NATO’s future in the Indo-Pacific: Tilt or jilt?
NATO’s future in the Indo-Pacific: Tilt or jilt?
WRITTEN BY MATHIEU DROIN
8 September 2023
“We have seen what NATO has done to Europe, and NATO must not seek to sow chaos here in the Asia-Pacific”. This was the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s reaction to the NATO Summit held in Lithuania this July, which was also attended by leaders of four Asia-Pacific countries (the so-called AP4) — Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea — for the second consecutive year.
For some across the ‘transatlandopacific’ space, the key takeaway from these comments will be that NATO should refrain from actions that give credit to China’s narrative and concerns about the alliance’s alleged eastward expansion. Others will argue that NATO and its partners should fully harness this apparent sore spot of the aspiring hegemon, in a united show of strength. What is certain, however, is that NATO’s partnership with the AP4 is now firmly anchored. The Allies agreed in the Vilnius Summit Communiqué to “further strengthen [their] dialogue and cooperation to tackle shared security challenges”. The publicity given to these partnerships will continue to increase, especially with the next NATO Summit being held in Washington DC during an election year.
The US has initiated and strongly advocated for raising NATO’s awareness of the Indo-Pacific. This goes together with Washington’s prioritisation of competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which now features prominently on NATO’s agenda. Indeed, NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept adopted pledges, for the first time, to “address the systemic challenges posed by PRC to Euro-Atlantic security”.
The limitations of what NATO can offer or execute in the Indo-Pacific raise the question of whether there may be other more appropriate frameworks to publicly tackle shared security challenges between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.
Yet NATO’s growing interest in the Indo-Pacific does not go undisputed among Allies and Indo-Pacific countries. NATO is not merely an international organisation; it is a military alliance and a legacy of the Cold War, a period of opposing blocs that left deep scars in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Many fear that NATO’s increasing focus on China and involvement in the Indo-Pacific will exacerbate the arms race in the region and push the countries into forming blocs.
Collaboration between NATO and Indo-Pacific powers has long-term, wide-ranging strategic implications that need to be fully appreciated. The first question that must guide this debate is: does increased NATO engagement in the region actually enhance the security of those it is supposed to benefit? At the moment, this is far from evident. There is a high risk that publicising this partnership could fuel tensions with China without providing adequate resources needed for Indo-Pacific partners to confront potential threats and further scatter the efforts of an already overcommitted alliance.
A divisive issue
In line with its prioritisation of China, Washington has been pushing NATO to increase its awareness of the Indo-Pacific. From NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s standpoint, embracing this agenda was not only necessary for keeping the organisation relevant in the eyes of its most influential member but also an opportunity to consolidate NATO’s stature as an international player with a global outlook, something he has been actively promoting himself. The move was welcomed by the United Kingdom, which heralded its “Indo-Pacific tilt” in its 2021 Integrated Review.
However, France has been a vocal critic. Paris may have been more flexible had the issue not been raised amid the AUKUS crisis. But even though relations with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are back on track, President Emmanuel Macron regularly recalls that NATO is for the Euro-Atlantic, not the Indo-Pacific. France clarified that it does not oppose NATO’s global partnerships, provided they fit with NATO’s overall mandate to protect its area of responsibility.
Other Allies have been mostly passive. Some such as Canada and Denmark support strengthening partnerships with the AP4. Others in Western Europe such as Germany and Italy have sympathised with the French point of view, although they have been happy to let Paris voice concerns.
Among the AP4, Japan and Australia have been consistently enthusiastic about forging closer ties with NATO. The topic has become notably consensual in Japan, which faces a highly volatile regional environment with neighbours such as China, North Korea, and Russia, and under strong impulse from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. There are even ongoing discussions about opening a NATO liaison office in Japan. NATO International Staff wanted to make it a deliverable of the Summit but ultimately had to renounce mentioning it in the final communiqué, due to a lack of consensus among Allies.
South Korea was initially careful to avoid picking sides between the United States and China, but has been gradually “tilting to the West” under President Yoon Suk-yeol. Seoul adopted a more assertive Indo-Pacific strategy in 2022, and Yoon has been pursuing energetic engagement with NATO Allies, which is not without lucrative interest for the South Korean defence industry. However, New Zealand — a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance but unenthusiastic about strategic rivalry — continues to be the most passive.
