🌎 North Atlantic Treaty, signed on April 4, 1949, established NATO, a US-led military bloc to counter the Soviet Union. Later, there were nine enlargements of the organisation.

Learn more about the history of NATO's expansion and its current state in our video infographic.

#valdai_infogaphics #NATO #expansion

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🌎 For the North Atlantic Alliance, the transition of the conflict between Russia and the West to a new phase with the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine created this very seemingly productive chaos.

Prior to this, for decades, NATO was in search of a social function and a corresponding renewal of its collective identity: from a military bloc that existed to contain the USSR to a crisis manager, an anti-terrorist organisation and a security conductor whose focus is already directed to the whole world.

By 2019-2020, as one of the main directions of the bloc’s potential development, the United States began to consider the possibility of using it to counter China in Asia. None of this contributed to centripetal tendencies: the problems of the unity of the allies did not leave the agenda, primarily between the United States and the large EU countries, which are by no means interested in a confrontation with the PRC.

Uncomfortable questions arose in connection with the need to increase defence budgets, transform the NATO military machine in the Asia-Pacific region, and develop European security projects, such as the Permanent Structured Defence Cooperation, the development of the Strategic Compass, and the strengthening of the European Defence Fund.

Russia’s operation in Ukraine seemed to have eliminated all these problems, returning NATO to an obvious and easily conceptualised sense of existence. The Madrid 2022 summit demonstrated a rare unity and transatlantic solidarity. The idea of a common enemy personified by Russia returned to the adopted new strategic concept, designed for eight years, and a decision was made to further strengthen the eastern borders of the alliance. It is also important that Germany, which resisted the increase in defence budgets for a long time, surrendered, Finland and Sweden began preparations for entry, and discussions of the membership of Ukraine and Georgia began again. In other words, all the prerequisites were created for NATO to move up the stairway of chaos.

Under these conditions, the semiotics of the 2023 Vilnius summit are again aimed at demonstrating the unity of the transatlantic allies, writes Julia Melnikova.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nato-summit-in-vilnius-stairways-change-directions/

#EconomicStatecraft #NATO #NATOSummit

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🌏🌎 The expansion of NATO is the immediate external factor behind the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

As a military alliance, NATO could only maintain its internal peace, but has brought about adverse impacts on the overall security of the European continent.

The global strategic imbalance which emerged after the Cold War is a crucial reason why the Russia-Ukraine conflict is still going on today.

The conflict should be regarded as a consequence of a global and regional strategic political imbalance.

Active efforts should be made to rectify such an imbalance. To do so, developing countries should work together to make a contribution to building a new global balance, write Wang Yiwei and Duan Minnong.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/two-years-into-the-russia-ukraine-conflict/

#WiderEurasia #NATO #Ukraine #WorldOrder

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🌎🌏 The 75th anniversary NATO summit in Washington, which took place on July 9-11, 2024, in addition to the issues it typically addresses, paid significant attention to the expansion of the bloc’s activities to the Asia-Pacific (now called the Indo-Pacific in the West), as well as strengthening cooperation with its partners in East Asia.

First of all, this applies to the well-known QUAD: Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Republic of Korea, whose leaders have become active participants in the NATO summit for the third time.

As we know, the decisions of this meeting, reflected in the “Declaration of the Washington Summit” adopted on July 10, 2024, are imbued with the spirit of increasing confrontation and deepen the dividing lines between this military alliance and those states that reject the hegemony of the West in the world.

The reaction of Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing, voiced essentially in unison by states which are organisationally independent and despite the lack of any special coordination on their part, is not only not accidental, it is quite natural: it reflects a common or very similar vision of strategic threats and challenges to their own national security both in the East Asian region and in the world as a whole, Alexander Vorontsov writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-common-strategic-vision-the-reaction-of-russia/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #NATO #WorldOrder

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🌐 What determines the ability of the states to cooperate?

NATO is an old military alliance created in the very first years of the Cold War, while the SCO is a young association that appeared only 10 years after its end.

NATO has a powerful infrastructure for collective military planning, rich traditions and serious executive discipline, while the SCO is an amorphous organisation with a rather weak secretariat, the absence of binding decisions and the inability to talk about any discipline in principle.

NATO brings together 32 countries around one leader; its military and economic capabilities significantly exceed all others. There is no and cannot be a leader in the SCO: it includes countries which are comparable in scale such as India, Russia and China, but the others are not ready to subordinate their policies to the will of the largest countries in the association.

The main thing in which both international organisations differ is their purpose. The central mission of NATO is to preserve the internal political inviolability of the ruling regimes in the participating countries.

The SCO's task is a dialogue on a wide range of issues of international security and cooperation, but it in no way ensures that the ruling circles of the member countries can feel calm about their own future, writes Timofei Bordachev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/sco-nato-and-the-fate-of-international-cooperation/

📍 This article is the first part of reflections on the future of international cooperation.

#WiderEurasia #SCO #NATO

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