Illustration: Liu Rui

In an interview with Themk Telegraph published on Sunday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg claimed that the bloc is in talks of taking missiles out of storage and placing them on standby in the face of a growing threat from Russia and China. While giving a stark warning about the threat from China, he said a world where countries like China have nuclear weapons, and NATO does not, is "a more dangerous world."

What truly constitutes a dangerous world is the world's largest war machine hyping a nuclear war that could bring devastating consequences to mankind. Stoltenberg is telling the world that NATO would go beyond being just a conventional combat force, and become a nuclear alliance. He is trying to create an opinion condition favorable for NATO and the US to strengthen their nuclear-sharing capability. At a pre-ministerial press conference of NATO on June 12, Stoltenberg stated that the US is modernizing its nuclear weapons in Europe.

It is worth noting that the warnings of Stoltenberg came against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The just concluded two-day peace summit in Switzerland did not achieve much to solve the crisis. The US-led West has no will to end the conflict as soon as possible. Instead, it sent out a nuclear deterrence against Russia, which is nothing but adding oil to the fire, according to Zhang Junshe, a Chinese military expert.

Zhang believes that the fundamental reason that the NATO chief made the irresponsible remarks is to coordinate US strategies to suppress its adversaries.

"The Cold War bloc aims to expand its role to the world, including the Asia-Pacific. It acts as a pawn of Washington to contain Russia in Europe and contain China in Asia," said Zhang.

On June 7, Pranay Vaddi, a senior White House aide, said that the US may have to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons in coming years to deter growing threats from Russia, China and other adversaries.

Coincidentally or not, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Sunday launched its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security, in which it said that China is amid a "significant" expansion of its nuclear capabilities and may have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as the US or Russia by 2030. The Stockholm-based watchdog also claimed that China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert for the first time.

Reading through SIPRI's report, one can feel a strong intention of thwarting China's development of nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the US has 10 times as many nuclear warheads as China. The report has quickly raised the eyebrows of major Western media outlets which rush to report on China's "fast-growing" nuclear stockpile.

The fact that nuclear arsenals are being strengthened around the world is the result of global conflicts such as the ones in Ukraine and Gaza and the suppression of Western countries against non-Western countries. "The SIPRI's report and Western media's narrative of China's 'fast-growing' nuclear stockpile are deliberate suppression of China and a kind of nuclear blackmail," Cui Heng, a research fellow from the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University, told the Global Times.

Now, the US has ripped off its veil of decency when dealing with China. The competition between China and the US will feature bilateral relations in the long run. Both sides strive to build "guardrails" to prevent relations from going off the track. However, China needs to show its strength. Strength can be best reflected by the nuclear weapons China owns. Nuclear power is the foundation of national security when China faces an increasingly hostile US with 10 times of nuclear warheads that China has.

Zhang, the military expert, noted that China's expansion of its nuclear arsenal is imperative. It will help not only to effectively get by the West's nuclear blackmail and threat, but also safeguard the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity and break through the shackles and obstacles created by the West during the process of China's development. 

China is a nuclear power that formally maintains a no-first-use policy. Its nuclear policy is fundamentally different from that of the US and NATO. If the US and NATO do not want to live in a dangerous world, they should start by changing their own perception of China.