be resolute in opposing NATO’s expansion into Asia.

Discussing the concept of “changes unseen in a century”, Zhang Weiwei highlights the emergence of a credible alternative for the Global South in the form of the BRICS grouping – whose GDP is already larger than that of the G7 – along with the Belt and Road Initiative, the economic emergence of several countries, and the failure of the US’s tech war against China.

Counselling the US to adopt a more peaceful approach to international relations, Zhang Weiwei notes that the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy is based on the concept of mutually assured destructions, when what the world needs is mutually assured prosperity.

Professor Zhang is providing a video contribution to our events to mark the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, in London and New York City.

NATO, nukes and a New Cold War

We are pleased to republish below a series of three articles by Kenny Coyle analysing the new Labour government’s foreign policy, in particular the “progressive realism” espoused by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

This putatively “clear-eyed approach to international relations” shares a great deal with the pro-Washington, pro-NATO, hawkish foreign policy of recent Conservative governments. Kenny notes that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to commit 2.5 percent of GDP to military spending, and Lammy’s critique of his Tory predecessor at the Foreign Office is largely focused on the need for a more aggressive stance against China, Russia and Syria.

Lammy praises Ernest Bevin, Labour foreign secretary from 1945 to 1951, for “bringing us the Nato alliance that is still the bedrock of our security” and “fighting for a nuclear bomb as he put it with the Union Jack on top”. Meanwhile, Lammy’s most coherent policy in relation to the Global South is to develop deeper relations with India. As Kenny points out, “clearly this is part of Western efforts to woo India away from its close relations with Russia and to maintain a level of mistrust between Delhi and Beijing”.

Labour is proposing to intensify Britain’s involvement in the US-led campaign of China encirclement. Lammy makes clear his support for the AUKUS nuclear pact, demanding that it be considered “as a floor, not a ceiling” for the UK’s military posture in the Pacific. He also calls for deepening Britain’s military coordination with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, with the obvious aim of contributing to the US’s island chain strategy against China.

Meanwhile there seem to be shifts occurring in Labour’s position with regard to Taiwan Province, including the establishment of Labour Friends of Taiwan in March 2023 and a recent Labour Party delegation to the island led by Lord Leong. Kenny writes: “The danger is that a current or future British government will abandon [its] One China positions and lean toward the ‘One China, One Taiwan’ policy that is gaining ground in Washington. The emergence of a generously funded Taiwan lobby within the Labour Party and at an all-party level needs to be further exposed.”

The series concludes:

Whoever enters the White House, the cosmetic modifications on offer from Starmer and Lammy commit Britain to a dangerous path in the Asia-Pacific, particularly the under-the-radar military agreements with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The left needs to ensure that the arguments against ‘progressive realism’ reach deep into the labour and peace movements.

The articles were originally published in the Morning Star in August 2024.

A new window on the world?

August 2 (Morning Star) — The guiding philosophy of Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign policy has been described by Foreign Secretary David Lammy as “a clear-eyed approach to international relations: progressive realism.”

In a series of speeches, interviews, articles and pamphlets over the past year or so, Lammy has elaborated this apparently innovative outlook in British foreign policy.

The most substantial of these were an article for the influential US journal Foreign Affairs in May, The Case for Progressive Realism, Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course later republished in The Guardian, and a 2023 pamphlet for the Fabian Society, Britain Reconnected A Foreign Policy for Security and Prosperity at Home.

“Progressive Realism” is designed to meet the challenge of a whole range of global issues, including, AI, climate change, international economic supply-chains and development.

However, since Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to commit 2.5 per cent of GDP to military spending and to conduct a thorough security and defence review, it’s essential to analyse the military and diplomatic aspects of what this new Labour government stands for on the international scene.

Continue reading NATO, nukes and a New Cold War

History has amply proved that wherever NATO’s hand extends, turmoil and chaos will ensue

On July 16, the United Nations Security Council held an Open Debate on ‘Multilateral Cooperation in the Interest of a More Just, Democratic and Sustainable World Order’. The meeting was convened on the initiative of the Russian Federation and chaired by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In his speech during the debate, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong, noted that the world body had been founded in 1945, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and continued:

“Since then, a large number of countries have emerged from waves of national independence and liberation.” Seventy years ago, “the Chinese leaders put forward the five principles of peaceful coexistence, namely, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, and peaceful coexistence. The five principles of peaceful coexistence embody the spirit of the [UN] Charter.”

Now, President Xi Jinping’s proposal of building a community with a shared future for humanity has been put forward with the aim of carrying forward the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the five principles of peaceful coexistence under the new circumstances.

Fu Cong went on to say that today, “some obvious truths [are] being willfully distorted, while certain specious arguments gaining currency.” Responding to this, he continued, making pointed reference to a number of imperialist countries, principally the United States and Britain:

“We often hear the talk about a rules-based international order by some countries. But what kind of rules are they talking about? And who are the rule makers? No one has given us a clear and precise answer. In fact, the so-called rules-based international order advocated by some is really intended to create another system outside the existing system of international law and to seek legitimacy for double standards and exceptionalism. I would like to emphasise that there is only one order in the world, that is the international order based on international law. There is only one set of rules, and they are the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”

And, while many peace-loving countries and people are working tirelessly to achieve peace in response to the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine:

“NATO, a regional military bloc left over from the Cold War, has been seeking to expand its sphere of influence, stopping at nothing to create false narratives, pouring oil on the fire wherever they go, stirring up confrontation between camps, and even shifting the blame to countries outside the region to frame them on the issue of Ukraine.”

This last comment clearly refers to accusations levelled against China at NATO’s Washington Summit earlier in July, when China was ludicrously described as being a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s Special Military Operation. 

Doubtless with such wars of aggression as those waged against Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia in mind, Fu Cong went on to say that: “History has amply proved that wherever NATO’s hand extends, turmoil and chaos will ensue. China hereby advises NATO and certain countries to conduct some soul-searching and stop being the troublemakers who jeopardise common security at the expense of others.”

He also said that common development and common security are mutually reinforcing. A just and equitable international order cannot be built on the basis of developed countries getting ever richer while developing countries remain locked in poverty and the lack of development.

We reprint below the full text of Ambassador Fu Cong’s remarks. They were originally published on the website of China’s Permanent Mission to the UN.

President.

China appreciates Russia’s initiative to convene this open debate. I welcome Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov presiding over today’s meeting. 

To build a just, democratic, and sustainable international order is the joint pursuit of humanity. In 1945, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, our forefathers, upholding the spirit of multilateralism, established on the ruins of the Second World War the most universal, representative, and authoritative international organization, that is, the United Nations. The UN Charter, laying down the cornerstone of the modern international order and establishing the basic norms of contemporary international relations, is an embodiment of our noble ideal of working towards a just and equitable international order. 

Continue reading History has amply proved that wherever NATO’s hand extends, turmoil and chaos will ensue

China rebuts NATO declaration as ‘defamatory, provocative, belligerent’

The article below, originally published in Global Times, reports on China’s response to the NATO Summit declaration of 9 July 2024, which accused China of being “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine” through the supply of so-called dual-use technology, which the US and its allies claim is critical to Russia’s military efforts.

The accusation marks a significant escalation in the US-led New Cold War – a “major departure for NATO” according to the New York Times. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg stated: “I think the message sent from NATO from this summit is very strong and very clear, and we are clearly defining China’s responsibility when it comes to enabling Russia’s war”.

The charges against China are of course utterly ridiculous and unfounded. Of all the major countries, China has been most active in pursuit of a peaceful negotiated settlement to the Ukraine crisis. Indeed last year it put forward a comprehensive document outlining the essential steps towards peace. Meanwhile the role of the US and its allies has been to escalate the conflict by arming Ukraine, imposing sanctions on Russia, and preventing Kiev from entering into negotiations.

China has not been supplying war materiel to Russia, but has simply maintained normal economic relations – as opposed to joining in with the West’s illegal and unilateral sanctions. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian pointed out: “Most countries have not participated in sanctions against Russia or cut off trade with it, so the US cannot blame China for its own actions. The US has passed large-scale aid bills for Ukraine while baselessly accusing China and Russia of normal economic and trade exchanges. This is blatant hypocrisy and double standards.”

The reasons for NATO’s accusations are two-fold. First, Ukraine and its backers are losing on the battlefield, and the well-advertised “counteroffensives” have not had the desired effect. As such, the imperialist powers “need to find an excuse, and the ready-made excuse now is that China is supporting Russia”.

Second, there are ongoing efforts to create a global NATO and expand its area of operations to the Pacific so that it can participate more directly in the campaign of China encirclement. According to Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, “they are attempting to achieve NATO’s globalisation by hyping the so-called ‘China threat’ and inciting challenges against China… The hype and intensification of the China issue serve as a catalyst for NATO to accelerate and strengthen its presence, influence, and actions globally, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The US is the leading protagonist of the New Cold War, and it is using NATO to bring Europe onboard with its anti-China strategy. However, European states have their own interests and only stand to lose by blindly following the US.

China voiced strong opposition and lodged stern representations on Thursday with NATO after the Cold War mentality-driven bloc issued a direct warning to China for the first time regarding the so-called support to Russia in the Ukraine crisis, which, some experts said, is essentially another attempt to shift the blame and smear China. 

The NATO Washington Summit Declaration exaggerates tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, which is filled with Cold War mentality and belligerent rhetoric, containing prejudiced, defamatory, and provocative content regarding China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said during a press conference on Thursday. 

NATO’s so-called security comes at the expense of others’ security, and much of the security anxiety NATO peddles is of its own making. The so-called success and strength NATO boasts of pose a significant threat to the world, the spokesperson said. 

Establishing imaginary enemies to maintain existence and expand power is NATO’s usual tactic. Its persistence in the erroneous positioning of China as a systemic challenge and smearing of China’s domestic and foreign policies are exactly that, the spokesperson added. 

The Chinese Mission to the EU also refuted NATO’s claims on Thursday, emphasizing that China’s position on Ukraine is open and above board, and it is known to all that China is not the architect of the Ukraine crisis. China aims to promote peace talks and seek political settlement, and this position is endorsed and commended by the broader global community.

Continue reading China rebuts NATO declaration as ‘defamatory, provocative, belligerent’

Threat of war looms over NATO summit in Washington

The following article by Gary Wilson, first published in Struggle La Lucha, gives an overview of alarming developments in the Pacific, with the US and its allies gearing up towards the formation of an “Asian version of NATO”.

Gary notes that in late June, the US, Japan and South Korea conducted joint military exercises in the region. These exercises, labelled ‘Freedom Edge’, “targeted not only North Korea but also China” and “aim to demonstrate military capabilities near China’s borders”. As such they form “part of a broader network of Indo-Pacific alliances led by the US to encircle and confront China”.

The article cites a pertinent and accurate observation by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Lurking behind the recent drill is the strategic design of the US to escalate regional military tensions, exert pressure upon the Far East of Russia, and lay siege to China”.

What’s more, US President Joe Biden has invited Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to Washinton to participate in the NATO summit in July. No doubt the US regime will be looking to use the summit to consolidate its New Cold War alliance in the Pacific, directed against China, Russia and the DPRK.

As Gary concludes, “the specter of war will loom large over the NATO summit in Washington.”

On June 30, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) blasted the joint military exercises conducted by the U.S., Japan, and South Korea in the region, labeling them as “reckless and provocative.” The DPRK pointed out that the military “war games” disrupt peace on the Korean peninsula and the broader region.

The hostile military drills expose the formation of an “Asian version of NATO” led by the U.S., declared a statement by the DPRK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 30.

The three-day military operation known as “Freedom Edge” took place from June 26 to 29, involving South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. The “Edge” featured all three militaries, including the U.S.’s Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, headed by a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier, Japanese Defense Force naval carriers and destroyers, and Republic of Korea F-16 Falcon fighter jets.

