Lay aside all the theatrics of this week's 70th anniversary summit of NATO's now-29 members. The biggest news – though woefully underreported – was that NATO, history's most enduring and successful alliance, for the first-time defined China as a strategic challenge.
Most media focused on the theatrics of this week's 70th anniversary summit of NATO's now-29 members.
As entertaining as all that was, more significant was that NATO allies have belatedly focused on the most significant challenge to world democracies and their market-driven economies in our new era of major power competition. However, although the closing NATO summit statement required unanimity, even more revealing is the ambiguity of its language, reflecting disagreement over whether Beijing is more of an economic opportunity than fundamental challenge.
The list of matters it would deal with is already a lengthy one, write the authors: Huawei's targeting of European and North American digital infrastructure; increasing ownership of major European seaports critical to NATO; joint exercises with the Russian military, including in the Nordic-Baltic region; and cyber espionage and intellectual property theft.
Over time, he argues, China will have the largest human, economic and technological resources of any single country. "China has been smart about building strength without projecting strength," says my London financier friend. "Many of its totalitarian predecessors lacked that discipline. And it will likely continue. It can further its rise until the discipline is no longer required."
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