Discussing the threat posed by Beijing and Moscow in an interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday, Julianne Smith, U.S. ambassador to NATO, said: “Those two are increasingly sharing a toolkit that should concern the NATO alliance.”
Her comments come as Beijing and Moscow increase military exercises and foreign policy alignment against the West. China announced on Tuesday that joint drills with the Russian Navy will be held off the coast of Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, from Wednesday until the following Tuesday.
China and Russia are allies with a shared anti-West sentiment. The two states revealed a pact in February, days before Russia invaded Ukraine. At a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the two men said their countries’ partnership has “no limits” and vowed to deepen ties in different areas. China has not supplied weapons to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but has provided Putin support in the conflict and stopped short of blaming him for the war. Beijing has repeated the Kremlin’s accusations that Ukraine and Western allies are responsible for the conflict.
Smith said that both Beijing and Moscow are working to dismantle the West using tactics such as cyberattacks and threats to critical infrastructure.
“There’s just no question that the [People’s Republic of China] and Russia are both working to divide . . . the transatlantic partners. And we are now very aware, we all have a deeper appreciation of those efforts and are intent on addressing them,” Smith added.
“We’ve seen them share hybrid tactics,” Smith said. “I think China watches very closely how Russia relies on disinformation and things like coercion or energy security, malign or malicious cyber operations.”
In June, NATO formally recognized the “challenges” China poses to the Western order for the first time and agreed to address them. Members of the alliance also discussed concrete measures to address Beijing at a meeting in Romania.
Smith said in the interview that China could “create some security risks or vulnerabilities for collectively the alliance or individual member states.”
She said that NATO members must start “protecting our values, protecting our unity and protecting ourselves from some of the hybrid tactics that in particular the Chinese like to rely on.”
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and Chinese Foreign Ministry for comment.
After a meeting on November 30, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference that NATO was concerned about China’s rapid and opaque military build-up, as well as its cooperation with Russia. His remarks came after Chinese and Russian strategic warplanes conducted joint patrols over the Sea of Japan and East China Sea. U.S. ally South Korea said it had scrambled some of its fight jets as two Chinese and six Russian warplanes entered its air-defense zone.
Also last month, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told Bloomberg that the transatlantic alliance must avoid repeating mistakes it made with Russia and limit its dependence on China. Europe has been enduring an energy crisis since the Ukraine war began because many states were reliant on Russian gas.