Other significant Indo-Pacific actors seem to have mixed feelings. India has been moving closer to the United States and has a vested interest in international efforts that complicate the Chinese strategic equation. Therefore, New Delhi seems increasingly open to “pragmatic engagement” but maintains a safe distance from NATO, consistent with its historical refusal to be associated with any military alliance, and mindful that Russia remains India’s top arms and oil supplier.
Despite its difficulties with China, Indonesia intends to position itself as a regional honest broker, in line with its historical yet vivid attachment to non-alignment. Jakarta emphasises cooperation and, therefore, regularly expresses concerns about moves that could further polarise the region and lead to irreconcilable blocs, as with the AUKUS security partnership which it considered as “created for fighting”. Jakarta’s position is regularly considered as the middle ground of the otherwise heterogeneous grouping of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), ranging from pro-US Philippines to pro-China Myanmar.
Fantasies without capacities
A key argument for increased partnership is that the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific theatres are increasingly intertwined. Although China does not constitute a direct military threat, its investments in critical infrastructure across Europe, from telecommunications to port facilities, could weaken NATO’s ability to respond to international crises diplomatically and, if necessary, militarily. Perhaps the most blatant illustration of China’s systemic challenge to NATO is the ‘no limits partnership’ joint statement released in February 2022 by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, which echoes Russia’s narrative on NATO. This convinced many in the West that China and Russia are two faces of the same autocratic coin, and led some Asia-Pacific countries — notably the AP4 — to substantially support Ukraine.
This growing Russo-Chinese alignment has led to calls to “not reproduce with China the mistakes made with Russia”. The mistakes refer to delusionary dialogue with Moscow, weak military posture, and more crucially failure to grant NATO membership to Ukraine. These mistakes altogether have failed to deter Russia from attacking neighbouring countries. China’s evolution today is indeed reminiscent of Russia’s evolution over the past two decades, notably regarding historical revisionism and attitude towards self-declared spheres of influence.
But this debate about the mistakes of the West remains contentious, as others argue that NATO’s eastward expansion was the ‘original sin’ and gives credit to Russia’s narrative that the West was seeking to undermine its security.
What experts do agree on, however, is that it has been strategic nonsense to incense Russia by publicly waving Ukraine and Georgia’s future entry into NATO since the 2008 Bucharest Summit, without simultaneously providing these two countries with adequate security guarantees or a clear path to membership. Although the situation of Ukraine and Georgia is different than the AP4 because the latter have no plans to join the alliance, NATO might well be reproducing the mistake of aggravating a strategic rival without enhancing in parallel the security of its partners.
There is indeed a large disconnect between the publicity given to the NATO-AP4 partnership and its actual substance or even potential achievements. Engagement is displayed at the highest level through leaders’ participation in ministerial meetings and summits, as well as Jens Stoltenberg’s visits to the region. This alone gives reasonable grounds for Beijing to feel that ‘NATO is coming closer’ and to feel concerned (let’s just imagine the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation evolving into a military alliance and knitting similar partnerships within Europe).
But in practice, cooperation is fledgling and limited in scope. It is framed by Individually Tailored Partnership Programs (ITPP), which generally revolve around political dialogue, limited access to shared intelligence, sectorial cooperation in fields like cybersecurity, capability development, and interoperability. The ITPP of Australia, Japan, and South Korea were approved at the July 2023 Summit and New Zealand should soon follow suit.
However, to avoid disappointment all parties should be clear-eyed that cooperation is not tantamount to protection. NATO supports and assists its partners, but there are no sublayers or variations of Article 5 for partners, as Ukraine and Georgia have bitterly experienced. Indeed, NATO does not provide direct military support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, for legitimate fears of fueling escalation. Sanctions, military support, and humanitarian aid are conducted on a bilateral basis through the European Union, via ad hoc formats such as the Ramstein Group and the G7.
To be specific, in a contingency scenario in the Taiwan Strait or the Senkaku Islands, NATO’s reaction could only be purely declaratory. It would not trigger any formal commitment for the Allies to respond, nor would NATO have any mandate to intervene. A military response could only take the form of a coalition of the willing, with only a handful of Allies able to commit substantial capacities to sustain an effort so far from their shores.
