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On July 5, representatives of 30 NATO member countries signed the protocol on the accession of Finland and Sweden at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Finnish Foreign Minister Havesto and Swedish Foreign Minister Linde attended the signing ceremony. Since then, NATO has officially launched the process of "North Expansion".

Finland and Sweden originally pursued a military nonalignment policy, and the "Finland model" was once regarded as the best model to balance Russia and the European/NATO group. However, after the outbreak of the Russian Ukrainian conflict, Finland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO in May this year. The reason for choosing this time point is that the Russian Ukrainian conflict has made Finland and Sweden extremely uneasy about security issues, and they are eager to seek NATO protection; Because the top leaders of the two countries are very young, they are unwilling to follow the rules and are prone to make impulsive decisions (for example, there are great opposition voices at the public level of the two countries on the issue of joining NATO); The three are timing issues. The author believes that the leaders of the two countries bet that the Russia Ukraine war will last more than three months, and Russia has been deeply mired in war. At this time, even if Putin is angered by the opportunity to join NATO, Russia has no surplus military strength to open up the second battlefield and directly attack Finland and Switzerland (indeed, Putin's response to this matter seems relatively peaceful for the time being).

According to the regulations, NATO can only recruit new members if the 30 member countries "unanimously agree". It was Türkiye who was determined to oppose Finland and Switzerland's entry into the Treaty, aiming to use it to extort political blackmail from NATO allies, including the Cullen Movement and the Kurdish issue. On June 28, Türkiye and Finland signed a memorandum of understanding, confirming that they agreed to join NATO, which removed the final obstacles for the two countries to join the Treaty; At the same time, Finland and Sweden will not support the Kurdish Workers' Party, the Syrian Kurdish armed "People's Protection Force" and the "Gulun Movement", and agree to lift the restrictions on the export of defense equipment to Türkiye (Türkiye succeeded in extortion). At the NATO Summit held in Madrid on June 29 and 30, Finland and Sweden were officially invited to join NATO. According to the regulations, after the 30 NATO member countries signed the protocol of accession to Finland, the next step is for all member countries' parliaments to ratify the protocol.

The accession of Finland and Switzerland to NATO is the sixth expansion of NATO after the Cold War, and also the first "North Expansion" in its true sense. Mr. Zong Zong shares an article published in World Culture magazine in May for the readers, aiming to help them recall the history of the establishment, transformation and expansion of NATO.

Xia Guohan: History of NATO: From the "Cold War" to the "New Cold War"?

This article is published in World Culture, 2022, Issue 5

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also known as the North Atlantic Alliance, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, is an intergovernmental security alliance dominated by Western countries led by the United States. At the beginning of its establishment, there were only 12 member states, which has expanded to 30 so far, including 28 European countries and 2 North American countries; It also includes 20 partner countries participating in NATO's Partnership for Peace and 15 countries participating in NATO's institutionalized dialogue program; In 2020, the total military expenditure of all NATO member countries will account for about 60% of the total global military expenditure, which can be described as the most powerful military joint organization in the world. From its inception, NATO, a military alliance focused solely on Atlantic affairs, aimed at balancing the Soviet Union's military threats, has been constantly reforming in response to changes in the international power structure in different periods. At present, it has become a global organization with tentacles extending to all parts of the world, involving military, economic, scientific and technological, anti-terrorism and many other traditional/non-traditional security fields. It was NATO's several expansions that led to the escalation of tensions with Russia, which finally ignited the war between Russia and Ukraine. This paper will trace back the historical context of NATO's various development stages from the perspective of changes in the international power structure and international strategic games, and try to explore the impact of the Russian Ukrainian crisis on NATO and the attempt of the United States to "new cold war".

1、 The Origin of NATO

With the end of the Second World War, the international power structure has undergone significant changes: the comprehensive national strength of Europe's old colonial empire represented by Britain and France has been seriously hit, while the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, have risen strongly, and the world has quickly entered the era of "bipolar", while Europeans' fear of Nazi Germany has quickly shifted to the Soviet Union. On March 5, 1946, the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered the famous "Iron Curtain Speech" against the Soviet Union and communism at Westminster College in Fulton, the United States, which sounded the prelude to the Cold War. In March 1947, on the basis of the "containment" theory put forward by George Kennan, the temporary deputy ambassador of the United States Embassy in the Soviet Union, the United States formally threw out the "Truman Doctrine" and determined the strategy of containment of the Soviet Union with a focus on Europe. The US Soviet relations evolved from cooperation to the Cold War.

