Leaders of many NATO states are not reticent about criticizing President Trump, although the splenetic reaction to his return to office was largely private. The same can not be said about much of European media, where concern that the U.S. may abandon NATO and jeopardize the continuation of the war in Ukraine were dominant themes of their coverage and opinion pages. Our NATO allies want to know what the U.S. does for them. The answer is profound: the U.S. provides for the security of our NATO allies and has done so for three-quarters of a century. U.S. involvement in Europe stopped the Europeans from doing what they did best, which was to kill each other in war. Given what the U.S. has and continues to provide NATO allies, it is past time to turn that around: how will NATO allies aid the U.S. in our fight against the People’s Republic of China (PRC)?
The United States is in the struggle of the century with the PRC. As allies, NATO members need to step up and perceive the PRC as the great threat it is. NATO cannot hide, ignore, or pretend that it is a bystander to this threat. On the contrary, it must move to the fore in targeting the PRC. Russia and the PRC are cooperating in discrete security areas. This is an important signal to the world that their entente is solid. It is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that is driving this—never forget their ideological fervor, which is the driving engine of their strategy.
Chairman Xi Jinping wants the Ukraine war to continue. A ruthless and Machiavellian dictator, he ignores the blood price of the conflict. He perceives that the longer the war continues, the greater Putin’s dependence on the PRC for diplomatic, economic, and military support. It was Xi who in 2022 proclaimed the “no limits” relationship with Russia that has fueled the war. Again, it was Xi who, on the steps departing the Kremlin in 2023, said to Putin, “Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years… and we are the ones driving these changes together.” He is a geostrategic arsonist who wants to fan the flames of the war. No doubt, at some point, the world will find out that Xi approved and facilitated North Korea’s troops to aid Russia.
Fundamentally, the war ensures that Russia is subordinate to the PRC. Achieving Russian subordination is a great victory for Xi, as the PRC’s dominance over the Soviet Union/Russia was something long sought by Mao Zedong but he was never able to achieve.
Moreover, a compliant Russia also secures the PRC’s northern and western flanks, allowing the PRC to concentrate against India in the southern flank and the U.S., its allies, and partners on the PRC’s eastern flank. In essence, the war in Ukraine gives the PRC a one-front war problem rather than what should be a multiple-front war strategic environment. Furthermore, as long as the war continues, much of the world media’s opprobrium is focused on Putin rather than Xi. More importantly, much of the U.S. intelligence community is centered on Ukraine, rather than Xi’s hyper-aggression against the Philippines and Taiwan.
Thus, Xi has supported Russia’s war effort and continues to do so. Xi and Putin meet and talk frequently, most recently on January 20, hours after President Trump was sworn into office. In that hour-and-a-half call, which was extraordinarily long for the two leaders, they pledged to take their relations to a “higher level” and deepen strategic cooperation.
That is worrying because what they are already doing is an existential threat to the U.S. and NATO. First, they are conducting air, land, and sea military exercises regularly from Alaska to Belarus to the Sea of Japan.
Second, they are cooperating in covert action directed against NATO members, such as the attacks in the Baltic Sea. The first of these was in October 2023. Although it received little attention in the United States, the PRC committed what can be described as an act of war against two NATO member states—Estonia and Finland—and against Sweden. The Hong Kong-registered feeder container ship Newnew Polar Bear left the Russian port of Kaliningrad on October 6, 2023, and arrived in St. Petersburg on the evening of October 8. On the early morning of October 8, the vessel cut the 77-kilometer Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunication cable on the seabed of the Gulf of Finland between Estonia and Finland that adjoins the Baltic Sea. Additionally, the day before, the Newnew Polar Bear is suspected of cutting a telecommunication cable between Estonia and Sweden. The vessel cut them by dragging its nearly 7-ton anchor along the seabed for hours. After nearly a year of investigation and attention, the PRC finally admitted it was responsible for this attack.
The second incident was on November 17, 2024, when the PRC vessel Yi Peng 3, owned by PRC firm Ningbo Yipeng Shipping Co., departed the Russian port of Ust-Luga on November 15 and likely cut a cable that runs between Lithuania and Sweden.
Incredibly, a third incident occurred on November 18, 2024, when the same vessel likely cut a fiber optic cable, C-Lion1, between Helsinki, Finland, and Rostock, Germany, which lies near where the defunct Nord Stream gas pipeline runs. In a similar pattern, the Yi Peng 3 disconnected its transponder and went over the cable just as it was severed.
These undersea cable cuts are covert actions against NATO members and follow a disturbing pattern. In 2023, PRC vessels cut two of Taiwan’s undersea cables between the Matsu Islands and Taiwan. This month a PRC commercial vessel was suspected of damaging an undersea cable on Taiwan’s north side.
None of this should be a surprise to NATO members, as earlier this month, Newsweek revealed Chinese-language patent applications showing that engineers in the PRC have invented devices to sever such cables quickly and cheaply. Cutting cables is strategically important as 95% of the world’s vital communications flow across these lines. What the PRC is perfecting are attack options to be employed against U.S. and allied critical infrastructure, which is likely used in tandem with cyber and other means. This should be considered and said for what it is: preparation for a countervalue strike against the U.S. to coerce the U.S. in a crisis or to defeat it in a kinetic war.
NATO’s members must respond by assisting the U.S. through tangible actions in the struggle with the PRC. This does not include chasing the illusion of an independent European security identity as President Macron seeks. Calls for an independent European security identity predate President de Gaulle’s famous appeals and are a regular, if feckless, feature of European politics.
Instead, European leaders should perceive the threat and work with the U.S. to target the PRC, which supports and protects Putin and allows the war in Ukraine to continue. The EU should tariff PRC imports and labor to reduce production and other dependencies on the PRC, eject PRC and Hong Kong entities from European financial markets, and work with the U.S. to meet the hyper-aggression of the PRC where it is urgently needed in Taiwan and the Philippines. NATO cannot afford to stay silent on this issue any longer, especially not given the immediacy and potency of the threat and their expectation of unlimited support from America.
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James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.
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