Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General and NATO, he leads are expansionist and overly offensive at times some argue. Over the last several years, the Atlantic alliance has added at least four new members with five now that Sweden has been permitted to join. This has happened all while a fast growing NATO is promising to add Ukraine as a member, too. Such a growth and promises to keep it going, appear to get Russia to further bear down on fighting in Ukraine and opposing, if not disrupting the West, causing collateral damage including sanctions to many struggling countries in the South.
The question is how forceful and expansionist this so-called, western alliance will be even in “swallowing up” parts of the Quad eventually, including India, as well as Japan and possibly Australia. Such widening geographical membership by NATO to Asia, already looking possible by South Korea and Japan being observers at the main NATO meeting in Vilnius, recently could be the greatest provocation by NATO to get Russia and China to do something unmentionable. India, thus should generally stay as far away from NATO for now and so should fellow Quad members, Australia and Japan, as well as South Korea. The fate of the world could depend on it, I kid you not.
NATO became truly offensive when it bombed Serbia in the 1998 – 1998 war in the Balkans and even the statesman, Henry Kissinger does not consider it as a defensive alliance. It was offensive in the Middle East, with the main member the US grabbed up to a third of Syria and allied with various (near) “extremists” to try to pull the UN recognized Assad regime down. It was out of control in Africa when it with little necessity bombed and destabilized Libya, causing more poverty and refugees out of the African Sahel to “flood” into Europe, thereby stirring up excessive nationalist and destabilizing sentiment. It has proved calamitous in Afghanistan and highly taxing to NATO taxpayers and causing money printing adding to inflation with a bill approaching a trillion dollars with the end game of the extremist Taliban getting back in power. And now, it puts the world into the jaws of provoking and maintaining to a serious degree the war in Ukraine and as it wants to set up in Asia, starting with a permanent representative office in Japan. And it has shown serious interest in further integrating Japan and South Korea in cooperation even structurally by their presence at the NATO Vilnius meeting. This is madness as history shows that the Brussels based organization has largely a reverse Midas touch to peace.
NATO needs to now honestly answer this question: Does it want to become the lead alliance of “democracies” worldwide to shut down Russia, China and North Korea but by mass conflagration. If Janet Yellen, Secretary of the US Treasury stated there was enough room for both China and the US in the world, spreading NATO to Asia will not provide such a message – as well to make Russia not want to avoid integrating much more militarily with Beijing. If Stoltenberg said Putin caused there to be more NATO by pushing a war in Ukraine, which led to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance which now has a much longer border with Russia, think this. All the pressure stepped up against Moscow by NATO’s accelerated sanctions and expansion eastward has mobilized the Russian army into part of Europe. But it has also caused the Global South and China, to look upon US-led NATO as too reckless, even if they think Russia has been, too. It is western recklessness to keep on expanding a war by provocation to an nth degree by going even much further east.
NATO has really lost its mandate from heaven as the Chinese would say, or considerably reduced its credibility through large parts of the world. That it was important at one time to defend the West from incursions and invasions by the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO lost its reason for existence but tried to reinvent itself by encouraging expansion, yet that further caused major security stress with post Soviet Russia and beyond. Strong war lobbies may have had a major hand as Turkey President Erdogan has essentially confirmed this by admitting the war Ukraine war has been caused by them. And I would add too much by getting the Atlantic alliance to expand well away, even from the Atlantic shores to Japan, one day. Yet, NATO should head in the other direction, go westward if anywhere and slim down, if not disappear altogether. It calls itself being against war but it has been evermore fighting or provoking war since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. That should further tell one that the fracturing of its opponents even internally by coups, such as in Ukraine, though mostly headed by the US is to worry about, too.
While there are fans in India, wanting it to join or cooperate much more with NATO, the latter’s track record also leaves many not wanting to. There is a flip side though to the cause of getting NATO membership to expand to Asia. For if China for example, were to get much more aggressive at trying to absorb parts of the northern region of India or in the Indo-Pacific sea along with over intervention into Taiwan territories, there might not be enough NATO to go around in Asia quickly, including sending protective forces into the vast subcontinent of India and certain neighboring areas. And of course, looking at the other side Putin invading Ukraine naturally made neutrals like Finland and Sweden not so far from Russia to (overly) panic into joining NATO. There is indeed a lesson for Beijing to learn from this?
Let us hope that war activities and tensions be they in the Taiwan Straits or other East Asian sea waters to the Line of Contact do not widely open this Pandora box of NATO heading East starting with Japan. Better for China to stay more peaceful in the region and Russia not to add tensions, there. Because if not, there are some very powerful pro-war forces that would gain strength to look very good in Washington, Europe and beyond and their friends in the very wealthy war lobby to do well out of more stepped up tension in Asia. For now, India along with Quad members, Japan and Australia and South Korea should avoid joining NATO which would be unnecessarily provocative. For the longer term future that is more open to question.