In order to comprehensively contain the Soviet Union, the United States decided to implement the Marshall Plan economically and conclude the North Atlantic Treaty militarily, so as to control Western Europe and bring it into the United States strategic system towards the Soviet Union. Western European countries also want to unite with the United States out of fear of "Soviet Union and communist expansion". On April 4, 1949, 12 foreign ministers of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Portugal and Italy signed the North Atlantic Treaty in the United States. On August 24, the Treaty came into force and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was officially born.

At the beginning of its establishment, NATO was still a "defensive military alliance", which was characterized as a "regional security organization mainly based on military political unity, supplemented by economic and social cooperation", and pursued the principle of "collective defense". The core principle of NATO is Article 5 of its Convention: "Each contracting party believes that an armed attack against one or more contracting parties in Europe or North America should be regarded as an attack against all contracting parties". In fact, this core principle was later abused by several NATO countries represented by Türkiye, and even turned into a security kidnapping of the entire NATO by member countries.

What needs to be clarified is that, although on the surface, the Cold War was a game process in which the two major groups of the United States and the Soviet Union fought for world hegemony through centralized security alliances, proxy wars and other means. From the perspective of power structure, the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union also formed a special group of strategic symbiotic relationships at the same time: due to the existence of balanced deterrence of nuclear terrorism and negligible economic and trade ties between the two groups, This enabled the United States and the Soviet Union to suppress and balance the power distribution within their own camp on the grounds of ideological opposition and enemy security threats, so as to ensure the overall stability of the "bipolar pattern". To sum up, the essence of the cold war can be explained as the opposition between the two camps, and can also be seen as the symbiotic stable structure of the United States and the Soviet Union to "carve up the world power cake".

Because of this, NATO has also buried some structural hidden dangers at the beginning of its establishment:

First, the needs of foreign enemies. NATO is a security alliance, that is, NATO must survive in response to a threat from a powerful foreign enemy. Once there is no enemy, NATO will naturally lose its reason for existence. This hidden danger also foreshadowed the dispute over the existence of NATO in the post cold war era, leading to the permanent existence of cracks in US EU Russia relations.

Secondly, the internal power distribution is seriously unbalanced. This is reflected in both conventional military forces and nuclear forces. For conventional forces, the military expenditure of the United States alone has accounted for more than 70% of the total military expenditure of NATO for a long time, while European countries are not willing to take the initiative to increase the military expenditure budget (NATO requires that it should reach 2% of GDP, while European countries rarely reach the standard), and the uneven military expenditure sharing has also led to discord and wrangling between European and American countries; In terms of nuclear power, the United States strongly monopolized the role of NATO's nuclear umbrella, and even blocked the nuclear weapons research and development of Britain, France and other countries in every way, which also laid a hidden danger for the later French exodus.

Finally, the similarities and differences between the strategic objectives of the main countries directly affect NATO's energy efficiency, which also leads to a certain "contradictory duality" of NATO for Europe. It must be noted that although the goals of the United States and Europe were basically the same at the beginning of its establishment, that is, "to defend the Soviet Union from outside and contain Germany from inside", NATO is also a geopolitical tool for the United States to intervene in European affairs for a long time and control its European allies. Therefore, NATO is not only the security umbrella of Europe, but also an obstacle that Europe must overcome in pursuit of strategic autonomy.

2、 NATO during the Cold War

According to the changes of international strategic situation, the history of NATO during the cold war (1949 to 1991) can be roughly divided into four stages - strategic offensive stage, strategic defensive stage, strategic mitigation stage and strategic counter offensive stage:

