Jan Oberg

March 31, 2022

The NATO-Russia Conflict in Ukraine Prevents Progress at the China-EU Summit

It’s amazing how the entire NATO/EU can watch the war in Ukraine and not reflect on issues -and learn lessons – like these:

• Prioritising weapons over all other security tools create neither security nor sustainable peace; they create hubris, anti-intellectualism and militarism.
• Alliances can only thrive if they appoint enemies.
• Military deterrence doesn’t work but stimulates escalation. With confrontational policies and offensive weapons, there can never be common security, stability and peace.
• Applying one set of rules for ”us” – e.g. the international rules-based order in contravention of the UN-based international law – and another for ”them” is moral fraud.
• Creating hard borders with polarisation is unwise compared to sharing soft borders with neutrality and cooperation. Lacking empathy and a sense of history makes for counterproductive, self-destructive decisions.
• And to make peace is about analysing the conflicts – or problems – that always stand between the parties. War happens when conflicts are neglected, treated wrongly and when fear enters.

Originally published in China’s Global Times, March 30, 2022

Since 1949, NATO has promised its taxpayers that they would live in peace. But today’s Europe is closer to catastrophe than ever before.

The world-domineering Western paradigm of security politics has come to its end. But more dollars and weapons are pumped into this defunct paradigm.

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By and large, the EU sides with and submits to the US policies because, as a Union, it has failed to develop an independent comprehensive one-voice foreign and security policy.

So, immediately after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, it decided by spinal cord tit-for-tat devoid of analyses of the longer-term consequences to basically cut off – cancel – everything Russia. It is blind punishment and hate mood as if Russia would not exist in the future.

Next, they argue that China should put pressure on Russia and ”help” the West to stop that war. And China should face negative consequences if it doesn’t.

Whether this is a genuine plea for help or another way of promoting the Western Cold War agenda vis-a-vis China remains to be seen. This attitude will prevent progress at the upcoming China-EU summit.

The West’s sanctions on Russia are extraordinarily ill-considered and will have self-destructive consequences. For a while, they will surely hurt the Russian innocent people – perhaps very hard – but they will, beyond a doubt, boomerang back on the West, deep socio-economic crisis following.

Russia will see no reason to work with the West in the future – and orient itself towards Iran, India, China and others. Contrary to the increasingly unreal and autistic perceptions of the West, the whole world does not support the West’s reactions to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The European Union has displayed a politically and rhetorically rather anti-China stand – Xinjiang, Hongkong, Taiwan, Lithuania – but is now asking China to ”help” solve a problem which several Union members have contributed vitally to as NATO members.

NATO’s confrontation expansion was always unwise. NATO should have been closed down when the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved.

History is catching up. The EU has failed miserably in living up to its own Lisbon Treaty and speak with one voice in foreign policy matters and to work for peace inside the Union and the world.

If the EU/NATO members had distanced themselves strongly from the US-promoted coup in Kiev in 2014 and insisted on other security arrangements for Ukraine’s future than full NATO membership, the world would not have been in the present extremely dangerous situation.

It seems to me that the US/NATO wants to tie Russia militarily for as long as possible in Ukraine and simultaneously undermine Russia’s economy and society. And then turn to what it foolishly believe is its #1 adversary: China.

Russia, of course, has other options than the West and should negotiate a ceasefire and a new future relationship with Ukraine, preferably leading to a large UN-peacekeeping mission and a multi-year negotiation facility. The EU will have to become more independent of the US to contribute constructively to that and the emerging multi-polar world order.

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Europe desperately needs an entirely new all-European security and peace system, a kind of European UN, based on common security with Russia, trans-armament toward defensive military structures, non-threatening postures, early warning and – above all – civilian, civilised negotiations instead of defunct and militarist escalatory deterrence.

In this sense, the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine could be used as a constructive turning point. It should mark the end of the outdated NATO paradigm and its peaceless policies.

It would be good for humanity if the East and West Europeans could now creatively recognise their common interests and thereby do good for the future of humanity and practise cooperation instead of confrontation with China.

NOTES

And here are a couple of links about what transpired on April 1, 2022

China Daily
Xi asks EU to adopt independent China policy

Global Times
Better for EU to manage unreasonable anticipation on China in talks, break from US’ coercion: expert

The EU Council
EU-China summit via video conference, 1 April 2022

  China-EU Summit 2022