The recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, was watched closely for the outcome of Sweden’s bid for membership—Turkey agreed on the eve of the summit to ask its parliament to approve Sweden’s membership—and the alliance’s response to Ukraine’s formal application to join—NATO maintained that Ukraine would become a member “when allies agree and conditions are met” without setting out a time frame for the country’s entry after the war. In Asia, another aspect of the meeting was scrutinized: how NATO positioned itself on China.
There were three developments ahead of and in Vilnius on this front. First, as with the NATO summit held in Madrid in 2022, NATO extended invitations to four Indo-Pacific countries: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. These are countries with which the alliance now has agreements to deepen cooperation. Their invitations were aimed at underscoring the strategic linkages between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific. Second, the leaders’ communiqué included strong language expressing concern about China. And third, NATO laid down plans to open a liaison office in Tokyo. This proposal was blocked by objections from the French and, reportedly, at the last minute, the Germans, though NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insists that plans to open a liaison office in Tokyo are “still on the table.”
Beyond the four partner countries, there are others in the Indo-Pacific, including in Southeast Asia, who are at best agnostic and at worst hostile toward NATO. More must be done to reassure these countries that NATO will not be a destabilizing force in their backyards. The alliance is not well understood in the region, with most commentary focusing on its military dimensions.
Because of this, China has been allowed to shape NATO’s image in the Indo-Pacific. Reports of the planned liaison office in Tokyo, for instance, made news without NATO first stressing its political goals or setting out how the liaison office fits in with these. The failure allowed China to step into the informational void and craft the narrative. While the communiqué that emerged from the summit accused China of being “opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up,” NATO itself could also be faulted for, if not opacity, then a lack of strategic clarity—as demonstrated by the French objections to the Tokyo liaison office on the basis that it would create misunderstanding about NATO’s commitment in the Indo-Pacific, which is not its geographical area of competence.
It would be wrong to suggest that NATO has no business beyond the Euro-Atlantic. NATO’s stated purpose is to “safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means,” and ensuring this sometimes involves “engaging outside of NATO,” as “the outbreak of crises and conflicts beyond Allied borders can jeopardise this core objective.” In addition, NATO can play an important role in defending and promoting the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific. But NATO’s presence being defensible in terms of the alliance’s stated mission is not the same as it being wise. Whether engagement in the region is prudent will depend on how effective such engagement is. Beyond its posturing on China, NATO can and should do more to address disquiet around its aims and intentions in the Indo-Pacific.
Chinese objections to the summit emerged in the lead-up to it. About a week prior, China’s state media criticized “NATO’s hidden agenda.” Beijing argued this had been exposed in advance by Lithuania, the host nation, announcing its own Indo-Pacific strategy—the wording of which had been “directly taken” from U.S. rhetoric toward China. The Global Times poured scorn on “a Baltic country with a population of less than 3 million, located in the direct radiation zone of the Russia-Ukraine conflict” releasing an Indo-Pacific strategy. The commentary also decried the attendance of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea at the summit for a second consecutive year, which gave, it argued, a “strong signal of NATO’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific.”
Meanwhile, the leaders’ communiqué, which came out of the summit and reflected almost word-for-word the language in the NATO strategic concept issued in March 2022, accused “the People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies [of] challeng[ing] our interests, security and values.”
The leaders’ communiqué went further than the 2022 strategic concept to expand on the “deepening strategic partnership” between China and Russia. A NATO wish list in relation to China was added: namely, for it “to play a constructive role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, to condemn Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, to abstain from supporting Russia’s war effort in any way, to cease amplifying Russia’s false narrative blaming Ukraine and NATO for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and to adhere to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.” NATO called, in particular, for China “to act responsibly and refrain from providing any lethal aid to Russia.”
NATO clearly wanted to send a signal of concern over China’s behavior. This was important, though parts of the communiqué lacked specificity—which of China’s “stated ambitions,” for example, were objectionable? China, unsurprisingly, took umbrage at the communiqué, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that NATO “stop making groundless accusations and provocative rhetoric targeting China, quit the outdated Cold War mentality, ditch the wrongdoing of seeking absolute security.” It is fair to ask what NATO has achieved thus far in the broader Indo-Pacific beyond signaling. Neither the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nor its member states have an official position on NATO, but suspicion of the alliance in Southeast Asia is exemplified in commentaries highlighting a sense of distrust.
Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent Singaporean former diplomat and academic, wrote in 2021 in the Straits Times, a national broadsheet newspaper, that “the Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance,” and that “NATO is not a geopolitically wise organization.” The Jakarta Post, an Indonesian newspaper, carried an op-ed in May this year labeling NATO’s outreach to Asia as “a very perilous step” and “very disturbing news for regional peace and stability.” A commentary in the National Defence Journal of Vietnam, linked to the Vietnamese Central Military Commission and Ministry of National Defence, alleges that the “expansion of NATO’s influence into the Indo-Pacific has been arousing concern for countries in this region, as it increases the risk of instability when the competition between China and the West becomes increasingly fierce.”
Worries around NATO in the Indo-Pacific can be teased out into two main concerns. First, that NATO is expanding militarily in the region—a claim for which there is no basis. Many in the region regard NATO as solely a military alliance, forgetting its political dimensions, and its expansion into the Indo-Pacific conjures up images of NATO troops and equipment. NATO member states are clear that there are no plans to expand militarily in the region; the alliance should seek to reinforce this message.
The second concern is more nuanced, namely, that even short of military operations, an expansion of the U.S.-led NATO in the Indo-Pacific will complicate an already fraught geostrategic landscape. Compounding this worry is a perception, even in countries in the Indo-Pacific that have taken a strong stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that NATO is geopolitically clumsy and bears at least some responsibility for the invasion. Among Southeast Asian countries, Singapore took the strongest stance against what it described as Russia’s “clear and gross violation” of international law and the U.N. Charter. Nonetheless, Singapore’s minister of home affairs gave a speech in March 2023 that posited that “the West and NATO … were not uninvolved bystanders who had no role to play in the current situation.”
And while China’s actions in the South China Sea—where its expansive maritime claims are a clear breach of the international law—are egregious, not all countries in the region regard China as a threat. Even Southeast Asian claimants to land also claimed by China (and Taiwan) in the South China Sea are wary of alienating the neighborhood superpower. They see their dispute with China as only part of a broader bilateral relationship, which reaps actual and potential benefits. According to a 2023 Yusof Ishak Institute poll of Southeast Asians, China continues to be seen as the most influential economic power in the region, with almost 60 percent of respondents selecting China over the United States (10.5 percent). (China is also regarded as the most influential political and strategic power, with 41.5 percent of respondents choosing China and 31.9 percent choosing the United States.)
In most, if not all, of Southeast Asia, an acceptance of the importance of the rule of law is not matched by an appetite to risk conflict or economic development in its defense. Concerns are most pronounced around deteriorating U.S.-China ties and its destabilizing impact, and, for many, a United States that is perceived as unduly confrontational. Given this, NATO needs to adopt a different tack if it is to effectively mobilize the Indo-Pacific to support a rules-based international order.
To be effective, outreach in the Indo-Pacific must go beyond Japan and the other NATO Indo-Pacific partners. The four countries in attendance in Vilnius are important but by no means the entirety of the region—a fact that received scant acknowledgement at the summit. Southeast Asia, for one, is at the geographic heart of the Indo-Pacific, and China is cultivating ASEAN and its member states. China has been ASEAN’s largest trading partner for 14 years, its foreign direct investments in Southeast Asia are on an upward trajectory, and its Belt and Road Initiative is generally welcomed.
More fundamentally, NATO should avoid vague complaints against “China’s stated ambitions,” a China threat, or the danger that authoritarian regimes pose to democracies. It should confine itself to clearly identifying behavior that flouts international law in the region, such as China’s attempts to claim economic rights within the nine-dash line encapsulating much of the South China Sea, so that common cause may be found.
NATO should also have a positive agenda and work with the EU and the United States to support peace and prosperity in the region through political means, namely, through consultation and cooperation on “defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and prevent conflict.” Focus should be placed on low-intensity and collaborative activities, which could include capacity-building (such as helping to boost maritime domain awareness) and dialogue on nuclear security and nonproliferation, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism.
If the NATO liaison office in Tokyo goes through—and private conversations at the Vilnius summit and the forum that took place alongside it, in which this author participated, suggest it might—it may be used to increase understanding in the region about the alliance and its political dimensions. Thus far, news about the liaison office has allowed China to reinforce its claims of NATO expansionism and militarization. When asked about the proposed office in Tokyo, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that “NATO’s attempt to make eastward inroads into the Asia-Pacific will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability.”
What is known about NATO in the region is very much a reflection of the mirror China holds up to it. China’s complaints about NATO hold sway in Asia. Understanding, addressing, and ideally, preempting these concerns will allow the alliance to more effectively engage an important region to achieve its core objective of safeguarding the freedom and security of its members.