1. Strategic offensive stage (1949-1954)

Since the United States did not suffer damage during World War II while the Soviet Union and European countries were devastated and left nothing to be desired, the US controlled NATO dominated the confrontation in the early cold war and took a comprehensive offensive posture. The core strategy of NATO during this period was the "frontier defense" strategy. It was proposed in the Defense Strategy for the North Atlantic Region issued in December 1949 that the strategy envisaged that the future war would be dominated by Europe, with the conventional forces of European countries resisting first, and then the United States using nuclear forces for strategic bombing. The strategic focus was on conventional forces. In the same period, the United States had a brief nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union. On the one hand, the United States successfully developed a hydrogen bomb in 1950, five years ahead of the Soviet Union. By 1954, the United States had accumulated an absolutely superior nuclear force. At the same time, the delivery capacity of the United States air force was significantly stronger than the Soviet Union. In addition, the United States took the opportunity of the escalation of the Iranian crisis and the turmoil in the Mediterranean in 1951 to absorb Greece and Türkiye to join NATO in 1952, strengthening the Southeast wing defense line of NATO, and receiving the Federal Republic of Germany in 1954, consolidating the central defense line of NATO.

2. Strategic defense stage (1955-1966)

During this period, major changes have taken place in the international situation, making NATO's advantage against the Soviet bloc shrink sharply and forced it into a strategic defensive posture:

First, the Warsaw Pact came into being. In 1955, the Soviet Union led the establishment of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, which promoted the integration and growth of the communist camp, and formally formed a sharp confrontation between the two major military groups of the East and the West. The emergence of the Warsaw Pact enabled the conventional security forces of the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union to gather and formed a confrontation with NATO.

Secondly, the balance of nuclear terror is emerging. In order to balance the nuclear power of the United States, the Soviet Union accelerated the pace of nuclear weapons development and successfully tested and exploded the first hydrogen bomb on November 22, 1955. In 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, which made its nuclear force's explosive yield and delivery means have the ability to deter NATO, and the "nuclear terror balance" between the US and Soviet groups began to emerge. However, during this period, the overall nuclear force of the United States still had advantages over the Soviet Union. For example, it successfully solved the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which saved mankind from nuclear destruction.

Thirdly, contradictions in NATO's internal power structure emerged. Benefiting from the "Marshall Plan", Britain, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries finally recovered from the ruins of World War II. With the recovery and development of their economy and military strength, European countries became more independent, demanding to break the monopoly of the United States military command, establish equal relations with the United States, and no longer be willing to be younger brothers, which made the contradiction between the American and European power structures within NATO prominent. Especially France: after Charles de Gaulle took office as President of France in 1959, he requested to amend the NATO Constitution to obtain the same "leadership" status as the United States and Britain, but was rejected by the United States. In July 1966, Charles de Gaulle announced that France had withdrawn from NATO's military integration organization, which greatly weakened NATO's military strength (but France still retained its political status as a member of NATO). In addition, Britain and France demanded to break the United States' nuclear monopoly on Europe, while the United States has always opposed the development of independent nuclear forces in Western European countries, and this contradiction has become increasingly fierce. Moreover, Europe has secretly started the process of integration according to the Schumann Plan, which has also laid the foundation for the establishment of the European Union and European strategic autonomy after the cold war.

The strategy of NATO in this period was "large-scale retaliation". The Paris Summit of NATO held in December 1954 announced that NATO's conventional forces would be used as the "shield" to contain and block the enemy's attack in the early days of the war, and the United States nuclear weapons would be used as the "sword" to declare that "any violation of the territorial integrity of North Korea would be rewarded with a heavy and large-scale nuclear counterattack". The strategy of "massive retaliation" has greatly lowered the nuclear threshold and highlighted the deterrent power of nuclear weapons. Subsequently, the United States began to deploy nuclear weapons in Europe.

3. Strategic mitigation stage (1967-1979)

Since the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War has seriously weakened the national strength of the United States, and even indirectly led to the bankruptcy of the Bretton Woods System. The defeat in Vietnam War and the constraints of European allies such as France greatly frustrated the US offensive against the Soviet Union. Instead, it sought to ease its strategy against the Soviet Union to form a balance of power, and was forced to recover its power from the third world to start its global strategic contraction. At the same time, the Soviet socialist bloc at this stage also experienced changes. The biggest change in the power structure was the Sino Soviet hostility. After the Treasure Island incident in 1969, the United States clearly confirmed the fact that Sino Soviet relations were broken, laying the groundwork for the subsequent "ping-pong diplomacy" and the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States.

