China encourages Europe to build ‘indivisible security’ mechanism with Russia

Yang Sheng

Beijing: China recently encouraged European countries to establish an indivisible, sustainable, effective and balanced security mechanism on different diplomatic occasions, with analysts saying that since the Ukraine crisis has brought serious damage to the security of Europe, the relevant parties need to realize that it is the US, an external superpower, that manipulates the security situation in Europe, and benefits the most, while the EU, Russia and Ukraine have all paid a heavy price under the current unbalanced and ineffective security mechanism.

Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN, said this week that the Ukraine crisis has further raised the question of how to maintain the stability of the international system and focus more on the real pathway toward universal security and common development.

He made the remarks at the UN Security Council briefing by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) chairperson-in-office. “The world is indivisible, and security is indivisible. In the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the important principle of indivisible security was first established. This principle carries special significance under the current circumstances,” he said.

China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi made similar remarks on Monday while mentioning the Russia-Ukraine conflict at his meeting with US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan in Rome.

Yang said “we should take a long-term perspective, to actively promote common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable views of security based on the principle of indivisible security, to seek construction of balanced, effective and sustainable security mechanism.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping in his virtual meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 8 said that “China supports France and Germany in promoting a balanced, effective and sustainable European security framework for the interests and lasting security of Europe, and by upholding its strategic autonomy. China will be pleased to see equal-footed dialogue among the EU, Russia, the United States and NATO.”

These frequent calls from China to the parties directly involved in the Ukraine crisis showed that China has found that the root cause of the current tragedy in Europe is that the existing security mechanism in Europe established by the US, with the US-led NATO having a dominant position, is problematic, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict just proved that the US-built security mechanism for Europe makes everyone in Europe insecure, said Chinese analysts.

Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Tuesday that “Europeans have realized that the security of Europe is not in the hands of Europeans. The eastward expansion of NATO is dominated by the US, and such view of security is based on the sacrifice of Russia’s security. In other words, the absolute security of the West makes Russia absolutely insecure.”

“So Russia decided to fight back and the ongoing crisis brings refugees and a series of problems to Europe in the fields of economy and energy. Who’s the biggest winner? It’s the US. Europeans need to pay the US military industrial companies for weapons. US military presence is getting more legitimate in the continent, and without resolving Russia’s security concerns, the EU will get increasingly insecure, and then the US military industrial giants will get more clients again,” Wang said.

A Beijing-based expert on international relations who requested anonymity said “Some might believe that Russia is too aggressive, so Europe needs the protection of the US. But the fact is that with the so-called protection, Europe is getting increasingly insecure.”

Russia is the one receiving pressure from NATO, not the one who is threatening the West. And the EU has complementarities with Russia. So without the US-led NATO, maybe the EU and Russia can form a community of shared future, and Russia wouldn’t even need to spend that much money on defense, which is a win-win situation for both the EU and Russia, the expert said.

The current tragedy in Ukraine is a chance for Europe and Russia to consider reestablishing a new security mechanism to prevent the replay of any of such conflict in the continent, but the challenge is to what extent the EU can exclude the influence of the US, and if Europe can independently think out of the hostile stereotype toward Russia, he noted.

Wang said in the Asia-Pacific region, the US is trying to impose the similar view of security to regional countries, and to establish a NATO-like alliance to build a divisible and unbalanced security mechanism in Asia, to target China just like what it did to Russia in Europe.

“We don’t want to see any country repeat the tragedy that Ukraine has experienced, so we hope US allies in Asia, such as South Korea, Japan and some Southeast Asian countries can make wise and independent decisions on security and diplomacy, to stay away from being used as a pawn to serve US strategy in containing China on the geopolitical chessboard,” said the anonymous expert, noting that China has a tradition to solve problems with its neighbors through diplomacy. But when some countries miscalculated China’s kindness as weakness, they have also paid a heavy price when China decided to retaliate.