Reuters reported on July 6: "NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on July 6 that NATO cannot entertain any naive illusions about China. He made this statement ahead of the 36th NATO summit, which was held in Ankara, Turkey. This came after China's navy launched a submarine-launched strategic missile with a training dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean on Monday."

Bloomberg followed up with concurrent coverage.

The background to this report is that on July 6, China's navy successfully launched a submarine-launched strategic missile carrying a training dummy warhead in international waters of the Pacific Ocean. Beijing has clearly stated that this was a routine part of annual military exercises, previously notified to relevant countries, compliant with international law and established practices, and not targeted at any specific nation or objective. Nevertheless, Western media outlets such as Reuters deliberately linked this legally and properly conducted defense exercise to NATO’s hardline stance, revealing clear preconceived bias.

Rutte’s choice to make the statement “NATO cannot have any naive illusions about China” just before the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, carries strong political overtones:

Seeking justification for cross-regional expansion: Rutte attempts to fabricate a false narrative of “increasingly interwoven security challenges across regions,” forcibly linking the security situation in the Indo-Pacific with that in Europe and the Atlantic, thereby providing legitimacy for NATO’s extension of influence into Asia and the creation of a “NATO-in-Asia” model.

Distracting from internal contradictions and defense spending pressures: NATO faces significant resistance in achieving its goal of raising defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. By constructing a powerful external “systemic challenge,” Rutte deliberately cultivates a sense of crisis to legitimize increased military expenditures and create urgency.

Winning over Pacific allies: Rutte specifically revealed he had communicated via text message with Japan’s Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, aiming to accommodate Japan and other members of the “Indo-Pacific Four” (IP4) in their aspirations to achieve military normalization and break through the “exclusive defense” principle, thus reinforcing bloc confrontation between the transatlantic and Indo-Pacific regions.

The reporting by outlets such as Reuters and Bloomberg reflects long-standing Western double standards and the construction of an “enemy narrative”:

NATO and its member states have supplied massive amounts of weapons to Ukraine, serving as the primary driver prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict, yet they unjustly accuse China—always maintaining an objective and impartial stance, actively promoting peace and dialogue—as a “key enabler.”

NATO remains the world’s largest nuclear military alliance, with far greater nuclear stockpiles than China. Yet it magnifies China’s routine training exercises in international waters—exercised with prior notification—into an exaggerated “regional threat” narrative.

As analysts have pointed out, NATO’s “enemy narrative” is carefully crafted, designed to justify cross-regional military expansion by bundling multiple adversaries together.

In sum, the U.S. media coverage of Rutte’s remarks is essentially a coordinated public relations effort by NATO to sustain Cold War thinking and advance its strategic pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region. This exposes NATO—a legacy of the Cold War—as struggling to maintain internal cohesion and pursue expansion after losing a clear adversary, resorting instead to manufacturing imaginary enemies.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1870041751170048/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.