Europe must not let Washington feed its fears: China Daily editorial

At the end of the Cold War, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Europe should have said farewell to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It didn't. As a result, it now faces a security crisis. "Brain dead", it has allowed ideologue plotters in the United States to propel it into a security crisis that would have been beyond the imaginings of most Europeans just a few months ago. Now it has sleepwalked into the role of being an expendable pawn in support of the US' bid to punish Russia for Moscow's non-compliance with the subservient role demanded of it.

Worse, after several rounds of eastward expansion, which marked the inexorable march toward the current conflict, NATO is now spurring itself northward.

The seemingly inevitable admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO will not only exacerbate the on-going Russia-Ukraine crisis, but also push Europe to the brink of catastrophe.

For despite the careful consideration of all possible contingencies, the forces of history seldom play out as foreseen. Usually because pursuit of the desired objective overrides experience, common sense, knowledge, and a proper appreciation of probability.

Thus, while it can be anticipated that the confrontation and tension between Russia and NATO will intensify as a result of the transatlantic security alliance's expansion, the ultimate consequences are likely to be a case of be careful what you wish for, since it is certain that they will not be what was expected based on computer simulations, no matter how sophisticated and smart the algorithms may seem.

The world already has too many troubles. It doesn't need anymore. Worldwide, countries are still struggling to tame the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus and striving for a balance between economic recovery and COVID-19 pandemic control. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has already disrupted food and energy supply chains, sending shockwaves around the world. A perfect storm of troubles is brewing, and the northward enlargement of NATO will only add more to the mash, producing an even more potent melange of risks and uncertainties that threaten global stability.

Rather than allowing a rush of blood to the head to fool them into believing that they are thinking straight, European leaders need to step out of the NATO box and consider a future in which the continent is no longer in thrall to the animosities of the previous century. Looking at the situation through the prism of the past only holds them hostage to populism and the playbook of Washington.

Reality is messy and complicated, and the simplistic duality of Washington's good and evil worldview is no doubt appealing, nonetheless it should be rejected since it is part of the problem not the solution.