New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Australia will attend the NATO summit for the third consecutive year, indicating that NATO is deepening its relations with these four Indo-Pacific partner countries. Even though these countries are not NATO members, their status has become more prominent as they establish closer ties with China and Russia to counter the West.
Last week, US Secretary of State Blinken stated at the Brookings Institution that European partners increasingly see challenges on the other side of Asia as closely related to them, just as Asian partners see challenges on the other side of Europe closely related to them.
Blinken emphasized the efforts by the US to break down barriers between European alliances, Asian alliances, and other global partners. He called it part of a new framework and new geometric structure.
As competition between the US and China continues to escalate, Washington is stepping up its efforts to curb China’s ambitions to challenge the world order. At the same time, many countries with shared security concerns are strengthening their connections.
During the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China and North Korea continued to support Russia, prompting the US, Europe, and their Asian allies to cooperate more closely.
The US and South Korea jointly accused Pyongyang of supplying ammunition to Russia. Russian President Putin visited North Korea last month and signed a military cooperation treaty with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The US pointed out that China is providing machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose, and other technologies to Russia, enabling it to produce weapons to use against Ukraine.
In April this year, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated in the US Congress, “Today’s Ukraine may be tomorrow’s East Asia.”
Last Friday, Kim Tae-hyo, the deputy national security advisor to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, told reporters that he would bring “strong information about military cooperation between Russia and North Korea to Washington and discuss how to strengthen cooperation between NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said discussions would focus on “our collective efforts to support a rules-based system.”
Mirna Galic, a senior policy analyst at the US Institute of Peace, stated that while this partnership doesn’t make NATO a direct participant in the Indo-Pacific region, it promotes coordination between NATO and Indo-Pacific partners.
She cited in an analysis report that despite not intervening in military crises outside their respective regions, NATO can share information with Indo-Pacific countries and maintain consistency in actions such as sanctions and aid.
Luis Simon, Director of the Security, Diplomacy, and Strategic Studies Center at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, believes that the NATO summit will allow the Euro-American and Indo-Pacific allies to counter China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Last week, Simon wrote on the War On the Rocks website, “Both the European-Atlantic Alliance and the Indian Ocean-Pacific Alliance are built around a clear pillar: US military power.”
“This fact makes them more cohesive and strategically advantageous compared to partnerships that bind China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” he added.
Initially, NATO paid little attention to the Chinese threat until tensions between the US and China escalated in 2019. In a joint statement at the NATO summit in London that year, China was identified as a “challenge” that, as an alliance, NATO needed to address.
Two years later, NATO designated China as a “systemic challenge” and stated that Beijing is “engaging in military cooperation with Russia.”
In 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaders from Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand attended the NATO summit for the first time and highlighted the geopolitical challenges posed by China in their speeches.
Currently, the US is forming alliances with many countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including the AUKUS alliance composed of the US, UK, and Australia, the Quad security dialogue composed of the US, Japan, Australia, and India, and the trilateral alliance with the US, Japan, and South Korea.
With conflicts escalating in the East and South China Seas initiated by China, observers are also watching whether under US leadership, these alliances could gradually form an Asian version of NATO, becoming a significant international force to counter China.
(Partial reference to relevant reports from the Associated Press)