Liu Guangyuan

Opinion | As Ukraine crisis drags on, Asia must learn the painful lessons of Europe

The US is peddling its Indo-Pacific strategy to make the Asia-Pacific another Nato. In reponse, Asian countries need to work together to maintain the hard-won regional peace and stability, and push back against US attempts to muddy the waters

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Liu Guangyuan

Published: 6:45am, 17 May 2022

Two months into the Ukraine crisis, Europe is still reeling from its impact. The United States, a good offshore balancer, lit the fuse of the Russia-Ukraine conflict by supporting Nato’s five waves of eastward expansion, starting in 1999, right up to Russia’s borders.

Even during the crisis, it has fanned the flames to heighten tension, casting a long shadow over peace and development in Europe. As former British member of parliament George Galloway put it: “Just as the US is ready to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, in the end, it’s prepared to fight to the last drop of European blood.”

The painful lessons of Europe must be learned by Asia. The US is peddling its “Indo-Pacific strategy” in Asia to make the Asia-Pacific another Nato. If it succeeds, regional peace and prosperity will be under siege. Fortunately, Asia-Pacific countries are clear-eyed about the ill-concealed hegemonic thinking behind the strategy.

The US plans to install a new political security regime in Asia in which all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are American satellite states. Rooted in a binary world view and ideological animosity, the US has fortified the Five Eyes partnership, the Quad mechanism, the Aukus agreement and its bilateral military alliances to create an exclusive circle.

The US only claims to support Asean centrality but its actions run counter to Asean integration and the Asean Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, threaten the Asean-led regional cooperation platforms, and expose Asean to the risk of being marginalised in regional cooperation.

These tricks, inconsistent with the trend of peace, development and cooperation, will only intensify bloc confrontation and ideological conflict globally, upend the current international system and order, and provoke a new “cold war”. They will surely gain no support.