Under the strategic background of the US and the Soviet Union reaching the "balance of nuclear terrorism", in order to reverse the unfavorable military situation, NATO accepted the "flexible response" military strategy proposed by the US in 1967, requiring the establishment of a proper proportion of conventional forces, tactical nuclear forces and strategic nuclear forces (i.e., the "trinity" military force). In December 1967, NATO adopted the "Hamel" report, which defined the policy of "defense easing" to the Soviet Union. In 1968, NATO responded to the proposal of the Warsaw Pact to convene a conference on European security cooperation and put forward proposals such as "balanced disarmament". Since 1973, the OSCE has held three stages of meetings, and reached agreement in principle on the border, security trust, economic, scientific and technological cooperation and personnel exchanges between the two sides. At the same time, the United States and the Soviet Union also reached several agreements on strategic nuclear weapons and other issues. In June 1974, NATO heads of state signed the "Declaration on Atlantic Relations", which recognized Western European countries as equal partners of the United States.

4. Strategic counter attack stage (1979-1991)

The landmark event of this stage was the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which marked that the Soviet bloc entered a strategic offensive period. But similar to the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union's national strength in Afghanistan was greatly depleted, which was also one of the key factors leading to its final disintegration.

As the Soviet Union fell into the "graveyard of empire" quagmire, the United States abandoned the "relaxation" policy towards the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and adopted a new tough policy. NATO also entered the stage of strategic counter attack against the Soviet bloc:

The first is military confrontation. The United States took the lead in significantly increasing military spending, and proposed the "Star Wars Plan" to conduct an arms race with the Soviet Union, wasting the Soviet Union's national strength; All Western European allies have participated in the "Eureka Plan" for the development of science, technology and armaments.

The second is to launch strong diplomacy against the Warsaw Pact. In 1980, NATO strongly condemned the Soviet Union's acts of wanton destruction of international peace, demanded that it withdraw its troops from Afghanistan immediately and unconditionally, and made the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the core agenda of the CSCE Madrid Conference and fought fiercely with the Warsaw Pact.

The third is to strengthen the NATO defense system. Since the 1970s, NATO has begun to cooperate with France in many military fields, such as France's defense of NATO's Mediterranean defense area and Mitterrand's government's proposal to participate in the "NATO's Frontier Defense" campaign.

Another is to suppress the international oil price, which makes the Soviet Union fall into the "resource curse". In the 1970s and 1980s, as a series of large oil fields in Siberia were successively put into development, the Soviet oil industry entered a golden period of development, and highly relied on oil revenue to support its food imports and arms race against the United States. In 1985, the United States government cooperated with Saudi Arabia to suppress international oil prices, reducing the price of crude oil from $30 to $10 a barrel, seriously affecting the Soviet Union's foreign exchange revenue and greatly overdrawing the Soviet Union's finances.

The last is to reduce the nuclear and conventional military forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact through negotiations. There were two landmark events. First, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate Range Missile Treaty in December 1987, which greatly restricted the nuclear weapon delivery capabilities of the two superpowers; Second, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed by the heads of NATO and the 22 Warsaw Pact countries in November 1990, stipulates the maximum quota of the five conventional weapons of the two sides in Europe, namely, tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, combat aircraft and helicopters, which severely weakens the superiority of the Warsaw Pact in conventional forces.

3、 NATO Reform and Its Eastward Expansion in the Post Cold War Era

In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and the "post cold war era" began. The international power structure also changed accordingly:

First of all, the world changed from a bipolar pattern to a unipolar pattern, and the devastating victory of the United Nations led by the United States in the first Gulf War formally established its "liberal unipolar hegemony" status. Since then, all the core objectives of the United States' international strategy have been to consolidate its unipolar hegemony, including encroaching on the former Soviet Union's member countries, reforming NATO's functions, instigating a color revolution, and monopolizing the international discourse of ideology. The core goal of the United States' Eurasian strategy is to "prevent the rise of a single regional power and prevent any form of Eurasian integration". Only the fragmented Eurasian continent can allow the United States, as the extraterritorial hegemony of Eurasia, to have enough space for intervention. As a result, the Palestinian Israeli conflict, the Iranian nuclear issue, the Korean nuclear issue, the Sino Japanese conflict, and the Russian European friction (including the Russian Ukrainian conflict) have all become the strategic focus of the United States.

Secondly, the establishment of the European Union and the Eurozone marks the beginning of Europe's strategic autonomy and the departure of the two power centers within NATO. At the same time, the disintegration of the Soviet Union also caused differences in the attitude of Europe and the United States towards Russia - Europe led by Germany hopes to improve relations with Russia and strengthen economic and energy cooperation with Russia; The United States needs the continuation of the European Russian conflict to create an excuse to maintain NATO and intervene in European affairs.

