Moscow, May 10 – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg does not believe that the alliance could be drawn into a possible conflict with China over Taiwan.
The question of potential conflict was brought up to the Secretary-General in an interview with The Washington Post.
Stoltenberg replied, “NATO will remain an alliance of North America and Europe, and will not become a global alliance with members from Asia, and our guarantee of collective security extends to the territory of the alliance countries.”
At the same time, he drew attention to the “profound consequences” that a possible conflict would have for the entire West.
NATO Secretary General added: “Any dispute in and around Taiwan will have serious consequences for all of us. If we take trade, 50% of goods are by containers, ships pass through the Taiwan Strait. Huge, and we will feel it immediately.”
The situation around Taiwan escalated dramatically after a visit to the island in early August last year by then Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this move the United States’ support for Taiwanese separatism, and conducted large-scale military exercises.
Official relations between the central government of the People’s Republic of China and its island province ceased in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT forces were defeated in a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, and moved to Taiwan. Commercial and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties have started contacting through NGOs – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relationships Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taipei Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchanges.