Freedom Edge targeted not only North Korea but also China.

The exercise draws its name from other U.S. military operations with Japan (Keen Edge) and South Korea (Freedom Shield). The annual Freedom Shield and Keen Edge exercises aim to demonstrate military capabilities near China’s borders. 

South Korea submits to imperialist Japan

These maneuvers are part of a broader network of Indo-Pacific alliances led by the U.S. to encircle and confront China. The Freedom Edge war maneuvers came out of an agreement between the U.S., Japan, and the Republic of Korea at Camp David last August. That agreement was historic because never before had the Republic of Korea submitted to such an agreement with imperialist Japan, which had occupied and colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945 (when the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army ousted them and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was formed).  

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Camp David agreement with Japan has been denounced throughout the Republic of Korea. Some have called it the country’s “biggest humiliation.” Yonhap News Agency reported on May 31 that President Yoon’s approval rating has fallen to 21%. 

The DPRK’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the U.S., Japan, and South Korea for their continuous provocative military actions against the DPRK and other independent states in the region. 

“Lurking behind the recent drill is the strategic design of the U.S. to escalate regional military tensions, exert pressure upon the Far East of Russia, and lay siege to China,” the Ministry statement said.

In recent years, the U.S. has intensified military exercises surrounding China and Korea, forming new military partnerships like the AUKUS and QUAD. 

U.S. President “Genocide Joe” Biden has invited Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to Washinton in July for more “trilateral talks” as well as participation in the NATO war summit taking place on July 9-11. 

NATO targets China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, on May 27 that one of the “main topics at the Washington Summit will be global partnerships, and in particular, our Asia Pacific partners – Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.”

The U.S.-commanded military alliance called NATO includes the armed forces of the U.S. and all other countries in the alliance, including Britain, Germany, and France.  

NATO has undertaken eight military actions, all since 1990. The alliance did not undertake any military operations during the Cold War. Since 1990, NATO has engaged in two actions related to the first Gulf War, two in the former Yugoslavia, and military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya.

Stoltenberg then said that NATO’s primary focus now is targeting China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. He called them threats to NATO’s dominance. He didn’t talk about the war threats that have come from NATO and the “Asian version of NATO.”

With his stilted bureaucratese, Stoltenberg did add, “NATO will remain Europe and North America, but to work with our partners in the Asia Pacific and therefore welcome that the leaders of the Asia Pacific will be at, we have invited them to attend, the summit in Washington.” 

[ChatGPT translation: While NATO’s focus remains on Europe and North America, we recognize the importance of collaboration with our Asia-Pacific partners. Therefore, we’re pleased to welcome leaders from the Asia-Pacific region to the upcoming summit in Washington — the Asian NATO.]

The specter of war will loom large over the NATO summit in Washington.

Asian NATO under a new guise

In the following article, which was originally published on the Australian website Pearls and Irritations, Tim Beal analyses the increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific region by the NATO military alliance, with China as its main potential target.

Tim notes recent military activities in the region on the part of Germany, France and the Netherlands, while Britain, “enthused with imperial nostalgia and memories of the Opium War, flaunts its very expensive but very vulnerable aircraft carriers in a mix of high ambition and low farce.”

There are, however, impediments to NATO’s regional expansion, including the potential role of more independent minded leaders in some member countries, such as Türkiye, Hungary, Slovakia, and even France. Tim therefore argues that the Seoul-based United Nations Command (UNC) might be pressed into service as a more pliant alternative, citing an article by US strategist Clint Work to explain:

“Although the Koreas, both South and North, are important in their own right the peninsula’s position in US geostrategy is principally as an instrument against China. Sometimes, Work mentions China, sometimes he uses North Korea as a surrogate for China and on other occasions he employs coded phrases for China such as South Korea’s ‘broader regional responsibilities’.”

Regarding the UNC, Tim further notes that: “Despite its name it is not an organisation under the control of the United Nations but in fact a US-controlled military alliance that got its misleading title during the early stages of the Korean War when the Soviet Union was boycotting the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) over the US blocking of recently-established People’s Republic of China (PRC) taking over the China seat from Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China (ROC) which had retreated to Taiwan province. And because of its name and its illegal use of the UN flag and logo, the UNC can be portrayed as a UN body, an expression of ‘the international community’, rather than the US military.”

Tim Beal is a retired New Zealand academic, whose main focus has been Northeast Asia. He is the author of ‘North Korea: The struggle against American power’ (2005) and ‘Crisis in Korea: America, China and the risk of war’ (2011), both published by Pluto Press.

Over the past couple of years there has been a flurry of activity linking NATO, and some of its constituent countries with the states of American East Asia, principally Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been a frequent visitor, and in December 2023, the US embassy in Seoul arranged for senior representatives from eight NATO countries to visit South Korea to “engage in discussions on the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region and other pertinent issues”. Meanwhile back in Washington Representative Mike Lawler has introduced a bill in Congress aimed at “establishing [a] task force for NATO-like Indo-Pacific Alliance”. The Luftwaffe made headlines in August 2022 by flying non-stop, refuelling in air, to participate in the Pitch Black exercises in Australia and more of the Bundeswehr returned in 2023 for the Talisman Sabre 23 exercises. In November a British army unit participated in military exercises in South Korea.  France and the Netherlands have been doing their bit, and Britain, enthused with imperial nostalgia and memories of the Opium War, flaunts its very expensive but very vulnerable aircraft carriers in a mix of high ambition and low farce. The participation of Asian militaries in the NATO space has been, so far, very low key. The Japanese sent observers to Air Defender 23 in Germany, and the South Koreans joined in a cyberwar game in Estonia in November 2023. However regional leaders – the Asia Pacific Four (AP4), Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – have been invited with some fanfare to mix with the grown-ups at NATO summits in Madrid and Vilnius. Moreover, NATO has been active in crafting Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes (ITPPs) with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and soon, New Zealand.

The reasons for this accelerating activity are easily discernible. For regional leaders – Yoon, Kishida, Albanese, etc – the illusion of European support in a war against China must offer comfort; delusionary given the state of European militaries but something to clutch at. For the Europeans in NATO, civilians and military, there is a desperate need to convince Washington that they are still relevant, given the shift of USA attention towards China and the failure of the proxy war in Ukraine. The search for relevance has been a constant since the Soviet collapse; as Senator Richard Lugar put it in 1993, for NATO it’s either ‘out-of-area or out-of-business’. NATO chose out-of-area and Beijing is the logical, and final, destination.

Continue reading Asian NATO under a new guise

‘Asian NATO’: brought to you by South Korean repression

In this detailed article, which was originally published by The Real News Network, Ju-Hyun Park, the network’s engagement editor, analyses the implications for regional peace, security and economics of the tripartite summit between the United States, Japan and South Korea, that US President Joe Biden hosted at Camp David in August, and relates them to the intensified crackdown on the labour movement and wider sections of civil society since a new conservative administration took office in South Korea.

According to Park, this budding tripartite alliance is a “dream come true for Washington in the New Cold War. And it wouldn’t be happening without South Korean President Yoon’s [Yoon Suk Yeol] war on labour and the opposition.”

Noting that, at Camp David, “for the first time, South Korea, Japan, and the US pledged to share data on North Korean missiles, coordinate joint military responses to threats in the region, and host a new annual trilateral military exercise,” Park explains: “These outcomes indicate a realignment of forces in East Asia that significantly raises the risks of potential major power conflict with China… The Camp David summit is a sure step towards achieving one of Washington’s long-standing goals: establishing an Asian equivalent to NATO as a bulwark to protect US interests in the Pacific.”

Roping South Korea into an alliance with Japan has been an aim of US policymakers since the Korean War (1950-53), but consummating it has proved elusive, both because of the bitter legacy of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean peninsula and latterly South Korea’s burgeoning and mutually beneficial economic relationship with China:

“China overtook the US as South Korea’s primary trade partner almost 20 years ago, and South Korea’s largest corporations depend on China for labour, production, and markets. While South Korea’s capitalists also benefit from the US military occupation of the peninsula, there are few benefits to them in picking sides in a zero-sum conflict between the US and China.”

Biden’s apparent success, therefore, in binding the two powers together in a joint embrace with the United States may been seen as a victory for deft diplomacy, but “there is another cause that deserves significantly more credit: For the past year, current South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol has waged a ruthless war on the sections of South Korean civil society standing in the way of Washington’s agenda, attacking labour, peace groups, and the general public.”

Yoon’s principal target has been South Korea’s militant labour movement. In January this year, hundreds of police officers raided the offices of multiple progressive organisations, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which represents over two million workers.

Yoon has also overseen a drastic escalation in the frequency and intensity of joint military exercises between South Korea and the US, with more than 20 planned for this year alone.

According to Park:

“Labour repression within South Korea also plays a significant role in facilitating Washington’s aims to technologically and economically isolate China… The war on Chinese tech goes beyond targeting individual Chinese conglomerates. Under Biden, a strategy has slowly taken shape to attempt to bring as much high-tech production back to the US as possible while simultaneously taking measures to exclude China from existing international supply chains that rely heavily on production in Taiwan and South Korea. Two of Biden’s biggest legislative wins, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, contain provisions that effectively force South Korean companies to abandon their investments in China in favour of building electric vehicle and semiconductor factories in the US. South Korean EV battery makers have already committed $13 billion to build new plants and expand existing ones in seven US states.

“This has all come at a steep cost to South Korea. South Korean technology exports to the Chinese market plummeted in the wake of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts. From 2022 until June 2023, South Korea suffered the most severe trade deficit in its history, haemorrhaging some $47.5 billion in 2022 alone. By far, the leading cause of this deficit was the sudden reversal in trade with China.

“Squeezed between rising inflation and spiralling economic prospects, South Korea’s workers are bearing the brunt of this economic realignment. At the same time, the Yoon government is scrambling to find some way to reverse its poor economic performance without making concessions to workers. Hence, Yoon’s war on trade unions – the only vehicles available for the working class to organise independently and fight back… South Korean labour is one of the only organised obstacles within the US-led bloc to Washington’s economic offensive against China. Crushing the unions means clearing the way for the unhindered reengineering of South Korea’s economy in Washington’s vision.”

Whilst noting that Chinese President Xi Jinping seems determined to maintain cordial relations with South Korea, if at all possible, Park adds that analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad – including in the Taiwan Strait.

Park also explains that the tightening of a US-led hegemonic bloc in the Pacific inevitably comes up against the law that every action has a reaction, in this case in terms of further consolidating the ties between Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing:

“North Korea, isolated and encircled for so long, now has a wide and reliable rearguard of support in Moscow and Beijing. As the centre of economic gravity pivots towards China, opportunities for North Korea’s advancement will only proliferate.”

While largely unnoticed by the US public, the trilateral summit between Japan, South Korea, and the US that took place at Camp David this August sent shockwaves throughout East Asia. 

US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio punctuated the end of the three-day summit by releasing a joint declaration rife with the kinds of diplomatic ambiguities and appeals to vague principles typical of this sort of affair. The three leaders pledged their support for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” for an international “rules-based order,” and for “peace and stability” around the world. But, of course, the historic significance of the summit had less to do with the rhetoric and more to do with the concrete commitments made by the three governments. 

The Pacific today looks a lot like Europe on the eve of the First World War—a hotbed of military powers sharply divided into opposing blocs driven by irreconcilable interests, ready to be pulled into war at a moment’s notice.

For the first time, South Korea, Japan, and the US pledged to share data on North Korean missiles, coordinate joint military responses to threats in the region, and host a new annual trilateral military exercise. 

These outcomes indicate a realignment of forces in East Asia that significantly raises the risks of potential major power conflict with China. Japan and South Korea have been individual allies of the US for decades—but the three have never before been part of a shared military structure. Now, with an agreed-upon “commitment to consult,” tighter military integration and coordination between the three countries than ever before is assured. 

