The NATO chief stated that Europe made a mistake by depending on Russian fuel and cannot make the same mistake with China. He said that NATO must organize and prepare for long-term competition with China’s communist regime. According to the alliance’s top diplomat Jens Stoltenberg, the Chinese Communist Party’s continued military modernization and infiltration of infrastructure projects worldwide pose the most significant long-term threats to international peace and stability.
Stoltenberg highlighted the need for NATO to organize itself for enduring competition with China due to its unfair trading practices, military modernization, and territorial dominance attempts, especially in the South China Sea. He also warned that China’s leadership is increasingly seeking to create an alternative world order to diminish US power and force smaller democracies to submit.
Furthermore, Stoltenberg admitted that NATO leaders have been slow to acknowledge the extent of the threat posed by the CCP but stated that the Trump administration’s 2017 shift in China policy has served as a wake-up call for the alliance. He vowed that NATO leaders would not repeat the same mistake with Beijing as they did with Moscow, highlighting their refusal to heed President Trump’s warning about dependence on Russian oil.
In an effort to gain continued US support for NATO, Stoltenberg portrayed the alliance as a vital tool for advancing US interests and power against the increasingly aligned authoritarian powers—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Finally, the Biden administration’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, emphasized the competitive structural dynamics in the US-China relationship but also stressed the need to build alliances of lasting mutual benefit rather than merely countering China, highlighting the strategy of “invest, align, compete.”