🌏🌎 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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