While there is no treaty to bind this budding alliance together yet, the unprecedented “trilateral security cooperation” born from the Camp David summit is a sure step towards achieving one of Washington’s long-standing goals: establishing an Asian equivalent to NATO as a bulwark to protect US interests in the Pacific. The result, which is already manifesting, is a much more divided and hostile region than existed before—where the possibility of great power conflict between nuclear states seems to be more a matter of time than a mere hypothetical.

WRANGLING SOUTH KOREA

Roping South Korea into an alliance with Japan has been an aim of US policymakers since the Korean War, when then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson sought to weld South Korea and Japan together into an economic bloc that could revive Japanese industry post-World War II and ward off communist influence in Asia. In recent years, however, the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, coupled with the nuclearization of North Korea, has brought renewed urgency to this long-sought objective.

For years, Seoul proved to be a slippery fish in Washington’s net. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-In, delicately navigated support for US military expansion in Korea without making ironclad commitments to insert South Korea into an anti-China bloc. 

The reasons for South Korea’s previous ambiguity lay in a divergence of interests between Seoul and Washington in light of a rapidly changing world. China overtook the US as South Korea’s primary trade partner almost 20 years ago, and South Korea’s largest corporations depend on China for labor, production, and markets. While South Korea’s capitalists also benefit from the US military occupation of the peninsula, there are few benefits to them in picking sides in a zero-sum conflict between the US and China. 

This is all rather inconvenient for those in Washington intent on preserving US hegemony indefinitely. South Korea is not only geostrategically important in a conflict against China—it also has the largest military of any US ally in the region, and is also a crucial producer of advanced technologies which US corporations and the Pentagon depend on. To put it simply, the US needs South Korea to succeed in containing China far more than South Korea needs to participate in this conflict. 

Then there’s the other, far thornier issue of Japan’s 35-year colonization of Korea and the deep imprint it has left—and continues to have—on Korea. Japan has yet to fully acknowledge, apologize for, or offer satisfactory compensation for its many colonial crimes against the Korean people. This matter remains an open wound on the Korean psyche, and a thorn in the side of Tokyo and Washington. 

The litany of Japanese atrocities in Korea are too many to name here, but the most prominent issue at the moment concerns Japan’s forced conscriptions of Koreans during WWII. From 1939 to 1945, Japan forcibly conscripted hundreds of thousands of Koreans to fight its wars, and mobilized more than 3 million Koreans as forced laborers throughout its empire. Among the most heinous and best known of these crimes was the conscription of an estimated 200,000 Korean women into sexual slavery for Japan’s military—a program euphemistically known as the “comfort women” system. 

In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court ordered Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi, which profited from wartime forced labor, to pay reparations to their surviving victims. This incident set off a diplomatic row that escalated to the level of a trade dispute that lasted for years.

For Washington, the renewed push to force Japan to address and atone for these historical injustices could not have come at a more inconvenient time. Just a year before, in 2017, India, Australia, Japan, and the US had revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad—a military alliance intended to serve as the main axis of a new anti-China bloc. 

The Trump administration was keen to rope South Korea in as a fifth member of the Quad, but this goal never materialized. Entering any kind of explicit alliance with Japan was, and still is, politically toxic in South Korea. Moreover, as the world enters a new era where the US is losing its footing as the globe’s preeminent military and economic power, South Korea, among other nations, was quite sensibly reading the room and attempting to hedge its bets.

Upon entering office, Biden’s administration set achieving a trilateral partnership between the US, Japan, and South Korea as a high priority, seeking to accomplish what its predecessor could not. The Camp David summit represents a major step towards achieving this goal. While the White House and its cheerleaders have already claimed this as a victory for deft diplomacy, there is another cause that deserves significantly more credit: For the past year, current South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol has waged a ruthless war on the sections of South Korean civil society standing in the way of Washington’s agenda, attacking labor, peace groups, and the general public. 

ENTER YOON SEOK YEOL

Despite less than 18 months in office, Yoon has earned the dubious distinction of being South Korea’s least popular head of state ever—not to mention one of the most maligned leaders in the world. His administration has been pilloried by civil society groups and the main opposition Democratic Party for its corruption and ineptitude, while simultaneously characterized as a “prosecutor’s dictatorship” where escalating abuses of executive power are interpreted by many as signs of backsliding towards South Korea’s days of autocratic rule.

Domestically, the Yoon administration has declared war against its political enemies, particularly against the labor movement. In January of this year, hundreds of police officers raided the offices of multiple progressive organizations, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which represents over 2 million workers.

Yoon’s domestic crackdown isn’t taking place in a vacuum separate from the formation of the trilateral alliance. These repressive measures are the necessary internal complement to an international agenda primarily determined not in Seoul, but in Washington. 

Wielding trumped-up charges ranging from racketeering to spying on behalf of North Korea, the Yoon administration has weaponized law enforcement to continue its crackdown on labor and progressive organizers throughout this year. Over 1,000 members of the Korean Construction Workers Union alone are currently under federal investigation, and more than 30 are now in jail. One local KCWU leader, Yang Hoe-dong, died by self-immolation in protest of these charges—transforming himself into a martyr for the movement to rally around.

It’s not just labor unions that have found themselves in Yoon’s crosshairs. The 6.15 Committee has also been the target of official persecution. Originally founded in 2000, the 6.15 Committee has chapters on both sides of the Korean peninsula and overseas that work towards building support for Korean peace and reunification through people-to-people exchanges. At the same time that the KCTU’s offices were raided, members of the 6.15 Committee in Jeju province were arrested on espionage charges. The evidence? They had previously hosted a public screening of a North Korean film.

Perhaps most brazenly, the Yoon administration has also escalated attacks on the media. Two news outlets, Newstapa and the Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company, were raided by prosecutors on Sept. 14, 2023, for publishing a story in 2022 spotlighting Yoon’s alleged participation in an illegal loan scheme. Press freedom has never stood on firm ground in South Korea, even after the supposed era of “democratization” in the 1990s. Ousted former President Park Geun-hye notoriously maintained a blacklist banning thousands of artists considered unfriendly to her government. Yet no other president since the days of military dictatorship ever dared to use state security forces against a media office, until Yoon.

Yoon’s domestic crackdown isn’t taking place in a vacuum separate from the formation of the trilateral alliance. These repressive measures are the necessary internal complement to an international agenda primarily determined not in Seoul, but in Washington. 

OLD AUTOCRACY, NEW COLD WAR

As president, Yoon has overseen several dramatic changes in South Korean foreign policy that benefit US interests and require the repression of internal dissent to achieve: scuttling relations with North Korea, joining US attempts to technologically isolate China, and reconciling with Japan to clear the way for the Camp David summit. 

Since coming into office, Yoon has overseen a drastic escalation in the frequency and intensity of joint military exercises between South Korea and the US. These military exercises began in the 1970s as annual affairs—now, there are more than 20 planned for 2023 alone. These war drills routinely rehearse invasions of North Korea within miles of the DMZ, the de facto border that has divided Korea since the 1953 armistice. 

The KCTU and other labor groups have provided some of the most stalwart opposition to these war games. Last year, in response to the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, the KCTU joined hands with the more moderate Federation of Korean Trade Unions to deliver a joint statement denouncing war maneuvers—a statement that was, significantly, also signed by their union umbrella counterpart in North Korea. 

Predictably, Yoon and Biden’s acts of aggression have prompted parallel North Korean shows of force, which then provide the pretext for Washington, Seoul, and, increasingly, Tokyo to escalate in turn. The Biden administration deployed two US nuclear submarines to Korea for the first time in 40 years this summer, and the US and South Korea warned in a joint statement that “Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime.”

Labor repression within South Korea also plays a significant role in facilitating Washington’s aims to technologically and economically isolate China, a crucial pillar of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s “New Washington Consensus.” Here, the intersection of technological and military power are key. US domination of tech patents is one of the pillars of its premiere position in the global economy—a position it can only hold so long as Chinese attempts to develop domestic tech production capacity are foiled.

Maintaining US dominance of the tech market also has more obvious military implications for Washington, which depends on semiconductors produced in South Korea and Taiwan to operate its weapons of mass destruction. Gregory C. Allen, an analyst with the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, describes Washington’s tech offensive against China as “actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.”

Attempts to “strangle” Chinese tech have escalated sharply under the Trump and Biden administrations. Two of the clearest and highest-profile examples of this have been US attempts to sanction Huawei, going as far as to coordinate the arrest of the company’s CFO during a visit to Canada, as well as the push to ban TikTok, which culminated in a bizarre and ridiculous Senate hearing earlier this year.

But the war on Chinese tech goes beyond targeting individual Chinese conglomerates. Under Biden, a strategy has slowly taken shape to attempt to bring as much high tech production back to the US as possible while simultaneously taking measures to exclude China from existing international supply chains that rely heavily on production in Taiwan and South Korea. Two of Biden’s biggest legislative wins, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, contain provisions that effectively force South Korean companies to abandon their investments in China in favor of building electric vehicle and semiconductor factories in the US. South Korean EV battery makers have already committed $13 billion to build new plants and expand existing ones in seven US states.

This has all come at a steep cost to South Korea. South Korean technology exports to the Chinese market plummeted in the wake of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts. From 2022 until June 2023, South Korea suffered the most severe trade deficit in its history, hemorrhaging some $47.5 billion in 2022 alone. By far, the leading cause of this deficit was the sudden reversal in trade with China. 

Squeezed between rising inflation and spiraling economic prospects, South Korea’s workers are bearing the brunt of this economic realignment. At the same time, the Yoon government is scrambling to find some way to reverse its poor economic performance without making concessions to workers. Hence, Yoon’s war on trade unions—the only vehicles available for the working class to organize independently and fight back. As President Yoon himself put it, the crackdown on unions is necessary “so that corporate value can rise, capital markets can develop, and many jobs can be created.” South Korean labor is one of the only organized obstacles within the US-led bloc to Washington’s economic offensive against China. Crushing the unions means clearing the way for the unhindered reengineering of South Korea’s economy in Washington’s vision.

Amid this political and economic chaos, Yoon was able to broker a new understanding with Tokyo that put an end to years of diplomatic and economic clashes. In a move many critics described as unconstitutional, the Yoon administration unilaterally modified the 2018 Supreme Court decision ordering restitution from Japanese companies for Korean survivors of wartime forced labor. Instead, the survivors will now be compensated from a fund paid into by South Korean corporations, letting their Japanese counterparts off the hook. Despite being opposed by some 60% of South Koreans, this arrangement allowed for a thaw in Seoul and Tokyo’s relations, which, in turn, set the stage for the summit at Camp David this August. 

Analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad—including in the Taiwan Strait. 

The specter of North Korean nuclearization was presented as the primary justification for the Camp David summit and the resulting trilateral security cooperation alliance. But the outcomes of Camp David were not exclusively military in nature. Japan and South Korea also pledged to share data on critical supply chains with the US. 

Domestically, Yoon’s participation in the Camp David Summit was widely lambasted as a betrayal of South Korea’s interests. The summit has not only heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula; it has also done significant damage to South Korean relations with Russia and China, although China’s Xi Jinping seems determined to maintain cordial relations. Analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad—including in the Taiwan Strait. 

The Camp David Summit has only brought more darkness to the political climate in South Korea. Days before he left for the US, Yoon gave a national address for Liberation Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Rather than offer reflections on the human toll of the colonial period or the legacy of the Korean independence movement, Yoon fixated on a different target: “The forces of communist totalitarianism have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda,” he said. “We must never succumb to the forces of communist totalitarianism.” 

