Russia and China have an entire “toolkit” of strategies designed to undermine the Western alliance and are actively sharing it, US ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith has alleged.
“Those two are increasingly sharing a toolkit that should concern the NATO alliance,” Smith told UK media.
“There’s just no question that [China] and Russia are both working to divide…the transatlantic partners. And we are now very well aware, we all have a deeper appreciation of those efforts and are intent on addressing them,” the diplomat added.
Asked to provide some specifics, Smith said that Washington has seen Russia and China sharing “hybrid tactics,” with China watching “very closely how Russia relies on disinformation and things like coercion of energy security, malign or malicious cyber operations.”
She did not elaborate on any of these points – for example how Russia, which has continually expressed readiness to continue selling energy to Europe throughout the Ukraine crisis, and warned Brussels of its “suicidal” plans to decouple itself from Russian oil and gas, is somehow responsible for undermining Europe’s energy security.
The PRC itself is not merely watching this suspected Russian malign behavior, but engaging in some of its own as well, Smith said. Again the diplomat offered no specifics.
“To be clear, what we’re talking about is understanding how China operates in and around the Euro-Atlantic area…How it could, through some of its actions, create some security risks or vulnerabilities for collectively the alliance or individual member states,” she said. Smith assured that efforts were “well underway” by NATO governments to recognize and address these challenges.
“There is a part of this that rests with national governments, national decisions, national tools, legislation. What we’re talking about is protecting our values, protecting our unity, and protecting ourselves form some of the hybrid tactics that in particular the Chinese like to rely on,” Smith said.
The US’s own actions have arguably weakened trans-Atlantic trust far more than Russia or China ever could, with some European politicians recently recognizing, for example, that skyrocketing energy costs in Europe and US subsidies for industry have resulted in European companies leaving their home countries in droves for America, propping up the US economy while threatening the EU with deindustrialization.