NATO at it again

THROWING their weight behind Ukraine, NATO members have affirmed their commitment to supporting the war-torn country in ‘building a force capable of defeating Russian aggression today and deterring it in the future’. The US and its allies have announced that they intend to provide a minimum baseline funding of 40 billion euros in military aid within the next year, adding that their alliance will continue to back Ukraine ‘on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership’. The pledge is part of the declaration issued on Wednesday at the NATO summit in Washington.

It is apparent that the Western bloc has no qualms about provoking Russia and prolonging the Ukraine war, which began in February 2022 and has caused the deaths of thousands of civilians. The push for Ukraine’s NATO membership was the flashpoint that prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade the neighbour. The irony is not lost on anyone: NATO is adopting a holier-than-thou approach by solely blaming Russia for the war. Amid increasing domestic pressure on President Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid, the US has declared that it will start deploying longer-range missiles in Germany in 2026 in a bid to counter the ‘growing threat’ Russia poses to Europe. This makes it clear that the West is unwilling to bring Russia to the negotiating table, a stark reality that was laid bare by Moscow’s absence from the Ukraine peace summit hosted by Switzerland last month.

The US-led NATO has also not stopped short of riling China, calling it a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Reacting sharply, Beijing has urged NATO to ‘reflect on the root cause of the crisis and take concrete action to de-escalate rather than shift the blame’. Indeed, NATO would do well to introspect and shun belligerent rhetoric; otherwise, this can worsen the situation in eastern Europe and bring the world to the brink of a catastrophic conflagration.