In South Korea, anticommunism and state repression have gone hand-in-hand since the “Republic of Korea” was first established in a widely opposed, US-sponsored election process in 1948. Before the Korean War officially began in 1950, a mass uprising on the island of Jeju against Korea’s division ended in the slaughter of between 30,000 and 60,000 people. In the early days of the Korean War itself, the South Korean government massacred between 100,000 and 200,000 political dissidents that had previously been forced to register in the so-called National Guidance League.

Throughout the long night of South Korea’s military dictatorships, which lasted from the end of WWII to the 1990s, strikes were broken, activists tortured and disappeared, and families of the massacred and vanished were silenced and surveilled in the name of suppressing the communist threat. When the city of Gwangju took up arms in 1980 to demand democracy and appealed to the US to intervene, President Jimmy Carter greenlit the deployment of South Korean paratroopers from the DMZ to butcher as many as 2,000 of the city’s residents. In the aftermath, the Chun Doo Hwan regime blamed the events in Gwangju on North Korean infiltrators and communists. 

For now, the Yoon administration has limited the scale and brutality of its crackdown to incarcerations and prosecutorial witch hunts. But the echoes of Korea’s recent history leave many wondering if, or when, the bloodletting will return. For its part, the Biden administration has followed in the footsteps of every previous administration by refusing to acknowledge the political repression unfolding under Yoon’s South Korea. Corporate media, in turn, has largely ignored the outcry against the Camp David summit by South Koreans themselves.

DIVIDING KOREA, DIVIDING THE PACIFIC

The joint statement delivered at Camp David cast the new US-Japan-South Korean axis in terms of a partnership based on a mutual desire for global peace and prosperity. But the immediate consequences of the summit strongly indicate that things are, in fact, moving in the opposite direction.

Rather than deescalating military tensions and breaking down barriers to international cooperation, the Camp David Summit signals an escalation of military threats coinciding with the tightening of a US-led hegemonic bloc in the Pacific. Every action has a reaction, and the reaction here is coming in the form of a consolidated counter-bloc between Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing.

The reestablishment of cooperative relations between North Korea, China, and Russia has been a long time coming. Relations between the three countries turned cold after the destruction of the Soviet Union. For decades, Russia and China acquiesced to UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea—something which they no longer are willing to abide.

In recent years, Beijing and Moscow have increasingly turned to each other, and to Pyongyang, as fellow targets of US sanctions, military encirclement, and propaganda. For all its bombastic proclamations about protecting peace and freedom around the world, Washington has created the conditions for a new unity of interests to emerge among those states it names as its enemies. 

Pyongyang, Beijing, and Moscow were all united in their alarm and rejection of the Camp David Summit—and not without reason. All three countries were explicitly named in the Camp David Principles and Joint Statement as problems to be managed by the self-appointed triumvirate. China and Russia also share borders with Korea, which will be the primary site of military escalation by Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. Beijing and Pyongyang swiftly denounced the new bloc. Moscow even suggested the start of trilateral naval exercises between the three countries as a counter to US-led military maneuvers.  

On Sept. 12, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boarded an armored train for the Russian Far East in his first foreign visit as head of state since 2019. In a meeting with Vladimir Putin, Kim expressed his government’s full support for Russia in its conflict against NATO, and received pledges to assist with developing space technologies from Moscow. 

For the time being, the two Korean states have aligned with opposing global interests. The possibility of reunification and reconciliation, which seemed so tantalizingly close just a few years before, now appears to be far out of reach. Yet even as the currents of world politics pull Korea apart once again, opportunities for a different future remain. 

South Korea, which ascended economically for decades on Washington’s coattails, now finds itself on the side of a declining power. Already, Seoul is being forced to choose between its objective interests in closer ties with its neighbors and Washington’s contravening political preferences. The result appears to be a declining trend in South Korea’s fortunes—something key stakeholders in the country may not tolerate forever. 

North Korea, isolated and encircled for so long, now has a wide and reliable rearguard of support in Moscow and Beijing. As the center of economic gravity pivots towards China, opportunities for North Korea’s advancement will only proliferate. The unintended result in the not-too-distant future could well be two Koreas that can stand on truly equal footing and finally become one, ending the division of Korea and the centrality of that division in manufacturing regional conflict.

But perhaps such predictions are too optimistic for the present moment. After all, Korea must survive intact for such a future to be possible. The Pacific today looks a lot like Europe on the eve of the First World War—a hotbed of military powers sharply divided into opposing blocs driven by irreconcilable interests, ready to be pulled into war at a moment’s notice. That war was so cataclysmic that for a generation it could only be remembered as The Great War. The war to come will be even more vicious, and so far, it’s being served to us with a smile.

Ireland’s neutrality is at stake

In this article, originally published by Socialist Voice, Jimmy Corcoran, who is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), takes up the new and increasing danger to what remains of Irish neutrality.

Neutrality is enshrined in the Irish constitution, but has been considerably undermined over recent years. That process has been further expedited with both the conflict in Ukraine and the new cold war against China, despite the principled position in defence of neutrality put forward by Irish President Michael D Higgins.

So far, Higgins’ public stance has prevented a formal application for NATO membership, but Micheál Martin, leader of the Fianna Fáil party and Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister), Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Minister for Defence in the Irish government, is now seeking to weaken the constraints on the deployment of Irish troops overseas as a thin end of the wedge. Hitherto, Irish troops have essentially been confined to United Nations peacekeeping duties overseas.

Corcoran notes that: “In the event of Sinn Féin becoming the major party in the next 26-County government [as is currently highly likely] they will be faced with this pro-imperialist bias [on the part of the Irish ruling class].”

The possibility of a revision or modification in Sinn Féin’s historically strong position on neutrality is currently a matter of public debate both within and outside the party. The CPI General Secretary poses the questions: “How will they react? Will they remain true to their anti-colonial and anti-imperialist tradition, or will they don the Atlanticist clothing of official Ireland?”

His article continues:

“They need to look beyond the world of US, EU and British imperialism towards the developing world. The Chinese share of the world economy is growing, while that of the United States is in relative decline. China is the main trading partner of more than 150 countries. Unlike Ireland, when China embarked on its path of modernising its economy the state remained in control, and it lifted 800 million people out of absolute poverty.”

Making an important call to Sinn Féin, Corcoran concludes:

“One doesn’t have to accept China’s self-designation as a socialist society to recognise that its development strategy has produced far better results than that pursued by the Irish ruling class since the late 1950s. If a Sinn Féin-led government is to develop Irish political and economic sovereignty and tilt the balance of forces towards the working class, it will need to counter the arguments of the Atlanticists. It could start by sending a high-level delegation to the People’s Republic of China to look at its path to modernisation and see what can be adapted to Irish conditions.”

The threat to completely abandon what remains of Irish neutrality is a continuing and increasing one. The recent intervention of President Higgins may have slowed down Micheál Martin’s march to NATO, but the threat remains.

Rather than applying for NATO membership immediately, the ruling class have set their sights as an interim step on removing the “triple lock” on the deployment of Irish troops. The capitalist parties and media claim that the triple lock is no longer tenable, because both Russia and China have a veto in the Security Council, which they can use to stop military aggression by the United States and its satellites. This ignores the fact that three NATO members—the United States, Britain, and France—also have a veto, which they use to protect imperialist aggression. The United States uses its veto against any condemnation of apartheid Israel’s continued colonisation in Palestine.

The report of the Commission on the Defence Forces demonstrates the continuing EU threat to Irish neutrality and sovereignty. It cites the EU Commission’s position that the rise of China must be seen as a threat to EU security.¹ This is reinforced regularly in the “news” media, to the extent that one would imagine that the Chinese military lie just over the horizon. The real political situation in Ireland consists of British (NATO) forces in the Six Counties and a US (NATO) base in Shannon Airport.

The Atlanticist ideology is deeply ingrained in the political class, the media, the higher echelons of the civil service, and the officer corps of the Defence Forces. Irish politicians and “journalists” ape the NATO line that China, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua and Venezuela are a threat to the “rules-based order” upon which “our” economic, political and military security is based.

But exactly what are these rules, who drafted them, and who approved them? Despite what many people may believe, the aforementioned rules are not the UN Charter or the various international agreements drafted under the aegis of the United Nations, or regional bodies such as the Council of Europe (not to be confused with the EU’s European Council) and then agreed by individual member-states: the “rules-based order” amounts to no more than the United States assuming the right to determine the economic and political path of all countries.

Any country that seeks to break with imperialism is automatically held to be in breach of the rules; and the United States reserves the right to punish them by economic or military intervention, or both.

In the event of Sinn Féin becoming the major party in the next 26-County government they will be faced with this pro-imperialist bias. How will they react? Will they remain true to their anti-colonial and anti-imperialist tradition, or will they don the Atlanticist clothing of official Ireland? The realpolitik gurus within the party will no doubt urge them to accept the Atlanticist position (they already have a welcome in the White House), as they will need the tax from American corporations to implement their social policies.

However, they need to look beyond the world of US, EU and British imperialism towards the developing world. The Chinese share of the world economy is growing, while that of the United States is in relative decline. China is the main trading partner of more than 150 countries. Unlike Ireland, when China embarked on its path of modernising its economy the state remained in control, and it lifted 800 million people out of absolute poverty.² It has an internal economy of 1.4 billion people, and government policies are concentrated on increasing the purchasing power of the poorest sections over the next decade. China spends far less on its military than the United States does; and China has not been at war for more than forty years.

One doesn’t have to accept China’s self-designation as a socialist society to recognise that its development strategy has produced far better results than that pursued by the Irish ruling class since the late 1950s. If a Sinn Féin-led government is to develop Irish political and economic sovereignty and tilt the balance of forces towards the working class, it will need to counter the arguments of the Atlanticists. It could start by sending a high-level delegation to the People’s Republic of China to look at its path to modernisation and see what can be adapted to Irish conditions. They would also see that China has no material benefit to gain from war, but that on the contrary a war could set its development back decades.

  1. Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces (2022), p. 6.
  2. World Bank press statement, 1 April 2022.

Closer ties with NATO would be a strategic blunder for India

In the following article, which was originally published in the Morning Star, Keith Lamb argues that Washington’s flattery of India and its encouragement of stronger ties with NATO, citing an alleged “Chinese threat”, is a trap into which New Delhi should not fall. The border dispute between India and China, he notes, is a legacy of British colonial aggression and India’s future lies in greater cooperation with China and the Global South generally. India’s support for the struggle of Mauritius to reclaim the Chagos Archipelago, a territory in the Indian Ocean which remains under illegal British colonial control and is home to a massive US military base, is cited by Keith as an example of how India grasps this imperative on some level. India’s interests, he argues would be well served by further consolidation of the BRICS grouping and greater promotion of regional energy integration and supply chains, not least the long-mooted Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline.

After a recommendation by the congressional committee on strategic competition with China, the US claims that India “is one of Washington’s closest allies.” As such, it is now courting India to join Nato to counter Chinese “aggression.”

India must not fall to Washington’s flattery and the trumped-up China threat. Strategically and economically, India’s future lies with greater co-operation with China and the global South, not Nato, which opposes development.

In terms of Chinese “aggression,” the US hypes up the border dispute. This dispute is a remnant of British colonialism annexing Chinese territory.

China’s claims are rational, not expansionist — they exist due to British hegemonic attempts to swallow up both China and India.

Importantly, this dispute is managed unprecedentedly well. The line of actual control is patrolled by non-gun-carrying troops. This peaceful status quo would be ruined by US-led Nato machinations, which continue, under a different guise, the hegemonic project of the British empire.

Colonialism hasn’t finished — it is alive under US leadership which has a greater global military presence than under the British empire. It seeks, through its hard power, to divide the global South and bring it to heel — strategically this is what India’s invitation to Nato represents.

On one level, India understands this, which is why India backs Mauritius’s claim on the British-controlled Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which hosts a US military base capable of threatening the Indian subcontinent.