Moreover, non-traditional security has replaced traditional security as the mainstream threat in the West. The disintegration of the Soviet Union also meant that the biggest traditional geopolitical security threat that the United States and Europe had ever faced no longer existed. The rise of world terrorism marked by "9.11" made the global security strategy of the United States and the West focus on non-traditional security fields for nearly 20 years. This change also affected the NATO reform process.

Finally, China's rapid rise is reshaping the world power pattern. The rise of China is totally unexpected for the United States and Europe. Even the West once believed that after the "Iron Curtain" fell, the "Bamboo Curtain" of China would naturally collapse soon. However, the rise of China has greatly changed the international power structure in just 20 years, accelerating its transformation to the "new bipolar" pattern. The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic, has catalyzed the pace of change in the international power structure. The rise of China has forced the United States to include China in the goal framework of NATO reform.

Since the end of the cold war, NATO has gone through four important reform plans (namely, four updated documents on "strategic concepts") to implement its three major tasks of "fulfilling new missions, recruiting new members and expanding new functions":

In 1991, the NATO Rome Summit adopted The Alliance's New Strategic Concept, proposing the strategy of "prevention and crisis management": first, replace "frontier defense" with "all-round defense"; Second, we should rely more on conventional forces and use nuclear weapons as a "last resort"; Third, expand the scope of action, believing that except for the original defense areas, such as the Mediterranean, the Middle East and other regions are the focus of its new defense security system; Fourth, expand its functions. In addition to preventing war and safeguarding the security of member states, NATO troops are allowed to maintain peace in 53 countries affiliated to the OSCE. This is the first time in NATO history that military operations can be conducted outside the defense zone. In 1999, NATO, without the authorization of the United Nations, carried out 78 days of air strikes against Yugoslavia in the name of "preventing humanitarian disasters", during which the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was "accidentally bombed". This action marked that NATO began to ignore the authority of the United Nations and launch an independent international military intervention.

On April 23, 1999, the NATO Washington Summit adopted the document "The Alliance's Strategic Concept", proposing a strategy for the new century: first, redefined NATO's main threats and security objectives, pointing out that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and "failed countries" are NATO's main security threats; Second, it clarified the new purposes and tasks of NATO, pointing out that in addition to traditional freedom and security, a just and lasting peace order should be established with "common values, human rights and the rule of law"; Third, the operational policy should be shifted to all-around defense, and the army's integration and ability to carry out military operations outside its defense areas should be strengthened.

Under the guidance of the new strategic concept, NATO has successively carried out four eastward expansions: in 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia formally joined NATO; In 2009, Albania and Croatia joined NATO; In 2017, Montenegro joined NATO; In 2020, Northern Macedonia joined NATO, and the number of NATO members has expanded from 19 at the end of the Cold War to 30. It is worth mentioning that France also returned to the NATO Military Integration Organization in 2009.

In November 2010, the Lisbon Summit of NATO adopted a new strategic concept - the strategy of "Active Engagement, Modern Defense". It believed that under the new situation, the probability of conventional attacks on NATO's homeland was greatly reduced, but missile attacks, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, extremism, instability outside the region, cyber attacks, and energy, trade New security threats such as disruptions in critical supplies such as communications have emerged. Therefore, NATO has put forward the new concept of "Promoting International Security through Cooperation", and put forward three main ideas: it can implement a preemptive strike strategy; Military operations can be carried out globally; Strengthen the defensive and offensive capabilities of network warfare, establish anti missile systems, etc. This shows that NATO has evolved from a defensive military organization to an offensive military organization, and from a regional military group to a global military group. Former NATO Secretary General Rasmussen listed collective defense commitment, military capability and political consultation as the three lasting pillars of NATO.

