The European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization issued a joint declaration on cooperation on Tuesday. The third such declaration after the first in 2016 and the second in 2018, it is the first to portray China as a challenge. Although reticent in its wording, Beijing has firmly opposed the accusations as unwarranted and evidence of the Cold War mentality embraced by NATO that was enshrined in the transatlantic security alliance's latest Strategic Concept adopted in June.

The guideline for the US-led organization's actions for the next decade, the Strategic Concept had no qualms about falsely portraying China as a challenge to the interests, security and values of the NATO members and makes no secret of the organization's intention to expand into the Asia-Pacific. It does not require any great acumen to identify whose hand has shaped both NATO's concept of security and the EU-NATO joint declaration.

The EU and China are economic and trade partners and shoulder a shared responsibility to address climate change and other global challenges. The EU should be steering well clear of the confrontational clique-building of the United States.

But the EU-NATO declaration serves to show how far the EU has drifted away from its aspirations of seeking common development, upholding strategic independence and promoting multilateral global governance. Washington will be feeling very pleased with itself that the assertion that China is a "challenge" is one of the 14 points put forward in the joint declaration, since it marks an important step forward in engaging the EU in the US' China containment strategy in the guise of collective security. Taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis, the US is trying to bind NATO's "interests" to those of the EU.

The EU should be vigilant to the fact that not only are its interests of different nature to those of NATO, but it has its own security mechanism. NATO, which is under the sway of Washington, is just trying to blur the lines by docking its Strategic Concept with the EU's Strategic Compass and define that move as "a key juncture for Euro-Atlantic security and stability, more than ever demonstrating the importance of the transatlantic bond".

The EU should ask why its Strategic Compass, a security initiative the Ukraine crisis prompted it to issue last year, lacks funding. What the US pays NATO is more like a ransom, if not bait, for the European countries to surrender their security affairs to it. That means the EU's lack of funds for its own security is primarily caused by NATO being a guzzler of many EU members' defense budgets. NATO is nothing but the misappropriation of the EU's money by the US in pursuit of the latter's geostrategic goals.

The "security guarantee" the EU members are paying for is priced so they surrender their independence to Washington. For that reason, the joint declaration is anything but one on cooperation. Rather it is a declaration of Washington's successful manipulation of the EU and NATO. With the EU wanting to end it and NATO prolonging it, the Ukraine crisis should bring home to the EU what lies in store if it outsources its security to the US via NATO.