Comicomment: Where are NATO's hands reaching?

(ECNS)--NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hyped the "China threat" in his press conference on Tuesday, a day before the NATO foreign ministers' meeting. He said NATO's next strategic concept will "for the first time… take into account China's growing influence." With media reports that the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea will attend the meeting, analysts may wonder where the hands of NATO are reaching.

In the early 1990s, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker made his “not one inch eastward” assurance regarding NATO expansion to then President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. As the culprit and the leading instigator of the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. has led NATO in pursuing five rounds of eastward expansion in the two decades or so since 1999. NATO’s membership has increased from 16 to 30 countries and the organization moved over 1,000 kilometers eastward to somewhere near Russia’s borders, pushing the latter to the wall. 

Whether the U.S. and other NATO members have asked themselves: What is the root cause of the Ukraine crisis? What responsibility should the U.S. and NATO assume? Before reflecting on their crimes against the people in countries like Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. and NATO have neither right nor authority to judge others. Born out of the Cold War, NATO serves no other purpose than war. It has never contributed to peace and security of our world and will never do so.