The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation plans to expand its pool of partners from the strategically vital Indo-Pacific region, a senior US official suggested while previewing the alliance’s 75th anniversary summit this week in Washington.
“Certainly there are more partners that we have in the Indo-Pacific that are of great value to the Nato alliance. And we will seek to include other partners and other events in the future,” said Michael Carpenter, senior director for Europe at the National Security Council, calling Nato’s Indo-Pacific partners “incredibly important”.
Carpenter, who also serves as a special assistant to US President Joe Biden and coordinates the White House’s national security policies on European affairs, said it was an “important time” to cooperate on issues like cybersecurity, fighting disinformation, and “building up our defence industrial bases” because Nato and its Indo-Pacific allies had a “lot of common interests”.
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He added that Nato was “not expanding into the Indo-Pacific” since the alliance’s defence and deterrence capabilities were all located in the Euro-Atlantic regions.
However, he added, “that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be talking”.
“We should be cooperating, talking as much as we can, sharing threat perceptions. Certainly, Russia is a primary threat to Nato allies. But ... the PRC has been directly providing support to Russia’s defence industrial base,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
He stressed that Beijing’s aid to Moscow was an “immense concern” not only to Nato nations but to their Indo-Pacific partners as well.
“So I imagine that we’ll have a robust conversation around that”, Carpenter said, referring to Nato members and partners.
Beijing issued a stern warning just as leaders and senior officials from the now 32-member alliance gather in Washington for three days of meetings, from Tuesday through Thursday, saying that Nato’s “breaching its boundary” was the “real source of risks threatening global peace and stability”.
“Nato should stay within its role as a regional defensive alliance, stop creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific, stop peddling Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation. Nato should not try to destabilise the Asia-Pacific after it has done so to Europe,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Monday.
On Thursday, leaders and senior official from Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are to meet Nato leaders and EU partners.
This is to be followed by a meeting of the Nato-Ukraine Council, assembled at last year’s Nato Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, as part of a package of support bringing Ukraine closer to Nato.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the group of four Indo-Pacific nations has had a recurring presence at Nato summits. According to people familiar with the matter, some existing Indo-Pacific partners may seek a more regular and formal participation in the future. However, plans to establish a Nato office in Japan have made no progress.
Along with the US and other Nato countries, Japan has signed a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine. South Korea is reportedly considering the same.
Benedetta Berti, Nato’s head of policy planning, said that the Indo-Pacific partners’ attendance for a third consecutive year was recognition that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific regions were increasingly linked.
At the summit, she added, a few areas where more cooperation is going to be carried forward with the Indo-Pacific partners include countering hybrid threats, cybersecurity, as well as “promoting interoperability and working on defence cooperation”.
Nato identified China as posing “systemic challenges” to Euro-Atlantic security in 2022, Berti said, necessitating a review of “what they are”.
“That means a lot of things – from strengthening cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners, to looking at issues like resilience or critical infrastructure of our supply chain, to continue to invest in our defence industrial base, and maintaining our technological edge.”
Also on Monday in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and direct dialogue between Moscow and Kyiv during his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Before his surprise stop in the Chinese capital, Orban also held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow – something that has angered some European Union leaders. Hungary, a former member of the Warsaw Pact, is a member of Nato.
During the briefing in Washington, Carpenter said of Orban’s travels, “we don’t find this helpful”.
“I don’t think it’s going to support Ukraine and its efforts at finding peace or Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity,” he added.
Carpenter said that the Nato summit would send a “strong signal” to Putin and an “important message to the rest of the world, including through our partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, that we stand stronger together, united and in support of democratic values”.
Despite the show of unity, frictions over Nato spending persist.
Last year, only nine Nato member nations spent about 2 per cent of their GDP on defence, a threshold agreed to in 2016. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 20 countries are reported to have spent 2 per cent or more on their defence.
Even so, some countries – Canada is one – have been hesitant to increase their military budgets.
Donald Trump, the former US president who is running against Biden for re-election, has made the issue a focus during his campaign.
Representative Mike Johnson, who as House speaker is the most senior Republican in the Capitol, is providing support for Trump’s position, affirming it during an event at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.
“Republicans, of course, celebrate the peace and prosperity that Nato has secured and will continue to stand by our partners as we prevent needless wars, but we also believe that Nato needs to be doing more,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he planned to meet with Nato leaders to deliver that message of reaching the 2 per cent threshold “emphatically”.
“There’s 10 or 12 of them that are doing that yet. It’s no longer acceptable that not all Nato members have reached their current commitment,” Johnson said. “It may even need to be closer to levels during the Cold War, but if we’re all going to enjoy a future of peace and prosperity, we all need to have skin in the game.”
The Biden administration expects that during the summit, behind closed doors, the pressure on allies not at the 2 per cent threshold will continue to be vocalised in favour of equitable burden sharing.
But John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, credited Biden on Monday for convincing more than half the Nato member nations to increase their military budgets, saying that in the last three years “rather than browbeating and insulting and demeaning allies” the president had invested in allies and partnerships.
It was “not by accident” but “because of leadership”, Kirby contended. And partners, like those in the Indo-Pacific, would not be attending the summit if they did not believe in the US leadership.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Threats from Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping will be a focus of upcoming Nato summit
- ‘Trump-proof’ Nato? As Biden falters, Europeans look to safeguard military alliance
- Ukraine war: mood ahead of Nato summit in US ‘gloomy’ amid Russia military gains
- Antony Blinken warns of threat to Europe as China helps Russia ‘sustain Ukraine war’
- China tells Japan to ‘reflect on its history of aggression’ after Tokyo signs Philippine defence pact
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