opinion

The Disarmament and Peace Institute of the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on August 24 released a white paper, as regards the 75th anniversary of effectuation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to disclose the atrocious criminal colours of NATO, which has forced wars and sacrifices on innocent sovereign states for over 70 years and still now lays a grave obstacle to the world peace and security environment.

Pointing out that NATO is a war alliance based on the extreme ambition for hegemony, the white paper said:

It is known to everyone that NATO is a military bloc established on the US’ initiative allegedly to cope with the "Soviet Union's threat" and "communist aggression" after the Second World War.

It will be hard to explain why NATO, cooked up under the pretext of "regional collective defence" with a geographical concept of the North Atlantic Ocean artificially termed, is now stretching its tentacle of aggression to different parts of the world.

The 75-year history of NATO, stained with merciless massacre and war records, goes to prove that it is a criminal group of heinous hegemonic forces obsessed with the ambition for domination over the world.

It is well evidenced by the "strategic concepts" raised by NATO after the end of the Cold War.

The dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty Organization on March 31 1991, which had existed for 36 years, meant the collapse of the East-West cold war structure. After all, NATO came to lose the justification for its existence to "defend the free world from communist threat".

Under such situation, NATO got hell-bent on laying a legal foundation to hold hegemony in the international military and political arena by expanding the mission and duty of the organization, which had been confined to the "regional collective defence", to "ensuring world security".

The bloody footprints of NATO's aggression, marked in East Europe, Asia and Africa in succession after the disappearance of the East-West confrontation structure in ideology with the end of the Cold War, were by no means attributable to their ideological difference.

The present Ukrainian crisis is the latest instance eloquently proving the unchangeable sinister intention of NATO to dominate the world and hold global supremacy.

After the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, NATO made its commitment to the world never to seek the expansion of alliance targeting Russia.

But it discarded its promise to the international community and has doubled its body by accepting 16 countries on seven occasions since 1999.

Despite repeated concerns and warnings of Russia, NATO pushed ahead with its continuous advance toward the East while seriously violating security interests of the sovereign state and, moreover, tried to draw even Ukraine bordering Russia into the sphere of its influence. Such reckless moves for expanding its sphere are the main factor that brought the present security situation to Europe.

Now, NATO is inciting the hirelings of the Kiev authorities to attack the territory of Russia with arms offered by the US and the West, out of its sinister plan to spread the flames of the Ukrainian battlefield to the Russian mainland at any cost. Recently, it is feigning ignorance of such dangerous military acts as an attack on nuclear power plants.

More than 900 days of the Ukrainian crisis, which has been going on for years accompanied by the unprecedented risk of a nuclear war outbreak, can be called a full-length drama of history that has clearly shown once again to the world people the sinister intention of NATO which does not hesitate to take any terrible gamble only for its geopolitical interests.

NATO is the world's biggest war alliance in view of its scale and duration of existence or its anti-peace evil deeds recorded in history.

The white paper disclosed the fact that NATO is making desperate efforts to bring a new war cloud to the Asia-Pacific region.

In June 2022, NATO adopted a new "strategic conception" specifying the future strategic direction, with the Madrid summit in Spain as an occasion. In the "conception", it defined China as a "systematic challenge" and Russia as "the most grave and direct threat".

In the past, NATO tried to expand its jurisdiction to such world issues as WMD proliferation, terrorism, cyber-attack and climate change through revision of the "strategic conception". But it had never formulated specific countries as strategic foes.

Considering that NATO's "strategic conception", published for about ten cyclic years, is a major document second in importance after its treaty as it is intended to regulate the organization's long-term action guidelines, the adoption of new "strategic conception" suggests that NATO has definitely turned its course to the Asia-Pacific region.

In particular, politicians of the US, little short of the chief of NATO, are now openly making an ill-boding assertion that the treaty should be interpreted on an extension basis or revised so that the application scope of the alliance's collective defense can be expanded to the US territory in the Pacific including Hawaii.

Besides, NATO is amplifying the "theory of threat from Russia and China" under the pretext of the Ukrainian situation and the situation of the Taiwan Strait on different occasions, including the Vilnius Summit in 2023 and the Washington Summit in 2024. It is also trying to "justify" its advance into the Asia-Pacific region, claiming "the Atlantic and the Pacific are inseparable in terms of security".

It is the truth proved by history and reality that if NATO, which has been branded as a war machine by the world people, enters any region, there is nothing good from A to Z.

NATO, which has been stretching out its feet to the Asia-Pacific region inch by inch, is now mobilizing various strategic assets for the US-led joint military drills in the region, including the RIMPAC joint military manoeuvres and Balikatan. This is why the war machinery called NATO is running all the year round in the Asia-Pacific region, which should be the hub of global peace and prosperity.

What should not be overlooked is that NATO has often slandered the DPRK's legitimate measures for bolstering up its capabilities for self-defence and intensified military infiltration into the Korean peninsula and its vicinity under that pretext.

All the circumstances go to prove that the plan for the "expansion of NATO into the rest of the world", worked out by the US to realize its ambition for world domination after the end of the Cold War, is being pushed forward with through the "expansion of NATO into Asia-Pacific region", and that the main course of the "aggressor fleet" called NATO has been turned towards the Korean peninsula.

If NATO, the world's largest group sharing nukes, continues its "crusade" towards the hot spot with nuclear weapons states as the main targets, the whole world will move a step and a step closer to the threshold of a nuclear war.

Not content with driving the security environment of the whole of Europe to an extreme phase, NATO is running amuck to bring new dark clouds of war to the Asia-Pacific region. It is, indeed, the worst group of confrontation in history.

The white paper stressed that the DPRK will redouble its responsible efforts to ensure balance of forces in the region, deter the outbreak of a new war and contribute to global peace and security in order to cope with the present military and political environment that is getting serious in its vicinity and the prospective security challenge.