The US talks about developing India and using India as the new “world factory,” but due to hegemonic strategic concerns, a country the size of India will never be allowed to develop to a comparable standard to that of the US

Hegemonism doesn’t seek development — it seeks to exploit and it seeks unipolarity. Those who try to break out of the net of economic domination will be countered.

China is the perfect example of this. It co-operated with the US, but due to its huge size, even a modest standard of development is seen as a threat to unipolarity.

India, if successful, would encounter the same problem — though if it loses its independence to the cancer of Nato perhaps it will never develop beyond being a low-end factory.

Anyone who doubts the resolve of the US and its power to silently smother its Nato “allies” needs to revisit the Nord Stream pipeline bombing allegations.

Europe is now cut away from Eurasia and is more reliant than ever on transatlantic shipping for its trade and energy.

India, though artificially disconnected from Eurasia, due to politics and connectivity, unlike the Nato-led Europe, still has the independence to overcome these issues.

Political co-operation can be achieved through the Brics coalition, which is currently expanding based on the principle of win-win global South development, rather than Nato’s principle of preventing the rise of the global South.

Continue reading Closer ties with NATO would be a strategic blunder for India

Securing US global primacy: how the US prepares for war on China

In this detailed essay, British author and peace campaigner Jenny Clegg provides a comprehensive overview of the US drive to war against China.

Jenny describes the attempts being made to construct a Global NATO, leveraging AUKUS, the remilitarisation of Japan, the undermining of the One China Principle and the prolonging of the Ukraine crisis in order to link the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres of war. Britain and Japan are emerging as the most important partners in this phenomenally dangerous strategy which, taken as a whole, constitutes “a historic restructuring of the international security order: strengthening of the NATO transatlantic military axis against Russia whilst elevating the US-Japan trans-pacific military axis at the core of newly created regional NATO-like multilateral security frame.”

The aim of this strategy is, of course, “to contain the growing multipolar trend”.

We must build a formidable global opposition to this warmongering. Thanks to an already-developing multipolarity, countries of the Global South are “starting to wake up to the real nature of US intentions”, and as such “a non-aligned resistance is taking shape”, with these countries asserting their sovereignty and interests. For anti-war activists in the West meanwhile, as we recall the historic protests against the Iraq War 20 years ago, Jenny writes that the task of playing our part in a worldwide mass movement for peace will require us to “resist the insidious influence of imperialism permeating through social democracy”.

The trajectory of war: Iraq then, China now?

Back in September 2002, Dan Plesch wrote an article in the Guardian entitled ‘Iraq first, Iran and China next’.  Less than a year earlier, George W. Bush had put China on a nuclear ‘hit list’ along with Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea. Twenty years on, it seems China’s turn has arrived, now identified as ‘America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge’.

Iraq was a turning point for the world as Bush ‘seized the unipolar moment’: ‘shock and awe’ and ‘full spectrum dominance’ in air, land, sea and space presaged a new militarism to secure US global primacy; and, blatantly displacing the UN on the pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the US found a new means of rallying allies in a ‘coalition of the willing’, embedding key NATO partners into ‘out of area’ operations.

All this was in line with the neocons’ Project for a New American Century which had advocated for the US pursuit of hegemony through the preeminence of its military forces.

As Plesch foresaw, the 2003 war set precedents to be used against other states that stood up against US global control.  US militarism has advanced into ‘air sea battle’ plans to wipe out multiple cities across China at a single strike, with trillions of dollars sunk into upgrading ‘full spectrum dominance’ capabilities; ‘humanitarian intervention’ has evolved into a New Cold War of ‘democracies against autocracies’ edging the UN further aside.  And now, using the Ukraine war to subjugate Europe and weaken Russia, the US is starting to assemble a new ‘coalition of the willing’ in the ‘defence of Taiwan’, ordering the global security architecture anew as it sets the stage for a new war on China.

But much has also changed over twenty years with the rise of China and the emergence of a multipolar world: as the economic balance shifts from West to East, countries in the Global South are not so easily influenced to follow US leadership.

What does China want?

US political elites have convinced themselves that China is bent on global hegemony.  Despite Xi Jinping’s assurances to Biden that China ‘has no intention to challenge or displace the United States’, they revert to racialised stereotypes of the Chinese as inveterate liars – recall the words of the popular 1880s music hall song: ‘for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, the Heathen China is peculiar’ – rather than face history.[1]

That China was its ally in WW2 is something the West conveniently forgets. KMT Nationalist and Communist armies successfully blocked the bulk of the Japanese forces from advancing west, a vital contribution recognised by Churchill and Roosevelt when they signed, with Chiang Kaishek, the 1943 Cairo Agreement.  This stipulated that the territories seized by Japan from China, including Taiwan, be restored, and that Japan be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific seized or occupied since 1914.

As one of the allies, China took part in the establishment of the United Nations, assuming a permanent seat on the Security Council.  But the UN order as based on the Cairo Agreement, confirmed in the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, was not to be.  Instead, the Japan peace settlement was determined at the behest of the US by the 1951 San Francisco Conference from which both the PRC and RoC (Republic of China) and the two sides of the Korean war were excluded, with the USSR refusing to attend.  US power came to prevail over the Pacific through a series of bilateral alliances and an extensive array of US military bases.[2] 

Despite political improvements over time – the PRC regained the UN seat,the US and China established official ‘One China’ ties, the USSR and China reached their own peace deals with Japan – the US-dominated military pattern remained and a number of territorial issues covered by the WW2 agreements affecting the USSR/Russia as well as China were left to fester.

What China wants is to see the promise of the Yalta of the East system realised through reunification with Taiwan and from this the construction of a cooperative security arrangement for the Pacific together with the US.

Militarising the Indo-Pacific

US control over the Pacific was never complete in the face of the armed resistance of the peoples of China, Korean and Indo-China and the non-aligned leanings of South East Asia states.  The US was never satisfied.

Today, claiming the Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘raises the spectre of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan’, the US is creating a new militarised order for the Indo-Pacific.  Increasing its own military capabilities to hem in China’s coastline and reinforce control across the wider oceans, the US is at the same time upgrading the key regional axis of power, its alliance with Japan, now elevated into a major military player.  Taking the Japan alliance and AUKUS as the core, the US is attempting to pull together a group of militarily committed powers covering the whole Pacific to oppose China.

Where previously the US pursuit of a ‘free and open’ Indo-Pacific has focused on the South China Sea, the prospect of a war over Taiwan has become the new focus.

The US is now reinforcing its force structure across the region, increasing manoeuvrability along the first island chain and plugging the gaps in this arc of alliances and bases from Japan in the North stretching down to the Philippines in the South.  The US has now secured agreement with the Philippines for four new bases, three in the Northern island of Luzon, within striking distance of Taiwan. Meanwhile under the terms of the new Japan alliance, the US Okinawa base north of Taiwan is being strengthened whilst the Japanese island of Mage is being rebuilt to serve US forces.  A new base is opening in Guam, the first in decades and a US nuclear submarine base is under construction in Australia.[3]

However it is the rehabilitation of Japan as a military power that is the biggest change in the region’s security pattern just as the US shifts its primary focus to the China challenge.

Japan also now identifies China as the main strategic challenge under a new National Security Strategy, the only US ally to do so. With the endorsement of its new US alliance, the country is undergoing the most radical overhaul in its regional positioning since WW2, vastly increasing its war-fighting capacity as it embarks on its largest military buildup in decades. Military spending is set to double from 1% to 2% of GDP over 5 years – from some $50 bn a year to an accumulated $318 bn – to see Japan leap to the third or fourth largest military power in the world.

Matching Japan in the North, Australia too is reconfiguring itself as a military power in the South Pacific, its military spend set to rise from around $49 bn to $57 bn per year by 2025-6.  Meanwhile Taiwan’s increased budget of $19bn is being backed by the US-pledged $10bn in military aid. 

For the US neocon Right, their long-held aspirations for a remilitarised Japan and an armed Taiwan serving as an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ – passed from MacArthur and the McCarthyites to John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz and now to Kagan and Blinken – are materialising.

As the US advances plans to catch Taiwan between the pincer of its forces in Okinawa and the Philippines, Biden’s constant vacillations between the One China policy and the defence of Taiwan are highly destabilising.  China is committed to a peaceful reunification, yet states it will never renounce the use of force directed against interference by outside forces.  The military display by the PLA following Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to the island demonstrates it is serious about this.  It has the capacity: in its vast naval fleet capable of imposing a blockade on the island, and with missiles capable of sinking US aircraft carriers and destroying US warships on the far side of the island, as its recent missile overflights demonstrated.

Lying 100 miles to the north of Taiwan and less than 300 miles from the massive US airbase in Okinawa, are the disputed islands known as the Diaoyutai in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese which may become the locus of battle given their critical importance in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan.

These uninhabited islands are claimed not only by China and Japan but also by Taiwan (the Republic of China); they were taken under control by the Japanese government in 2012 and now are increasingly patrolled not only by Japanese and Chinese but also by US forces.

To defeat any move by China, the US would need a coalition of forces – and this is what the Pentagon is seeking to construct.

Towards a Global NATO

With the transatlantic NATO alliance strengthened against Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, and a new Indo-Pacific regional security architecture  emerging, the US is also working to construct a third axis under its control between the European and Asian theatres to serve as a counter to China’s Eurasian Belt and Road initiative.

AUKUS and the US-Japan alliance both offer access points for linking the security of the Euro-Atlantic to the security of the Indo-Pacific in accordance with NATO’s New Security Concept adopted at its 2022 summit.

NATO allies are getting drawn into the Indo-Pacific security pattern step by step.  Military exercises have multiplied in the last year or two as a way of involving outside powers, not only the UK, but also France, which is boosting its military presence in the region. Germany has also sent in warships.  NATO forces made up at least half of last year’s US-led RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises.[4]  Australia, South Korea and Japan are again to attend the 2023 NATO summit, and Japan has become a regular participant in NATO Chief of Staff meetings.[5]

So far, NATO is committed to addressing the ‘systemic competition’ from China, but Stoltenburg’s recent visits to South Korea and Japan were looking for a more strategic undertaking.  Japanese PM Kishida, mirrored by Zelensky’s visits around Europe, had embarked earlier in January on a diplomatic tour to rally support, visiting the UK, France, Italy and Canada as well as the US to gain approval for Japan’s new militarist orientation.

Eliciting statements of stronger support from Macron and Trudeau, Kishida was to agree a form of strategic partnership with Meloni of Italy.

But it was Sunak that took things furthest, signing a Reciprocal Access Agreement to allow the two nations to deploy military forces on each other’s soil. This represents Japan’s first military agreement with a European power.

The UK leads the way

The UK and Japan began to deepen military cooperation with the visit of the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group in 2021.

This was followed in November 2022 with an agreement on new UK-Japan-Italy partnership – the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) – a hi-tech programme for unmanned aircraft and cutting-edge weapons heralded as an ‘unprecedented international aerospace coalition’.  BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and MBDA are to work together with Leopard in Italy and Mitsubishi in Japan to deliver next generation combat fighter jets.  The Tempest is to replace the Typhoon aircraft by the mid 2030s; its capacity to carry hypersonic missiles will significantly increase Japan’s capabilities in joining a US war with China.[6]

Also in November 2022, a ‘Vigilant Isles 22’ joint exercise simulated the retaking of an island under enemy control.  The new RAA aims to regularise such exercises in ‘island defence’.[7]  This should set alarm bells ringing.

Similar to ones agreed by the US and Australia with Japan, these arrangements gain significance together as providing the US with the means to break a blockade of Taiwan: the RAA could bring British forces into direct conflict with China given the deepening Sino-Japanese island dispute.[8]

The RAA and GCAP are designed to sit alongside AUKUS and with the US and Australia also having access agreements, few barriers remain for Japan to join the ‘Asian NATO’.

