My Take | Nato’s stealthy expansion into Asia-Pacific can blow up region
- A proxy war in Ukraine is not enough for Jens Stoltenberg, who clearly thinks his mandate extends to containing China in its own backyard
Jens Stoltenberg is wasted on being merely the Nato chief. Over Russia, China and much else, he almost always sounds more extreme than your average Pentagon general and the US defence secretary, who appear rational and restrained by comparison.
The Norwegian career politician and former prime minister beats the drums of war louder than many Washington hawks. He would make a perfect US secretary of defence, if not the president. Too bad the United States constitution bars non-natives from being the commander-in-chief, but nothing stops him from being the war secretary; just make him a citizen. The man is more patriotic than most Americans and reads off Washington’s warmongering scripts more faithfully than any European leader, while adding more propaganda niceties all his own.
The man is priceless, from the American perspective. But then, no one in the know doubts Nato is anything but an extension of the US military machine. His latest salvo: “China refuses to condemn Russia’s aggression, echoes Russia’s propaganda and props up Russia’s economy”.
That’s the cheap rhetoric of a talking head on Fox News, not the chief of the world’s most powerful military alliance.
China is hardly alone. India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil and half the countries in South America and Africa have taken a similar position over Ukraine. A majority of those nations that have voted to condemn Russia and demand it to leave Ukraine in the United Nations General Assembly have nevertheless declined to join the US-led sanctions, with some even openly criticising the sanctions as worsening economic conditions in the Global South.
Propping up Russia’s economy? How about telling Europe to stop buying Russian gas, right here, right now? Here’s a Bloomberg report on March 28. “Europe needs all the LNG [liquefied natural gas] it can get to fill the void left by dwindling Russian piped supplies. In fact, the bloc boosted imports of the liquefied fuel from the country by more than 30 per cent last year.