On November 25, 2020, NATO released the "NATO 2030: United for a New Era" reform report, which aims to examine how NATO will strengthen internal unity, political consultation and its own political role in the alliance in the future. The background of this report is that the international situation has undergone one of the most important changes, that is, the great power competition has returned to the main theme. The landmark events include the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, the abolition of the China Navigation Treaty by the United States and Russia in 2019, and the reassessment of the comprehensive strategic competition situation of the United States against China. Under this background, the "NATO 2030" reform report involves a new round of reform ideas: first, further strengthen NATO's political role and reshape its dual political military alliance identity; Second, emphasize non-traditional security factors and research and development of new and disruptive technologies, and highlight the "challenges" to China Russia security; Third, we should focus on the development of global partnerships in the Asia Pacific region.

The most noteworthy aspect of the "NATO 2030" reform report is that it has set China as the new strategic focus of NATO. The NATO Brussels Summit Communiqu é in June 2021 directly pointed out that China has created "systematic challenges" to "the rule based international order and alliance related fields": first, it is worried that China's military and scientific and technological development will weaken NATO's military advantages and internal cohesion; The second is worried about the impact of China's infrastructure construction in Europe on NATO's operational mobility and mobility, pointing to the "the Belt and Road" initiative and the "China CEE 17+1" cooperation platform; Third, they are worried about the close cooperation between China and Russia, especially in the security and military fields.

The NATO 2030 reform report is just the strong evidence that the United States hopes to lead the world to a "new cold war".

4、 Russia NATO Relations and the Impact of the Russia Ukraine Crisis on NATO

After the Cold War, the relationship between Russia and NATO has undergone a roller coaster transformation:

In fact, Russia in the Yeltsin era and Putin's early days in power has been trying to integrate into the Western family, and even once dreamed of joining NATO. However, due to some structural contradictions derived from the consideration of the strategic interests of the United States and the West, combined with the multiple rounds of eastern expansion of NATO and the European Union, which constantly encroached on the former member countries of the European socialist camp and kept narrowing the security red line of Russia, Putin completely abandoned his illusion about the United States and the West, which eventually led to the outbreak of the Crimean crisis in 2014, which evolved into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, and the collapse of Russia NATO relations.

NATO Russia relations began with the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In 1991, Russia joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined NATO's "Partnership for Peace" and deployed peacekeepers to support NATO led peace operations in the western Balkans in the late 1990s. In 1997, the "NATO Russia Foundation Act" laid a formal foundation for bilateral relations, and established the "NATO Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC)", a forum aimed at promoting consultation and cooperation. Russia NATO relations were frozen during the Kosovo crisis in 1999, but PJC related activities resumed after the air strikes. This dialogue mechanism was replaced by the NATO Russia Council (NRC) in 2002. In 1998, Russia set up diplomatic missions in NATO. NATO also opened an Information Office in Moscow (NIO) in 2001, and a military liaison mission in 2002. In 2008, the outbreak of the Russian Georgian military conflict led to the suspension of the formal NRC meeting and related cooperation until the spring of 2009. NATO continued to call on Russia to withdraw its recognition of the declaration of independence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia. Since the outbreak of the Crimean crisis in 2014, Russia NATO cooperation under the NRC framework has been suspended. In October 2021, Russia decided to suspend the work of its diplomatic missions in NATO, and requested NATO to close the NATO Information Office in Moscow and suspend the work of its military liaison mission in Moscow, which meant that NATO Russia relations were completely suspended. The same fate trajectory also occurred in the relationship between Russia and the Group of Eight (G8). From the time when Russia officially joined the G7 Group in 1997 to the G8, to the time when it was kicked out after the Crimean crisis in 2014, Russia's dream of joining the West was completely shattered.

The 2022 Russia Ukraine crisis is still fermenting, but it is not difficult to judge its dual impact on NATO:

In the short term, it is good for NATO. The Russia Ukraine crisis will undoubtedly consolidate the cohesion of NATO, making European countries have to be tied to the United States chariot. The outbreak of the Russian Ukrainian crisis made small and medium-sized countries in the Russian European border zone feel insecure and actively cooperated with NATO's actions. For example, Poland actively invited NATO's conventional military forces and even nuclear forces to enter (Poland is also the main channel for the US and the West to provide military assistance to Ukraine this time). In addition, small European countries such as Finland, which have maintained a relatively neutral relationship between Russia and Europe for a long time, will also support NATO membership because of fear of Russian threats. All of the above may lead to the escalation of the geopolitical crisis in Russia and Europe.