For the UK, the deals cement Global Britain’s Indo-Pacific tilt, breaking new ground in military relations with Japan as an example for other NATO members to follow.  As it opens the door for a wider international recognition of Japan’s rehabilitation as a military power countering any residual reluctance to do so given its past history, the UK is playing a significant role in the shift to a new Indo-Pacific security architecture.

At the same time, as the US’s key ally in the West, its links with Japan the US’ key ally in the East create a new global axis linking the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres of war.

As it looks to build a future beyond Brexit, Global Britain follows the US in tying future prosperity to military development – arms manufacture and arms exports.  Here it aims to serve as a new model of Western 21st century power ‘creating jobs, saving lives’ as through GCAP it boosts its ‘world beating defence industry’ to promote high-high-skilled employment, drive innovation, and open up markets in both Europe and Asia.

Aiding and abetting the US, the UK similarly indulges the military aspirations of Japan’s right wingers, long held in restraint by its constitutional pacifism.  Now GCAP subverts Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, the ‘peace clause’, by developing Japan’s counterstrike – that is – offensive capabilities.

Shockingly, the UK Prime Minister’s office was to draw parallels between the RAA and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902.[9]  Forged to counter Russia’s expansion to the East at the time, the alliance oversaw a twenty year period of Japan’s rapid military industrialisation which then drove its bloody expansion across Asia.

US progress after WW2 on democratising and demilitarising Japan ground to a halt after the CPC victory in China in 1949. Suspected Class A war criminals, such as the grandfather of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, were released from jail to help form the Liberal Democratic Party which has now held power almost continuously over the last 70 years.  Senior political figures in Kishida’s government continue to visit the Yasukuni shrine to the war dead which still memorialises those convicted of war crimes. 

It did not seem to bother either Biden or Sunak in promoting collaboration between Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems respectively with Mitsubishi to restore its role in arms manufacturer, that the company’s owners are yet to meet South Korean demands for compensation for the use of forced labour in WW2.  South Korea and Japan have recently announced some measures to ease these particular tensions.[10]

Constructing a new coalition

The US perceives the ‘security threats of the future’ – China – to be of such an order as to demand an entirely new response.  Learning the lesson from the Iraq war not to alienate allies, the US seeks to secure military pacts and alliances through a fusing of economic and technological resources into their structure.

US Secretary of State Blinken states: ‘whether techno-democracies or techno-autocracies are the ones who get to define how technology is used … will go a long way toward shaping the next decades.’

AUKUS and the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP have both been designed to set the pace in the military use of new technologies, integrating security- and defence-related science and technology as well as arms production bases and supply chains centred on US core technologies.  France, Italy, Germany as well as the UK are mentioned in Japan’s National Defense Strategy as partners with whom the government will work for training and exercises, defence equipment and technology cooperation.[11]

Meanwhile the Quad, falling short of a fully-fledged military alliance, uses Australia and Japan as a means to draw India closer to the US.

Rather, then, than relying simply on formal alliance structures, the US is making good use of unconventional arrangements and linkages to draw others along in the slipstream of its agenda, knitting an array of supporters together around the militarised core – all singing from the same hymn sheet of ‘freedom and democracy’.

Revolutions in technology and communications are opening new opportunities to broaden the more flexible ‘coalition of the willing’ format to a wider range of partners involved in a hybridised warfare.

Short of actual military engagement, support can come in various ways – through the provision of material, arms, logistics, economic and technological assistance, and through participation in economic warfare with sanctions along the lines of the informal groups now aiding Ukraine.  Arrangements involving data- and technology-sharing, and exclusive supply chains can serve as a dragnet to draw ‘democratic’ states away from economic and diplomatic links with ‘authoritarian regimes’.

In this way the emerging pattern of US military hegemony is being underpinned by the globalisation of what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has called a new Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT).[12]

Towards a new World War

With the Iraq war underway by March 2003, the US effectively stepped back from a fight on two fronts, agreeing within months to join the six-party talks on Korean denuclearisation. Today, in contrast, it is shifting from the strategy of containment, prolonging the conflict with Russia in Ukraine in order to gear up for war with China.

What is taking place is a historic restructuring of the international security order: strengthening of the NATO transatlantic military axis against Russia whilst elevating the US-Japan trans-pacific military axis at the core of newly created regional NATO-like multilateral security frame.  Meanwhile the UK-Japan military pact together with the increasing presence of NATO in Asia are laying the preliminary groundwork to complete the third axis of its triangle of global power, between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.

Not since WW2 with the Axis powers of Japan, Italy and Nazi Germany coordinating the worldwide fascist offensive, have these two theatres of war been bridged in this way, and not for want of the US trying.

Through these three axes of a Global NATO, the US aims to contain the growing multipolar trend.  A key here is to block the Eurasian link: the prolongation of the Ukraine war is helping to drive China and Europe apart, as China maintains neutrality whilst Europe demands it take a position on what it sees as its existential priority.

The US is applying immense pressure to achieve this, endeavouring to break the remaining post WW2 pacifist restraints in the Indo-Pacific as it has been doing in Europe so as to achieve these goals. 

Actually it is NATO that is being positioned to cover and play the coordinating role between the two theatres, with the US pushing plans at the next summit to prepare for fighting on the home front and beyond NATO borders simultaneously.  Europe will be under great pressure to increase spending on weapons procurement to free the US to move more of its assets closer to China.[13]

The major world powers are close to a stand-off – the last time this happened it ended indeed in world war.  The UN has become a battleground for the New Cold War as US-influenced motions are designed to divide the ‘democracies’ from the ‘autocracies’. The UN Charter represents the deep learning from the horrors of the two world wars, lessons which are embodied in its institutional design built to maintain world peace.  The UN is now under existential threat. Should war break out directly between the permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US and UK versus Russia and China – this would finally finish off the organisation. What then is left to prevent another word war?

One cannot help but wonder at the key players following the US into this deadly situation: the Anglosphere AUKUS pact intervening in an Asia becoming accustomed to managing its own affairs and a remilitarised Japan with its dark past to lead the region, partnering up in Europe with Italy, its former fascist ally and a Britain deluded by fantasies of past imperial glory.

But countries in the Global South are starting to wake up to the real nature of US intentions – to perpetuate its own and the West’s supremacy – and a non-aligned resistance is taking shape as they refuse to take sides over Ukraine. 

More and more developing countries will be looking to China and others in the BRICS for economic stabilisation with the prolongation of the war further damaging further the prospects of world economic recovery after COVID.

The Iraq war unleashed over a decade of disruption for the Middle East, leaving the region even further divided: the countries of East Asia hardly want to see this happen to them.  US plans to remilitarise and divide East Asia threaten to derail their promising prospects of further economic development, destabilising a region vital to the world’s future prosperity and the battle against climate catastrophe and not least at risk of nuclear proliferation.

Nor is Japan’s rearmament welcome in the region: not only China and the Koreas remain sceptical as to the sincerity of Japan’s apologies for its past, but other Asian nations, whose memories of Japan’s WW2 brutality and military-colonial occupations live on, may also be wary.  Indications are that the Japanese public themselves will not support increased taxes to cover the proposed rise in military spending.

Meanwhile, new US proposals that allies host more intermediate range missiles in the region are being met with reluctance not only Thailand and the Philippines but also Australia, South Korea and Japan.[14]

Ahead of the G7 summit, planned to take place in Hiroshima and built up by Kishida’s January tour of the Western powers, is intended to send a strong signal of their unity both to Russia and China.  A visit by Kishida to Kiev is also on the cards.

With the Ukraine crisis threatening to escalate into a direct clash between major powers, China has stepped forward with guidelines for a political settlement backed by a concept paper for a new global security. It may be that the Global South, still rather disorganised, will find direction under China’s proposals and start to set a limit to the US-led wider war preparations.[15]

The world is changing very fast indeed.

Peace and anti-war activists in the West seek to draw inspiration from the massive protests against the Iraq war, but to resist the insidious influence of imperialism permeating through social democracy requires a deeper historical and international understanding to unite a new worldwide mass movement for peace and common security.

[1]  E.Ayketin “China has no intention of challenging the US: Xi Jinping” Nov 15, 2022 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/china-has-no-intention-of-challenging-us-xi-jinping/2738050

[2] John W. Dower, The San Francisco System: past, Present and Future in US-Japan-China Relations, Asia Pacific Journal February 23, 2014, Vol. 12, Issue 8, No. 2 https://apjjf.org/2014/12/8/John-W-Dower/4079/artcile.html

[3] For details on the US military build up in the Pacific see Michael Klare, The Pentagon prepares for island combat in the Pacific as US-China tensions rise https://truthout.org/articles/pentagon-prepares-for-island-combat-in-the-pacific-as-us-china-tensions-rise/

[4] A. Wright “Largest ever US-Nato naval war drills in Pacific a Threat to Peace and Marine Life”, June 22, 2002 https://www.codepink.org/us-nato-naval-war-drills

[5] R. Nemoto, “Japan’s top uniformed officer to attend 1st NATO military chiefs meeting” May 17, 2022 https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Japan-s-top-uniformed-officer-to-attend-1st-NATO-military-chiefs-meeting

[6] K. Inagaki, L. Lewis and S. Pfeifer, “The fighter jet that could create a new alliance between the UK and Japan” Financial Times Nov. 27, 2022 https://www.ft.com/content/a013530d-82f9-4a89-b5cf-5d76032d8c47

[7] A. Chuter, UK, Japan ink agreement to enable bilateral troop deployments, Defence News, Jan 11, 2023 https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/01/11/uk-japan-ink-agreement-to-enable-bilateral-troop-deployments/

[8] The US is also now pushing the Philippines into a similar arrangement so that not only could Philippines’ forces be deployed in Japan but Japanese forces be deployed say in Luzon.

[9] Downing Street Press release, Jan 11 2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-hosts-japanese-pm-and-agrees-historic-defence-agreement

[10] A. Jung-a and K. Inagaki “US hails thaw between Seoul and Tokyo” Financial Times March 7 2023

[11] National Defense Strategy Dec 16, 2022 https://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda/guideline/strategy/pdf/strategy_en.pdf

[12] R. McGovern US-Russia Talk About Where Not To Place Missiles, Jan 11, 2022
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/01/10/us-russia-talk-about-where-not-to-place-missiles/

[13] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-14/nato-looks-at-raising-defense-spending-target

[14] Rand Corporation, Ground-Based Intermediate-Range Missiles in the IndoPacific: assessing the positions of US Allies  https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA393-3.html

[15] China’s Foreign Ministry Proposals for a Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis  https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/202302/t20230224_11030713.html

Standing against NATO and AUKUS a key issue for the peace movement

On Saturday January 21, Britain’s Stop the War Coalition organised its first-ever trade union conference.

Speakers included former Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP; President of the RMT rail workers union Alex Gordon; Deputy President of the PCS civil service union Martin Cavanagh; Alex Kenny from the National Education Union; Liz Wheatley of public service union Unison; Ricardo de la Torre of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU); Daniel Zahedi of the junior doctors section of the British Medical Association (BMA); striking ambulance worker George Solomou; José Nivoi from the Autonomous Collective of Dockworkers in Genoa, Italy, who have repeatedly prevented arms shipments from being sent to conflict zones in the Middle East; Deputy President of Stop the War Andrew Murray; Stop the War Convenor Lindsey German; and veteran anti-war campaigner Salma Yaqoob.

China specialist Dr Jenny Clegg, who is a member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group, introduced and led a well-attended session on the AUKUS pact between Britain, Australia and the United States, and on the ‘coming war on China’. She was joined on the panel by Dr. Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and Warren Smith of the Australian Maritime Union.

