By Prof. Xiaoyang Zhang
NATO and China are not allies. Nor are they on good terms as partners. This was so in history and is also the case at the present time.
Created after the World War II, NATO is a political and military coalition, embracing thirty-two member States currently, mostly from the West led by the US. Originally, NATO was to counter-balance the Soviet Union and its satellite Eastern European countries. The bedrock principles for NATO members to adhere to could be well detected in the North Atlantic Treaty, i.e. the NATO’s founding protocol.
In light of the North Atlantic Treaty, collective defence is NATO’s lifeline, and NATO members must be in full compliance with the Charter of the United Nations as to ensure global security and justice.
New China (i.e. the People’s Republic of China) was founded by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. Unsurprisingly, new China and its ideological mentor Soviet Union were intimate comrades for quite a long period of time.
As opposed to NATO, the Warsaw Pact was launched in the mid 1950s, standing side by side with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, an economic inter-nation organization forged by the Soviet Union with a view to economically supporting each other within the Eastern bloc.
In this connection, the Warsaw Pact was hammered out as a staunch collective defence mechanism standing up to NATO and protecting the Eastern bloc, which was spearheaded and orchestrated by the Soviet Union. Thus, a Western bloc shielded by NATO and an Eastern bloc shored up by the Warsaw Pact appeared to balance the world’s layout then. This sort of geopolitical stand-off permeated most of the Cold War time. Notably, China did not join the Warsaw Pact, and it consistently proclaimed itself as an non-alliance sovereign nation, though a communist country in essence.
In a strict sense, NATO is not an international organization other than a strategic alliance sharing identical ideologies. Even in today’s time, long after the collapse of the Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union itself, arresting military conflicts and collectively safeguarding peaceful territories for all NATO’s member nations remains NATO’s unaltered aim.
To that end, there have been eight Strategic Concepts in aggregate formally made public by NATO at various points in time. The NATO 2022 Strategic Concept is the latest one.
The 2022 Strategic Concept illustrates NATO’s updated tactics to deal with some of the most thorny issues in today’s world. Previously, China had never been mentioned in any Strategic Concept which NATO officially enacted. But in the 2022 Strategic Concept, China has been manifested for the first time as one of NATO’s predominant targets to tame. The endorsed NATO 2030 agenda mentioned that initiative, too. But just a couple of years back, the relevant NATO summit communiqué and report merely unveiled their concern that the challenges stemming from China’s rapid development may menace the integrity of international orders that are highly valued by NATO members at all times. They seemed not to take such supposition too seriously.
The 2022 Strategic Concept lays bare NATO’s stance on China in a quite different way. It seems to suggest that Euro-Atlantic security is facing systemic challenges from China. And China is first of all complained about its murky military strategies, ambitions and possible expansion. China is further criticized to have somewhat leveraged some of its monopolies over science and technology, and worse still, to have utilized its economic prowess to slight well-established global principles based on universal perspectives on democracy, freedom and justice. Most startlingly, the 2022 Strategic Concept envisages the ongoing pally relations between Beijing and Moscow as a contributing factor exacerbating the problems encountered by maintaining current international order and world peace.
China vehemently impugned NATO’s admonitions. In response, China timely put forward its Law on Foreign Relations, where the three Initiatives (i.e. the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative) are incorporated.
On the whole, NATO and China both have to concede that their present relations are clearly at an arm’s length, in spite of the sad accident during the Kosovo War in 1999 when NATO forces bombed China’s Embassy in Belgrade, giving rise to horrendous staffer casualties. Nonetheless, craving peace and development and accepting the plausible complementarities that might exist between one another can be a less threatening third route. Either China or NATO members (even those de facto NATO members/partners like Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, etc.) may need to consider this option in a wisely manner.
Regardless of ideologies, NATO and China are supposedly two responsible forces in political, economical and national defence senses. They have mutual obligations to shelter natural justice and global safety from any brutal impairment. This common goal is achievable not necessarily between close military allies on the same camp, so long as NATO and China are able to eschew contending against each other and resourcefully tap into collaboration as two conspicuously useful stakeholders in stead of unreasonably irreconcilable adversaries.
About the author:
Xiaoyang Zhang, Professor, Beijing Foreign Studies University School of Law