In the medium and long term, NATO has two disadvantages:

First, the crisis of security and trust. NATO's role in the whole Russian Ukrainian conflict is actually not decent. Before the outbreak of the conflict, the United States had been using NATO security endorsement as a bait to encourage the Zerensky government of Ukraine to constantly provoke Russia. After the outbreak of the conflict, NATO had always adhered to the principle of not involving directly by force, making Ukraine itself a cannon fodder. The United States used the Russian Ukrainian conflict to force European allies to jointly launch comprehensive and comprehensive sanctions against Russia, resulting in a situation of "Russia, Europe and Ukraine lose more". This operation of NATO may make some member states look down on NATO's security commitment and try to use NATO's security loopholes to seek geostrategic interests for themselves. The most typical representative is Türkiye.

Second, the crisis of power center differentiation within the alliance. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, there will be a division between two power groups within NATO: one is the "Five Eye Alliance" group, and the other is the European Union group. After Brexit, the United Kingdom faced a free fall in its international strategic position - on the one hand, it completely broke away from the European Union; on the other hand, it faced the potential crisis of "referendum on Brexit" of Scotland and Northern Ireland at any time; on the other hand, the "Commonwealth" would disintegrate with the change of the British Emperor. Therefore, the United Kingdom has put all its chips on the United States. From now on, there will be only the "Five Eyes Alliance" of the United Kingdom, and no longer the United Kingdom of Europe. After the Russian Ukrainian crisis, Europe will be forced to face multiple complex crises such as the food crisis, energy crisis, refugee crisis and geo security crisis. For the first time, Germany announced an increase of 100 billion euros in its military budget and agreed to provide offensive weapons to Ukraine, completely breaking the policy exclusion zone after the Second World War. French President Makron once publicly talked about "NATO brain death" twice and threatened that France could provide the EU with a nuclear umbrella. All of the above means that there will be two power centers within NATO, namely, the "Five Eye Alliance" represented by the United States and Britain and the "Sovereign Europe" represented by Germany and France. This internal power differentiation is not conducive to NATO's development.

And conclusion: America's strategic intention of "New Cold War" is emerging

To sum up, through a complete review of NATO's historical development stages from its birth to the present, it can be seen that NATO is essentially a tool to cooperate with the United States' global strategy and maintain its world hegemony. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has evolved from a single transatlantic defensive collective security alliance into a comprehensive global offensive "collective interest" alliance. It was precisely because NATO ignored its commitments and continued to expand, seriously squeezing Russia's geographical red line and strategic living space that led to Russia's backbiting, namely the 2022 Ukraine crisis.

The ambition of NATO goes far beyond that. In view of the signs of the "NATO 2030" reform and the interaction between China and the United States since the former Trump administration and President Biden came to power, it can be concluded that the United States is trying to push the world into a "new cold war", and its core goal is to delay the decline of the United States' unipolar hegemony. Therefore, it is not hesitate to create regional crises in several sub geographical plates of Eurasia to prevent Eurasian integration, And NATO will become the core toolbox of its new global cold war. The characteristics of the "New Cold War" are as follows:

First, the new agent war. The crisis in Ukraine is essentially a new proxy war, and the United States hopes to operate it as the second war in Afghanistan, trying to make Russia once again fall into the same quagmire as the former Soviet Union, or even disintegrate again or force Putin to step down at least.

Second, a new round of nuclear deterrence has emerged. During the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demonstrated nuclear deterrence. For example, for the first time, he used the hypersonic missile "dagger" with a nuclear warhead to deter NATO countries. Correspondingly, President Biden of the United States is also giving up his election vow of "not using nuclear weapons first" and accepting the existing policy, that is, reserving the right of the United States to use nuclear weapons first in the event of "serious non nuclear strategic attacks".

Third, the new bipolar pattern. In fact, compared with Russia, the top management of the United States is more inclined to define China as the only global hegemonic competitor in the future, and the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the trend of "polarization" in the world in a disguised form. Therefore, the United States is doing everything it can to weave an encirclement circle against China from the "Indo Pacific Strategy/Four sided Alliance" to the "NATO 2030" reform. The United States is preparing to conduct a long-term comprehensive game with China, which is deeply embedded in the existing international system. Its competition dimension will be far greater than that of the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war, or extended to the sea floor, space, network, and the polar region, China should also prepare for the corresponding comprehensive strategic competition in advance.

Author: Xia Guohan

Typesetting: YvelineWang