We reproduce Jenny’s opening remarks below, which present an admirable and concise summary of the regional situation. Their cogency and urgency are only underlined by the subsequent visit of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to Japan and South Korea.

Introduction

The Ukraine war, Russia, and NATO, have been demanding the attention of the anti-war movement, but there is also a whole other dimension to Global Britain that is unfolding in the Asia Pacific.

Some might say that the US and NATO want to weaken Russia before moving on to China in the future – in fact war preparations are accelerating right now in the East.

Progress on AUKUS

The announcement of AUKUS in September 2021 was a surprise, made with no democratic debate.  It came as the new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier was engaging in multiple joint military exercises in the South China Sea – flying the flag for Johnson’s Global Britain, demonstrating the new Indo Pacific tilt, but the F35 fighter jets it carried actually belonged to the USAF.

The key feature of the AUKUS pact was seen to be the US and UK agreement to assist Australia in acquiring nuclear powered submarines.  BAE systems declared itself ready to support production. However, over the last year, as the US and UK have tried to wangle their way around the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without apparent success, the deal has struggled and it is not certain that the US and UK can take on the building work given their own nuclear submarines programme commitments.

However, AUKUS is more than just the submarines: it is about Australian militarisation, about advancing military technologies and military industrial cooperation.  BAE systems, Rolls Royce and MBDA have long had subsidiaries in Australia helping to supply its armed forces.

Continue reading Standing against NATO and AUKUS a key issue for the peace movement

Truss and China: opening a new war front?

This important article by Jenny Clegg, academic and campaigner with CND and Stop the War Coalition (and member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group), analyses the foreign policy of the current British government, led by Prime Minister Liz Truss. Jenny notes that Truss is known for her “extreme hawkishness and a highly ideological world view” and has adopted an aggressively anti-China stance, viewing China as a threat to the so-called rules-based international order.

However, Truss and her team are also facing an extremely difficult and complex economic situation, and “questions will surely be raised from the business community as to the wisdom of jeopardising economic ties with the world’s second largest economy.” Jenny writes that at least 150,000 British jobs are connected to economic links with China, and hence it would be prudent for the government to reconsider its alignment with the US-led New Cold War. Certainly ordinary people in Britain have nothing to gain from this adventurism. Jenny concludes that the people of Britain should exert pressure on their government to adopt a sane policy in relation to China: “No way should we allow these extreme reactionaries to march us into a US-led war with China, a war bringing two nuclear-armed states into face-to-face combat.”

This article first appeared in the Morning Star.

Liz Truss, in her first international speech as prime minister at the UN, called on the G7 and “like-minded countries” to join together to limit the influence of “authoritarian aggressors.” Meeting with President Joe Biden later, she clarified her plans “to ensure Britain is fully equipped to tackle the evolving challenge from countries like China and Russia.”

Truss talks of “refreshing” the Integrated Review, which outlines British priorities in diplomacy and defence over the coming decade, to elevate the designation of China in particular from “systemic competitor” to an “acute threat” on a par with Russia.

It is clear she brings to her new role as head of government an extreme hawkishness and a highly ideological world view.

She believes in a “strong and outward-reaching Global Britain,” proposing to boost defence spending from 2 to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 to back this. She has vowed “to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine” and has called for Nato to “go global” to tackle “worldwide threats.”

In her previous posts as international trade secretary and then foreign secretary, she advanced Britain’s Indo-Pacific tilt promoting military and military-industrial links with the region, and indeed it was she who signed the Aukus pact to supply Australia with the technology to build nuclear submarines aimed at containing China.

Truss views China as a threat to the “rules-based international order,” and calls for the G7 to form an “economic Nato” so as to play an even a greater role in rule-making.

Continue reading Truss and China: opening a new war front?

NATO is the real ‘systemic challenge’ against global peace and stability

The following article, published recently in People’s Daily (one of the most important, longstanding and widely-read newspapers in China), responds to NATO’s recently-issued Strategic Concept document, which describes China as a ‘systemic challenge’ and outlines NATO’s role in confronting this purported challenge. The article points out that – unlike the US or NATO – China’s record is one of consistently pursuing peace, multilateralism, non-interference and mutual benefit in international relations. The author calls on NATO to drop its anti-China aggression, put an end to New Cold War activity, and orient itself towards global peace.

The so-called new “Strategic Concept” document issued at the just-concluded 2022 NATO Summit distorts China’s domestic and foreign policies. It claims that China challenges NATO’s “interests, security and values,” and NATO will jointly respond to such “systemic challenge” posed by China.

NATO’s efforts to make and spread lies about China and hype the so-called “China threat” are driven by the organization’s reemerging Cold War mentality and ideological bias. It is just an awkward show staged by the U.S. to extend NATO’s reach to the Asia-Pacific region.

NATO’s practice encourages confrontation and threatens global security. Regional countries and the international society must stay alert to it.

China follows an independent foreign policy of peace and is always a staunch force for global peace and prosperity. The country has never initiated a war or conflict and never taken an inch of foreign land, nor has it interfered in other countries domestic affairs or exported ideology. It never engages itself in long-arm jurisdiction, unilateral sanctions, or economic coercion.

China is firmly committed to upholding multilateralism, supporting the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on the Charter of the UN, international law and the universally recognized basic norms governing international relations.

Pursuing a peaceful development path, China is actively building a society with a shared future for mankind and advancing the high-quality construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. It has proposed and been implementing the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, and offered a number of public products to help the international community deal with major issues on peace and development.

China presents valuable opportunities for world peace and development. It does not pose “systemic challenges”, as wrongly purported by NATO. NATO has disregarded facts and confounded black with white when making groundless accusations, smears and attacks against China. However, it will never change the fact or the international society’s positive evaluation on China.

NATO is a Cold War product that is gradually becoming a tool for the U.S. to maintain its hegemony and instigate a new “Cold War.” The first-ever mentioning of China in NATO’s so-called “Strategic Concept” document is closely related to U.S. coercion.

The incumbent U.S. administration inherits the wrong practices of its predecessor and keeps seeing China as a strategic competitor. It has formed cliques to oppress China.

The NATO Summit this year has not only hyped the so-called “China threat,” but also invited some Asia-Pacific allies of the U.S. It exactly exposed the strategic scheme of the U.S. to make NATO’s foray into the Asia-Pacific.

China has to pay a high attention and make a systematic response to NATO’s so-called “systemic challenge” rhetoric. Any attempt to hurt China’s legitimate interests will be met with strong reactions. The country has a firm resolution to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests. The U.S., emboldening itself by involving a few of its allies, will only see its plot fail at the end.

NATO has always been haunted by the Cold War mentality though the geopolitical tension has already ended for some 30 years. It has never stopped making enemies out of nothing. Indeed, NATO is a “systemic challenge” for global security.

NATO, or North Atlantic Treaty Organization, always poses as a regional defensive organization. However, it has never stopped geographical expansion. It has started and been involved in a big number of wars, killing innocent civilians, hurting world peace and creating humanitarian disasters.

To seek its own absolute security, NATO constantly moved its borders eastward, which led to the bitter fruit of the Ukraine crisis that seriously impacted the peaceful development of Europe and even the world at large.

NATO”s previous expansions and disruptive practices were all under the disguise of “consolidating democracy” and “extending stability, promoting common values.” Today, it is once again playing the same old trick, calling its conspiracy to disrupt the Asia-Pacific region a move to protect “international order” and safeguard its values. Even former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana warned that a “global NATO” or “NATO plus” could divide the world into adversarial blocs.

The outdated Cold War script must not be repeated in the Asia-Pacific, neither shall the disorder and conflict currently taking place in Europe be duplicated in the region.

We sternly warn NATO that it must immediately stop its groundless accusation and provocative remarks on China, abandon its outworn Cold War mentality and zero-sum game, and halt its dangerous practice of disordering Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Any attempt to reverse the trend of history is doomed to fail.

Danny Haiphong and Carlos Martinez discuss NATO, BRICS and the New Cold War

On 1 July, our co-editors Danny Haiphong and Carlos Martinez had a detailed discussion on Danny’s Left Lens YouTube show about the crisis in Ukraine, NATO’s escalation against both Russia and China, the comparison between the recent BRICS and NATO Summits, and the foreign policy continuity from Trump to Biden. Watch below.

Webinar: The Empire Strikes Back – Imperialism’s global war on multipolarity

Our next webinar takes place on Saturday 11 June 2022, 11am (US Eastern) / 8am (US Pacific) / 4pm (Britain) / 11pm (China).

Register on Eventbrite

This webinar will address the latest developments in international politics, particularly around NATO, AUKUS, the war in Ukraine, and the increasing militarization of the US-led New Cold War.

Topics include:

  • NATO, AUKUS and the military infrastructure of the New Cold War
  • The evolving China-Russia relationship and the West’s response
  • The Biden administration’s undermining of the One China Principle
  • Solomon Islands and the West’s plan for hegemony in the Pacific
  • NATO’s plan for Ukraine and how this impacts China
  • Prospects for sovereign development in the Global South

Confirmed speakers:

  • Victor Gao (Vice President, Center for China and Globalization)
  • Ben Norton (Editor, Multipolarista)
  • Li Jingjing (Reporter, CGTN)
  • Jenny Clegg (Author, ‘China’s Global Strategy: Toward a Multipolar World’)
  • Danny Haiphong (Author, ‘American Exceptionalism and American Innocence’)
  • Chris Matlhako (SACP Second Deputy General Secretary)
  • Mustafa Hyder Sayed (Executive Director, Pakistan-China Institute)
  • Professor Ding Yifan (Senior Fellow, Taihe Institute, China)
  • Ju-Hyun Park (Writer and organizer, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development)
  • Rob Kajiwara (President, Peace For Okinawa Coalition)
  • Sara Flounders (United National Antiwar Coalition, International Action Center)
  • Yury Tavrovsky (Chairman, Russian-Chinese Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development)
  • Radhika Desai (Convener, International Manifesto Group)

Serbia and China honor Chinese martyrs killed in NATO bombing

The three Chinese journalists who were murdered when the US-led NATO forces bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in violation of all norms of international law, during the vicious war against Yugoslavia in 1999, were remembered by Serbian and Chinese officials on May 7th.

Speaking at the ceremony, Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin, said: “Chinese citizens that laid their lives here, didn’t even need to be here, but they chose to do so, in order to share the most difficult and saddest moments with us… Serbia will never stop asking for responsibility for crimes conducted by NATO during their aggression… Those (Western powers) which now ask from us to align with their policies should remember their statements from 1999.”

The following report was originally published by Xinhua.

Laying wreaths at memorial plaques here dedicated to the three Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing of the former Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, representatives of Serbia and China on Saturday commemorated the Chinese martyrs and condemned NATO’s “barbaric act.”

Among the officials present at the commemoration were Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin, Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Darija Kisic Tepavcevic, and Tian Yishu, Charge d’affaires of the Chinese embassy in Serbia.

“Chinese citizens that laid their lives here, didn’t even need to be here, but they chose to do so, in order to share the most difficult and saddest moments with us,” Vulin said.

“Serbia will never stop asking for responsibility for crimes conducted by NATO during their aggression,” Vulin said. “Those (Western powers) which now ask from us to align with their policies should remember their statements from 1999.”

He noted that Serbia and China “have a friendship made of steel, forged in the most difficult of times.”

Tian said that “China-Serbia friendship of steel is now playing a vital role in the peace and economic recovery of this region.”

“We wish to continue comprehensive cooperation with all peace-loving countries, both in fields of economic cooperation and security,” he said.

Svetozar Parezanin, a retired colonel of the Serbian Army who came here with a local citizen association, held a banner with photographs of the three killed journalists — Shao Yunhuan of Xinhua News Agency, and Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying of the Guangming Daily newspaper.

“We remember that day very well, and we will never forget it. We come here every year to show our feeling of respect towards brotherly Chinese people,” Parezanin said.

