Chinanews Commentary: The ever-expanding NATO is the director of the bloody conflict tragedy

　　China News Service, Beijing, April 12th,

　　Author Yin Jia

　　The conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to ferment and escalate. From financial wars, public opinion wars, to diplomatic wars, multiple forces have intervened, and many fields have been affected. So far, the conflict has not yet ended, and the situation has become increasingly complex.

Who was behind the scenes leading this tragedy of war with immeasurable loss of life and property?

A large number of facts have proved that NATO, which has violated its commitments and continued to expand eastward, is probably to blame.

　　On February 21 this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced in a televised speech that the five rounds of NATO's eastward expansion were Western countries' failure to keep their promises and "deception".

Is NATO's continuous eastward expansion a breach of its promise?

The answer is yes.

Recently, the documents disclosed by the German weekly Der Spiegel recorded that on March 6, 1991, the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France and Germany held a meeting in Bonn, Germany, to discuss and promise the Soviet Union that NATO would not continue to expand eastward from eastern Germany.

In addition, former OSCE Vice-President Willy Wimmer also confirmed that, as an official of the Federal Ministry of Defense of the Federal Republic of Germany, he did report to the then Chancellor on his commitment to "not expanding NATO eastwards".

　　However, the so-called commitment quickly became a dead letter.

In January 1994, the Brussels NATO summit formally adopted the NATO expansion plan proposed by the United States.

Since then, NATO has carried out five rounds of expansion.

With the continuous eastward expansion of NATO, Russia's strategic security space has been continuously squeezed, its fundamental security interests have been threatened, and geopolitical tension has intensified.

More than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, NATO, a product of the Cold War, has not disappeared, but has continued to expand, which is bound to become a source of regional tension.

　　In response to the serious consequences of NATO's continued eastward expansion in breach of its commitments, for a long time, many people, including US politicians and think tank scholars, have continuously issued warnings.

However, NATO, led by the United States, has chosen to turn a deaf ear and continue to go its own way for its own strategic self-interest.

　　As early as 1998, George Kennan, the founder of the Cold War-era U.S. containment policy, warned about the possible consequences of NATO's eastward expansion.

He believes that NATO's eastward expansion is "a tragic mistake and an action without any justification".

Michael Mandelbaum, an American foreign policy expert and professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University, also bluntly stated in an online dialogue with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) recently that NATO's eastward expansion itself is "a harmless and harmless" Yili's mistake" and "Let America's words have no integrity."

　　Apart from the criticism that NATO's continued eastward expansion is both "untrustworthy" and "mistakes", there are many views that NATO's eastward expansion is the root cause of bloody conflicts and ultimately the Ukraine crisis.

　　Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior researcher at the Cato Institute, an American think tank, pointed out in an article titled "Many Predictions of NATO Expansion Will Lead to War, These Warnings Are Ignored", pointed out that NATO's arrogance and arrogance in its treatment of Russia One of the main reasons for the Russian-Ukrainian war was the policy of shutting eyes and listening.

Carpenter believes that Putin issued a stern warning against NATO's eastward expansion in 2007, but Western countries, especially American leaders, ignored each warning. Therefore, "NATO's eastward expansion will eventually lead to the rupture of relations between the West and Russia, or even violence. The way it breaks is completely predictable."

　　Former UN Deputy Secretary-General Araki also pointed out that the root cause of the Ukrainian crisis is the continuous expansion of NATO. This is a problem that has lasted for more than 30 years.

　　Everything has a cause and effect, and it is difficult to analyze the origin of the Ukraine crisis from the context of NATO's eastward expansion.

In the past 30 years, the United States has led the eastward expansion of NATO five times, expanding NATO members from the initial 12 to the current 30, which has greatly threatened Russia's security interests and laid a fuse for the regional strategic game. .

After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, NATO led by the United States contributed to the fuel and provided heavy weapons support to Ukraine on many occasions, which led to the escalation of the situation.

Looking back at the historical context and looking at what it has done in reality, the answer is self-evident whether NATO is the director behind the Ukraine crisis.

(Finish)