To counter China, NATO and its Asian partners are moving closer under US leadership
WASHINGTON — In the third year of the war in UkraineNATO plans to deepen relations with its four partners in the Indo-Pacific region. Although these partners are not part of the military alliance, they are becoming increasingly important as Russia and China forge closer ties to counter the United States and the two Koreas support each other’s opposites in the conflict in Europe.
The leaders of New Zealand, Japan and South Korea will attend the NATO summit, which begins Tuesday in Washington, DC, for the third year in a row, while Australia will send its deputy prime minister. China will watch the summit closely, concerned about the alliance’s growing interest outside Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
“Increasingly, partners in Europe see the challenges on the other side of the world, in Asia, as relevant to them, just as partners in Asia see the challenges on the other side of the world, in Asia, as relevant to them. challenges on the other side of the world in Europe “As relevant to them,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week at the Brookings Institution.
America’s top diplomat said the U.S. has worked to break down barriers between European alliances, Asian coalitions and other partners around the world. “That’s part of the new landscape, the new geometry that we’ve established.”
Countries with shared security concerns strengthen their ties Competition between the United States and China is increasing. Washington tries curb Beijing’s ambition to challenge the US-led global order, which the Chinese government dismisses as a Cold War mentality aimed at containing China’s inevitable rise.
On Monday, Beijing reacted angrily to unconfirmed reports that NATO and its four partners in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to publish a document outlining their relationship and their ability to jointly respond to threats from cyberattacks and disinformation.
Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, accused NATO of “overstepping its limits, expanding its mandate, reaching beyond its defense zone and fomenting confrontations.”
The war in Ukraine, which has pitted the West against Russia and its friends, has strengthened the argument for closer cooperation between the US, Europe and their Asian allies. “Today’s Ukraine can be tomorrow’s East Asia,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Congress in April.
The US and South Korea accused Pyongyang of Russia supplied with ammunitionwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea last month and signed a pact with leader Kim Jong Un that provides for mutual military assistance.
Meanwhile, South Korea and Japan are sending military supplies and aid to Ukraine. The US also says China supplies machine tools to Russiamicroelectronics and other technology that can be used to create weapons that could be used against Ukraine.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will deliver “a strong message to Washington on military cooperation between Russia and North Korea and discuss ways to enhance cooperation between NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners,” his chief deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo, told reporters on Friday.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the discussions would “focus on our collective efforts to support the rules-based system.”
The partnership doesn’t make NATO a direct player in the Indo-Pacific, but it does allow it to coordinate with the four partners on issues of mutual concern, said Mirna Galic, a senior policy analyst for China and East Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace. For example, she wrote in an analysis, they can share information and coordinate on actions such as sanctions and aid deliveries, but not intervene in military crises outside their own regions.
According to Luis Simon, director of the Center for Security Diplomacy and Strategy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the NATO summit will enable the United States and its European and Indo-Pacific allies to stand up to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
“The fact that the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alliances are structured around a clear anchor — US military power — makes them more cohesive and gives them a strategic advantage compared to the kind of interlocking partnerships that bind China, Russia, Iran and North Korea,” Simon wrote last week in a commentary on War On the Rocks, a defense and foreign affairs website.
Beijing is concerned about NATO’s turn east, said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University in East China. Beijing has insisted that NATO stay out of Indo-Pacific security affairs and that it must change its view of China as a strategic adversary.
“NATO should regard China as a positive force for regional peace and stability and global security,” Zhu said. “We also hope that the war in Ukraine can end as soon as possible … and we have rejected a return to the triangular relationship with Russia and North Korea.”
“In today’s unstable and fragile world, Europe, the US and China should strengthen global and regional cooperation,” Zhu said.
NATO and China had little conflict until tensions between Beijing and Washington increased in 2019, the same year that NATO’s London summit identified China as a “challenge” that “we must address together as an alliance.” Two years later, NATO elevated China to a “systemic challenge” and said Beijing was “cooperating militarily with Russia.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand attended a NATO summit for the first time, where statements highlighted the geopolitical challenges posed by China. Beijing accused NATO of “collaborating with the US administration for the comprehensive suppression of China.”
Now Beijing is concerned that Washington is forming a NATO-style alliance in the Indo-Pacific.
Chinese Senior Colonel Cao Yanzhong, a researcher at the Chinese Institute of War Studies, asked US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last month or whether the US was trying to create an Asian version of NATO by emphasizing partnerships and alliances. They include a U.S. grouping with Britain and Australia; another with Australia, India, and Japan; and one with Japan and South Korea.
“What implications do you think the strengthening of the US alliance system in the Asia-Pacific region will have for the security and stability of this region?” Cao asked at the Shangri-la Dialogue security summit in Singapore.
Austin responded that the US was simply working with “like-minded countries with similar values and a common vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Beijing has its own conclusion.
“The real intention of the US Indo-Pacific strategy is to integrate all the small circles into a big circle as the Asian version of NATO to maintain hegemony under the leadership of the United States,” Chinese Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng said at the forum.
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AP researcher Chen Wanqing in Beijing contributed to this report.