Wreaths are seen at memorial plaques dedicated to the three Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing of the former Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, in Belgrade, Serbia, May 7, 2022.(Photo by Wang Wei/Xinhua)
Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin (L, front), Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Darija Kisic Tepavcevic (R, front), and Tian Yishu (C, front), Charge d’affaires of the Chinese embassy in Serbia, mourn at memorial plaques dedicated to the three Chinese journalists killed in the NATO bombing of the former Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, in Belgrade, Serbia, May 7, 2022.(Photo by Wang Wei/Xinhua)

NATO and AUKUS: the makings of an Asian NATO

In this recent presentation to the International Manifesto Group webinar, The Case Against NATO, Dr Jenny Clegg traces the makings of an Asian NATO via such mechanisms as AUKUS and the Quad whose fundamental purposes are to contain and confront a rising China. She further draws attention to the extension of NATO influence into the Asia Pacific through its Partnerships for Peace for example with Japan, South Korea and Australia; and also considers the impact of the Ukraine crisis in relation to these developments with the increase of tensions, divisions and militarisation in the region

NATO serves as the nuclear-armed fortress that helps to elevate the West above the ‘Rest’; it anchors Europe to its western orientation, severing it from its Eurasian geography.

But NATO members are also Pacific powers – the US, Canada, but also France and Britain, which maintain possession of a few islands and hence some considerable maritime territory. 

In this Pacific presence can be seen the makings of an Asian NATO as a counter to the growing Eurasian dimension.

Whilst the world’s focus is on Russia in the Ukraine, for the US, China is the ‘pacing challenge’, and from this perspective, the Ukraine crisis can be seen as the first phase in the US’s last-ditch battle to retain its world supremacy, a battle pitting ‘democracies against autocracies’ in which NATO is to serve as the armed vanguard against the so-called Russia-China alliance.

The world before NATO was to be a new world of the UN Charter which, in the coordination of the wartime allies – the US, UK, Soviet Union and China – and in its commitment to national sovereignty, held the promise of a multipolar world.

It was this new world of the equality of nations that the US set out to smash in driving the first Cold War.

From Cold War to thaw back to Cold War in the Asia Pacific

The Cold War in the Pacific divided China and Korea and involved two hot wars – in Korea and Indochina – at the cost of countless lives and countless war crimes.

The US sought to set up an Asian NATO – however Australia lacked trust in Japan after WW2; Japan’s military was constrained under Article 9 of its constitution; and many South East Asian states, having fought to gain independence, chose non-alignment over subordination in a military alliance.

SEATO – Southeast Asia Treaty Organization – was set up in 1955 to block the ‘communist domino effect’ but it lacked unity and folded in 1977. The US instead relied on bilateral alliances and a spread of some 400 military bases to encircle China.

The Cold War never ended in the Pacific – China and Korea remain divided. Nevertheless, a degree of thaw in the 1990s allowed China to improve its relations in the region whilst ASEAN extended membership to the three communist-aligned Indochinese nations along with Myanmar.  Regional economic growth entered a new phase.

But then, sending things into reverse, Obama embarked on his Asian pivot launching the freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea.  Following this, Trump declared China a strategic competitor, initiating the Quad to draw India into a new network with Australia, Japan and the US.

2020 saw the counter-hegemonic trend gather momentum with agreement on RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, embracing large parts of East Asia and Oceania; the EU was also about to sign a major investment deal with China – these two  developments recalling the coalition of Germany all the way across to China which Brzezinski foresaw in 1997, claiming this would be hostile to the US.

The US then prepared to strike back, launching the New Cold War, followed in September 2021 by AUKUS – a mini–Asian NATO, an intervention by the outside Anglosphere which started to sow disunity within the region, undermining its resolve for Asians to deal with Asian affairs.

NATO in the Pacific

NATO itself has been expanding into Asia since 2012 with its Partnerships for Peace programme drawing in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the Philippines. 

By 2014, an equation was already being drawn between Russia and the Ukraine and China in the South China Sea.

At the 2019 NATO summit, Pompeo raised the issue of the China threat and, in 2021, the NATO 2030 document widened its focus to include the ‘IndoPacific’, making very clear a strategy of: Russia first then China.

Biden has advanced on Trump’s anti-China approach in two key ways, elevating the Quad and bringing the Taiwan issue more into view. But the Quad lacks military muscle – hence the announcement of AUKUS. 

The US and UK are to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, not only violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but also subverting the nuclear weapons free zones of South East Asia and the South Pacific – both important advances of regional independence in the 1980s.  These submarines will extend Australia’s naval reach much further into the South and East China Seas. 

Australia is to be transformed into a forward base for the US military, providing the core of a regional ‘hybrid warfare’ network, with looser links bringing nations into various regional networks under US direction, covering diplomacy, intelligence sharing, media narratives, supply chains and so on. 

The pact also represents a new level of cooperation in military technologies – in quantum computing and digital technologies – as exemplified in the recent announcement on the development of hypersonic weaponry. 

Accompanying the promotion of arms sales and the implementation of sanctions, AUKUS then is designed to secure US dominance over East Asia’s future growth in its support of US competition at the cutting edge of new technologies.

The impact of the Ukraine crisis

Amidst the Ukraine crisis, fears have been raised of a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan – in a completely false parallel between Ukraine, a sovereign state and Taiwan, recognised by the UN as a part of China.

As in Europe, militarisation in East Asia is accelerating: Japan has just increased its military budget by $50bn; Australia has estimated the cost of AUKUS at an eye-watering $250bn. With the newly elected conservative president in South Korea, a North East Asian arc with Japan and the US, comes into view, and with both Japan and South Korea strengthening military links with Australia, there are possible ties here into AUKUS in the South.

AUKUS only received a lukewarm reception amongst regional powers with Indonesia and Malaysia most openly expressing their reservations. Again, as in Europe, pressure is being brought to bear to erode the long held stabilising positions of Japan’s peace clause and ASEAN’s non-aligned inclinations, using the threat of sanctions to splinter and subordinate the organisation so as to clear the obstacles to militarisation.

Rather than Ukraine-Taiwan, Ukraine-the South China Sea may offer a better parallel: whilst Russia insists on Ukraine’s neutrality, China has been seeking the neutrality of the South China Sea in negotiations on a code of conduct which limits permission for outside powers to set up naval bases.

The marker of the Cold War battle line of ‘democracies versus autocracies’ is being drawn by the US around the so-called democratic right of nations to choose their allies. This is also the meaning behind the ‘free and open IndoPacific’ – that is freedom to join in the making of an Asian NATO.

Why is it that the US is blocking peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality? Why can’t it accept the legitimacy of Russia’s security concerns?  Not least, because this would set a precedent for China over Taiwan and the South China Sea.  And it is China that is seen as the real, comprehensive challenger.

Amidst false allegations that China is supplying arms to Russia and propping Russia up, NATO is strengthening its links with the Pacific 4 – Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.  The upcoming summit this June will set the stage for an attempt to legitimise NATO’s increasing penetration into the IndoPacific region as the necessary opposition to the so-called ‘Russia-China alliance’.

In conclusion

NATO expansion is the root cause of the war in Europe; through its links into the Asia Pacific, it is equally intent to divide and destabilise a region now forecast to overtake Europe as the centre of the world economy by 2030.

Russia first, China next, NATO is bringing on a new world order – it’s called the jungle.

If China has not criticised Russia, at least one reason is because it looks to the long term – to a new security plan not just for Europe but one which restores its Eurasian orientation, a new Eurasian Security Order

China, in taking its stand on the indivisibility of security, on security for all – not of one at the expense of another – is keeping alive the spirit of the UN Charter.

Qin Gang: The Ukraine crisis and its aftermath

China’s Ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, is making persistent efforts to explain to the American public his country’s real position regarding the conflict in Ukraine and to counter disinformation. Below is his article, published on April 18 by The National Interest, a leading US conservative bimonthly International Relations magazine, founded in 1985.

Ambassador Qin notes that: “To end this unwanted conflict as soon as possible is more important than anything else.” He notes that Europe is the focus of the current crisis and the continent needs not only an end to the fighting but also a fundamental answer to the question of securing lasting peace and stability and a balanced and effective security architecture.

Qin Gang contrasts the eastward expansion of NATO, which contributed in no small measure to today’s tragic situation, with the development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which framework China has amicably settled all its historic border disputes with Russia and the countries of Central Asia, both of which may be traced to 1996, and notes: “Different choices lead to different outcomes.”

The Ukraine crisis is agonizing. One more minute the conflict lasts means one more hardship for the 43 million Ukrainian people. To end this unwanted conflict as soon as possible is more important than everything else.

China loves peace and opposes war. It advocates upholding international law and universally recognized norms governing international relations and respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine. China supports all efforts that can deliver a ceasefire and relieve the humanitarian crisis on the ground, and will continue to play a constructive role toward this end.

Lessons must be learned. While working to end this conflict, we must also give some serious thought to the changes brought by the crisis and the path forward in its aftermath.

The postwar international system is coming under the heaviest pressure since the Cold War. The once-in-a-century pandemic, the Ukraine crisis and the unparalleled sanctions, the spiraling inflation and a looming recession, all these have sounded the alarm for the “boiler” of the international system. It is high time for us to reduce the pressure, not the other way round, for our shared world.

Continue reading Qin Gang: The Ukraine crisis and its aftermath

Fact sheet: China’s position on the situation in Ukraine

We are pleased to present the following fact sheet about China’s position on the situation in Ukraine, sent to us by the International Department of the Communist Party of China.

The fact sheet debunks the US State Department’s allegations and insinuations that China is fomenting or taking sides in the Ukraine crisis. China consistently works toward peace and stands for negotiated solutions to problems between countries. Furthermore, as the largest trading partner of Russia, Ukraine and the European Union, China’s basic interests demand peace.

China has refused to support the US-led unilateral sanctions against Russia, on the basis that these sanctions are illegal and only serve to increase tensions and prolong the conflict. Meanwhile they are having a serious economic impact on countries around the world, particularly in the Global South, where the rise in prices for food and energy is seriously impacting wellbeing.

The fact sheet points out: “An enduring solution would be for major countries to respect each other, reject the Cold War mentality, refrain from bloc confrontation, and build step by step a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture for the region and for the world. China has been doing its best for peace and will continue to play a constructive role.”

Ukraine fact sheetDownload

Wang Wenbin: NATO serves no other purpose than war

Speaking at the Ministry of Foreign Affair’s press conference on March 25, 2022, Spokesperson Wang Wenbin commented on NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia (which was launched 23 years ago) and NATO’s record as an aggressive alliance and product of Cold War.

On March 24 1999, US-led NATO forces blatantly bypassed the UN Security Council and began the 78-day incessant bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a sovereign country, in grave violation of relevant international conventions and basic norms governing international relations. In 12,000 strikes, over 10,000 tonnes of explosives were dropped and more than 3,000 missiles fired, targeting everything from medical facilities to ancient cultural relics, residential buildings and schools. Thousands of innocent civilians including three Chinese journalists were killed. During the bombing campaign, NATO even used depleted uranium bombs prohibited by international conventions, causing long-term damage to Serbia’s environment and people’s health. The people of Serbia will not forget NATO’s aggression, nor will the people of China and the rest of the world.

NATO is convening a summit on Ukraine on the 23rd anniversary of its bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I wonder if the US and other NATO members have asked themselves: What is the root cause of the Ukraine crisis? What responsibility should the US and NATO assume? Before reflecting on their crimes against the people in countries like Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and NATO have neither right nor authority to judge others. Born out of the Cold War, NATO serves no other purpose than war. It has never contributed to peace and security of our world and will never do so. All those who truly love peace and are committed to advancing peace will resolutely reject NATO’s continued expansion.