Rebalance cooperation and communication
If NATO wants to avoid reproducing the same mistakes and be coherent, it must engage in a serious debate ahead of next year’s Washington Summit. The key question is how to calibrate the balance between cooperation on the one hand, which is certainly valuable, and communication on the other hand, which is very sensitive.
One option would be to match the political signalling with a resolute tilt to the Indo-Pacific, with robust deterrence and Allied presence in the Indo-Pacific. On top of the political sensitivity and practicability, this option would also raise the question of the affordability of such a pivot. NATO Allies are already struggling to meet commitments to beef up the defence of the alliance’s Eastern flank. At the Vilnius Summit, the Allies adopted a series of new and ambitious regional plans for the three strategic commands of the Euro-Atlantic area. It is hard to see how an already overstretched NATO in its area of responsibility can credibly do much more on remote continents.
A second option would be to tone down the publicity given to partnership with the AP4, which does not preclude discrete and fruitful cooperation to enhance mutual awareness and interoperability. Although this option would frustrate NATO’s appetite for showcasing the alliance’s global outlook, and some Asia-Pacific countries’ intention to leverage their proximity with the stronger military alliance, it is certainly the most consensual and practicable approach.
The right interconnections
The limitations of what NATO can offer or execute in the Indo-Pacific raise the question of whether there may be other more appropriate frameworks to publicly tackle shared security challenges between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.
The European Union can be a key actor in demonstrating transcontinental affinity as well as building concrete synergies and comprehensive partnerships without antagonising China. As a mostly political and trade bloc, the EU is indeed a more palatable player for Beijing.
Brussels is serious about tackling the challenges posed by China. It has developed instruments to screen suspicious foreign direct investments, introduced an anti-coercion instrument, and published its economic security and critical raw materials strategies to harmonise European policies in domains where Chinese predatory policies are particularly harmful. The EU is also stepping up its engagement with the Indo-Pacific. In May, 26 Indo-Pacific countries participated in the second EU Indo-Pacific Forum in Sweden. The AP4 all have solid partnerships with the EU, with Japan and South Korea being among the EU’s ten “strategic partners”. The EU has had a “Strategic Partnership” with India since 2005, and with ASEAN since 2020, holding the first-ever summit between the two organisations in 2022.
Some may object that the EU is not yet a credible geopolitical player, but the bloc is already a consensus builder for the transatlantic community. The term “systemic rival” regarding China, endorsed by official NATO documents, originated from EU language. Likewise, the now consensual “de-risking” approach to engagement with China was first put forward by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before being picked up in Washington by the likes of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Finally, the EU remains China’s second-largest trade partner, after ASEAN but before the United States, which certainly gives it some leverage.
It is true that the EU lacks the ability to significantly beef up the security and the defence capabilities of its Indo-Pacific partners. Indo-Pacific countries who wish to tie their defences to the United States can do so bilaterally without burdening reluctant Allies or Asia-Pacific partners with NATO obligations. But when it comes to capacity building and collective security, the best way to create strategic dilemmas for China is to keep building on and expanding the network of minilateral arrangements across the Indo-Pacific, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Australia, India, Japan, United States), AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States), the Global Combat Air Programme (Italy, Japan, United Kingdom), and the Franco-Indian-UAE initiative. Indeed, the brewing Indo-Pacific architecture is inherently “flexilateral” due to the breadth of factors and the rapidly changing stakes.
This patchwork might be a disturbance for Western capitals accustomed to building common positions, but it also has its virtues. First, key Indo-Pacific players who want to retain their freedom to manoeuvre can cherry-pick from the cooperation menu proposed by courting Western powers. Second, it complicates Beijing’s strategic calculus. China has been striving to assert its interests through bilateral engagements where it always negotiates from a position of strength — clubs are more difficult to handle.
Therefore, there are alternatives to NATO that showcase and build solidarity between supporters of liberal democracy against autocratic regimes across the globe. These alternatives should be fully harnessed, since doubling down on publicising NATO’s agenda in the Indo-Pacific risks increasing rhetorical escalation without matching it with adequate security guarantees. By doing so, NATO could refocus on its core mission at a time when it is more relevant than ever, and it would alleviate a difficult equation for many Indo-Pacific countries.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Mathieu Droin is a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he focuses on transatlantic European security and defence. Image credit: Flickr/NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization.