South Korea's foreign ministry recently vowed to strengthen "substantive cooperation" with NATO. In recent years, South Korea has actively moved closer to NATO, signed agreements and launched cooperation with NATO, and its leaders have attended NATO summits for two consecutive years. However, as a tool for the United States to incite bloc confrontation and safeguard hegemonic interests, NATO will not bring the desired security to South Korea, but will only push it in the opposite direction, bringing instability and unrest to the Asia-Pacific region.
In recent years, NATO has frequently extended its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific region, attracting South Korea and Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries through means such as selling security anxiety, and constantly increasing its power projection in the Asia-Pacific region. After the Yoon Seok-yuek government came to power, the relationship between South Korea and NATO greatly advanced, becoming one of the important points of NATO's "Asia-Pacific". In June 2022, as the first South Korean president to attend the NATO summit, Yoon Seok-yoon proposed a plan to establish a mutual representative office with NATO. During the NATO summit in July 2023, the two sides signed the "individual targeted partnership plan" covering many fields, and South Korea said that it plans to join NATO's field information collection and development system, and exchange military secrets with NATO members; Not long ago, South Korea participated in NATO's Cyber Alliance 2023 exercise as a "NATO partner country" for the first time. The South Korean government can be said to be obedient to the "Asia-Pacific" of NATO led by the United States.
The turmoil NATO has created around the world is well known. The South Korean government's claim to safeguard its security interests by strengthening "close cooperation" with NATO may backfire. As a product of the Cold War, NATO still holds a zero-sum game and confrontational mentality. Under the leadership of the United States, NATO constantly seeks to expand its geographical boundaries and scope of activities, and repeatedly provokes wars and conflicts. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has created division and chaos wherever its hand is stretched: bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, launching the war in Afghanistan in the name of "anti-terrorism", invading Iraq, air strikes against Libya, and promoting the escalation of the Ukraine crisis. Have brought heavy disasters to the local people. Moon Jung-in, an honorary professor at Yonsei University in South Korea, wrote in the Hankyoreh Daily that instead of trying to prevent war through diplomatic efforts, the South Korean government has continued to strengthen military cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States and cooperation with NATO in recent years, which has increased the security anxiety of the South Korean people, and Northeast Asia "may return to the precarious security environment of the past Cold War."
As the world's largest military organization, NATO is essentially a tool for the United States to maintain its hegemony. Against the backdrop of the current turbulent international security situation, NATO continues to interfere in extraterritorial affairs and create confrontation, and its expansionist ambitions and hegemonic designs are clearly revealed. NATO's offensive posture of expansion into the Asia-Pacific region is an attempt to replicate the pattern of provoking and even creating confrontation in Europe to the Asia-Pacific region, which will do more harm than good to the regional situation. The South Korean government should realize that increasing cooperation with NATO is tantamount to inviting wolves into the house. NATO's eastward advance into the Asia-Pacific will only stir up regional tensions, trigger confrontation between camps and even a "new Cold War" and "new hot war". It is going against the trend and reversing history and is unpopular. Asia-pacific countries do not welcome and many NATO countries do not agree with the "Asia-Pacific version of NATO", and the Asia-Pacific region does not need an "Asia-Pacific version of NATO". The Asia-Pacific is a high ground for development and a hot land for cooperation, not a geopolitical arena. To pursue peace, cooperation and development is the general trend of the Asia-Pacific region and the aspiration of the people.
Continuing to follow the US "Indo-Pacific strategy" and cooperate with NATO tanks to sail into the Asia-Pacific will ultimately only lead to the loss of its own interests and the deterioration of the regional situation. The ROK should stand with the overwhelming majority of countries in the Asia-Pacific region and stand on the right side of history, instead of being an accomplice in endangering regional peace and stability and the interests of people of all countries.
