China Sides With Russia on the Issue of NATO Expansion
Jose Nino
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As the one year anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict approaches, Russia can still count on China to not
oppose its military action in Ukraine. While China has taken a neutral stance on Ukraine, it still understands Russia’s security concerns such as NATO’s eastward expansion and its attempts to include Ukraine in the alliance, which it believes precipitated this conflict.
Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye expressed these beliefs on the LCI TV channel on February 6, 2023.
“NATO has been posing a threat to Russia’s security for decades, […] the five rounds of NATO’s eastward expansion pose a significant threat for Russia’s security. This is what [Russian] President Vladimir Putin is talking about; he strongly opposes the inclusion of a number of neighboring states to NATO, including Ukraine,” Lu Shaye stated in response to a question about the reasons behind the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
“You believe that the NATO expansion does not carry a threat for Russia, but, when [Soviet leader Nikita] Khruschev decided to deploy nuclear weapons on Cuba, what was [US President John] Kennedy’s reaction?” he added. The host pushed back noting that before Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, there were allegedly no plans to include Ukraine to the alliance and to install NATO missiles on its territory. However, the diplomat noted that the NATO threat is still very real and could surface in the near future.
“If NATO pushes its borders to Russia’s threshold, it will also deploy missiles,” Lu stressed.
The Chinese diplomat believes the Collective West has no interest in bringing a peaceful end to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
“China remains neutral in this crisis, but we believe that constant shipments of increasingly heavy weapons to one side of the conflict do not contribute to its prompt end. It is like pouring oil to the flame,” he stated. When the host asked about the role China has played in the conflict, the diplomat responded that China is not sending weapons to Russia and “does nothing against peaceful settlement of the conflict.”
“Several months ago, European countries refused to ship tanks to Ukraine, and now they do. Today, they refuse to ship warplanes, but, maybe, in several months, they will ship them,” he continued. “Maybe, one day, NATO member states will wonder if they are a side to the conflict.”
The alliance between Russia and China is one of the biggest geopolitical developments in the last 50 years. This marks a major reversal of the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, which the US later exploited in the 1970s to effectively align itself more with China to ultimately check the Soviet Union.
Sadly, there is very little in terms of shrewd political leadership like there was in the Cold War in the present. Instead, most foreign policy leaders in the US are entranced by fanatic neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies. As a result of this, a Eurasian balancing coalition is forming to check the foreign policy excesses of this interventionist cabal.
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