NATO chief assumes predecessor's mantle

This is an editorial from China Daily.

Before Mark Rutte assumed the NATO general secretary's post on Oct 1, there were hopes he would make more balanced and independent decisions than his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg, even try to persuade Russia and Ukraine to end their hostilities at the earliest. Yet a gathering of NATO defense ministers the former Dutch prime minister presided over last week belied those hopes.

The NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday was by no means a gathering to exchange views on the global security situation. Instead, it was an occasion for the new NATO chief to assume the mantle of his predecessor as a US yes-man.

With North Atlantic Treaty Organization's close partners in the Asia-Pacific region — Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea — and the European Union taking part in the executive-level meeting of NATO, the organization, under Rutte's leadership, has taken a big step forward in transforming their symbolic presence at the NATO summits in Madrid last year and Washington earlier this year into a worrisome routine practice.

Although details of the meeting remain unknown, the selective information NATO has chosen to release shows China's growing national strength was cited as the main "reason" for NATO to justify its expansion to the Asia-Pacific.

Rutte said the participation of NATO's "Indo-Pacific" partners and the EU in the defense ministers' meeting is "a clear sign of our deepening cooperation in the face of shared challenges".

"The war in Ukraine has shown that instability in Europe can have far-reaching consequences across the world, and that countries thousands of miles away — as far away as Iran, China and even North Korea — can become security spoilers in our own backyard. Our world is closely linked — and so is our security," Rutte told journalists.

Rutte even outdid his predecessor by publicly declaring that he is willing to fulfill Ukraine's wish to become a NATO member, a move widely seen as a grave provocation to Russia and will further complicate the Ukraine crisis. "At the moment it seems that it will be Ukraine as number 33, but maybe somebody else pops in front of him. But Ukraine will be a member of NATO in the future," Rutte said. "That is what we decided in Washington. So the question is now about the timeline ... Then the question exactly about ... when I cannot answer now .... "

Allies need "to move further and faster to meet the growing threats we face", he said, adding that "this requires more forces, capabilities and investment to meet the ambitious targets set by our defense plans". It is apparent that Rutte was carrying out Washington's task of merging security with technology, trade and climate action by overgeneralizing the concept of "security", which the United States-led West believes will prove effective in countering the China "threat".

However, neither NATO's promise to help Ukraine nor its so-called commitment to contain China is new. While the former has worsened the security situation in Europe, the latter has soured relations between China and NATO, which is a pity because before the Ukraine crisis broke out, China and NATO could still communicate with each other in good faith to seek to work together to deal with common security threats.

As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, China has the best track record among major countries when it comes to maintaining peace and security. So it is to be hoped that NATO will take a hard look at what it has done to Europe's security architecture, reflect on the consequences of triggering bloc confrontation, and stop smearing China and see China for what it is: a peace-loving, development-oriented nation.