Is the West creating a “NATO” against China?

Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro…

Parliamentarians from eight countries came together to create the “Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC)”, a global coalition project of nations aligned against China. Officially created on June 5, IPAC intends to undertake measures against the Chinese advance amid the economic growth of the Asian country and the commercial war between Washington and Beijing.

To date, IPAC brings together parliamentarians from the USA, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Australia, in addition to members of the European Parliament. The group came up with the common idea that China represents a real threat to the West and to main Western values, such as democracy, human rights and liberalism. On the organization’s website, we can read: “Developing a coherent response to the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as led by the Chinese Communist Party is a defining challenge for the world’s democratic states. This challenge will outlast individual governments and administrations; its scope transcends party politics and traditional divides between foreign and domestic policy. The assumptions that once underpinned our engagement with Beijing no longer correspond to the reality. The Chinese Communist Party repeatedly and explicitly states its intention to expand its global influence. As a direct result, democratic values ​​and practices have come under increasing pressure”.

The Alliance seems to have emerged quite strongly. In its early days of existence, IPAC was able to bring together members of rival parties in the British Parliament. The organization is co-chaired by labor leader Helena Kennedy and by the well-known conservative Duncan Smith. The group is open to the membership of parliamentarians from all over the world, through a registration following the instructions available on the website.

According to the alliance’s website, parliamentarians will act against China in the fields of human rights, trade, security, national integrity and international law. Specifically, on the issues of security and national integrity, the group reports: “Democracies must develop complementary security strategies to address challenges presented by the PRC; The PRC must not be permitted to compromise the sovereignty or institutions of any developed or emerging markets through lending, investment, or by any other means”.

The excerpt brings us some important reflections: at which level does IPAC intend to organize a global scheme for security and defense of national integrity? Does the new organization plan to arm itself against China? If IPAC intends to take on a military dimension, what would this mean for international security?

It is impossible not to associate the emergence of the IPAC and its claims for “security” with the context of trade war between the USA and China. Everything indicates that this war tends to be no longer just commercial, but to take on ever greater scale of violence. Apparently, the West is preparing to create a new international alliance to defend its interests, similarly to NATO, but adapted to the needs of the contemporary world, where war has a hybrid and multifaceted nature.

The choice for an apparently peaceful group consisting of parliamentarians, instead of generals, is extremely strategic: the countries involved do not want to show any project to create a military alliance, so they cover it with a legal and commercial strategy – these means being true weapons in modern hybrid warfare, though. In practice, we can recall the context of NATO’s emergence and the interests involved in its creation in 1949, when the main fear of the USA was the growth of the communist bloc and Soviet influence in the bipolar world. Now, the fear of Americans is China. Although our contemporary reality is completely different from the reality of the bipolar world, the West’s fear of losing its global hegemonic status remains the same and, against each enemy of this hegemony, Western governments will create specific strategies to combat it.

The current international scenario is extremely complex and especially tense: the USA and China are waging a trade war; US formally accuses China of being responsible for the new coronavirus pandemic; China begins a long journey of maritime conquest, approaching American control zones; India and China intensify their disputes and threaten international security on the Asian continent. In the midst of extreme chaos, the creation of IPAC is a terrible and desperate act by the West to try to preserve its hegemonic status.

Still, the group may grow in Asia itself and gain support in possible pro-Western insurrections, such as the protests in Hong Kong, providing support for the groups involved in such demonstrations – which make up the “regime change operations” project by the American defense forces.

From all points of view, the worst scenario that can arise is the militarization of IPAC, as this process would give the organization enormous power in the defense of Western interests. Still, China may consider the act as a provocation and call on its main global allies for a future coalition, which means a complete militarization of the global order.