Escalating global tensions. I want peace for my grandchildren.

U.S. and NATO expands enemies list to include China.

My granddaughter is back home and working for the summer before going back to college for her junior year.

My grandson just graduated middle school and is going to high school in the fall.

We are lucky grandparents.

I feel blessed to be here and to watch them grow.

The news has been grim these past few weeks (and years), but it is my grandchildren that fuel my optimism.

Of course I worry about the future, mostly about their future.

Decisions like today’s SCOTUS ruling on climate change don’t help.

But my optimism is based on the strong belief that they will fight along with others of their generation for their own future, and the planet’s future.

Just as we did.

I also worry that without a powerful movement for peace, the current escalation of global tensions will bring on a wider war with disastrous global consequences.

As leaders of NATO and their allies met in two back-to-back summits this week in Europe, their focus escalated from a focus on Russia to now include China in what they are calling NATO’s Strategic Concept.

Adopted at the NATO summit in Madrid, the Strategic Concept for the first time names China as a a target on their strategic “challenge”.

Of course, China is an economic challenge and has been for a while.

In a global economy, many countries are both a challenge and an opportunity.

That has been true of China.

But NATO is a military alliance and so this can only be seen as an escalation in military terms.

China sees it that way too.

“NATO’s so-called new strategic concept document disregards facts, confuses black and white … [and] smears China’s foreign policy,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

NATO is a U.S. and western Europe military pact.

How is China a military threat?

They are not.

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