Writing in Foreign Affairs last week, NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, took aim at Beijing, condemning its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and declaring that NATO had entered a new era of “enduring competition with China.” This situation “shows that in today’s world, security is not a regional matter but a global one,” he wrote, adding, “Europe’s security affects Asia, and Asia’s security affects Europe.” This is not a new idea. Stoltenberg has long championed a greater role for NATO in countering China’s rise. “Everything is intertwined,” he said in June, referring to European and Asian security at a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “and therefore, we need to address these challenges together.”
Stoltenberg’s statements echoed a crucial pillar of U.S. President Joe Biden’s vision for countering China and Russia, as laid out in his administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy: “We place a premium on growing the connective tissue—on technology, trade and security—between our democratic allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.” NATO, with Washington’s backing, has made some progress toward this goal of strengthening cooperation with key partners in Asia. In 2022, for the first time in the alliance’s history, NATO officially identified China as a security challenge. The organization is now strengthening political dialogue and practical cooperation with its Indo-Pacific partners on a wide variety of issues including cyberdefense, new technologies, space, and maritime security.
The alliance has also boosted its visibility in the region. In another landmark first for the organization, in 2022, NATO observers attended regional military exercises in the Indo-Pacific. Acting in their national capacities, NATO allies such as France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom increasingly participate in large-scale military drills with Asian partners and have dispatched naval vessels to high-profile waters including the South China Sea amid rising tensions between China and its neighbors. At the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore in June a high-ranking Chinese general accused Washington of trying to build an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO.” Lest anyone miss it, the alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit, beginning on July 9, will offer a very public reminder of NATO’s focus on the region. For the third consecutive year, the leaders or representatives of four non-NATO states—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, known as the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4)—will take to the NATO summit stage.
That NATO and its Asian partners are deepening their cooperation is clear. What is less clear is that this cooperation is in either’s best strategic interests. China’s assertiveness presents complex challenges, and transatlantic and Indo-Pacific security are interconnected in important ways, particularly because of closer collaboration between Beijing and Moscow. NATO, however, is not the correct forum for fostering transregional cooperation to counter China. Pulling the alliance into Asia fuels Beijing’s narrative of a U.S.-led confrontation between global blocs and risks alienating Asian countries without ultimately helping to shore up regional security or deterrence.
Read the full article on Foreign Affairs.
