NATO’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific comes at a dubious and dangerous time 

Despite criticism of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, for failing to set a clear timetable for Ukrainian membership, the outcome was far from a bust. On the contrary, given the differences among the allies, it was a success. 

Though it received little attention, the real failure was NATO’s decision to extend its security remit to Asia. 

The summit updated NATO battle plans, created a NATO-Ukraine Council, waived a membership action plan for Ukraine and announced bilateral security agreements between the G-7 countries and Ukraine. President Joe Biden and his European counterparts neither “fumbled the ball,” as commentary in this publication claimed, nor surrendered to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat, as Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, reportedly said.

What was remarkable about the summit was NATO’s eastward expansion to Asia. As if managing the largest war in Europe since 1945 was not enough, NATO opted to intensify its security ties with Japan, South Korea, Australia and India.  

Partnerships with the four will focus on such concerns as maritime security, cybersecurity and outer space. The intent is to improve the interoperability of their collective military forces, though there are no plans to integrate the Indo-Pacific countries into NATO’s military planning. 

Indeed, with less than half of NATO members spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense and a perennially underfunded defense industrial base, the alliance could not sustain an operational presence in Asia. Why, then, the sudden alignment with Asia?      

In part, NATO is rewarding the four Indo-Pacific states for their support of Ukraine during the past 17 months. But the incipient collaboration with four democracies on the other side of the world — previewed in the 2023 AUKUS submarine agreement between the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia — is the direct result of the threat China poses to European security and interests.  

Prior to February 2022, China had been on NATO’s agenda mainly to demonstrate alliance solidarity with the U.S. But Beijing’s unwavering support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and its objective of displacing America’s global dominance and undermining the liberal international order have alarmed Europe.  Worried that a second Donald Trump presidency might result in America’s exit from NATO, the allies may also have wanted to show their support for U.S. policy initiatives.  

Even so, the European allies are still in the process of determining the right strategy for China and the Indo-Pacific. Europe’s quandary is that it is equally dependent on the U.S. and China. Loath to weaken a U.S. military presence that has sustained European security since 1945, the allies have come around to Washington’s view that China is a systemic rival. Many countries have purged Huawei from their 5G networks. In addition to reducing their trade exposure to China, the European Union is considering export controls to hamper Chinese access to security-relevant technology such as quantum computing and semiconductors. 

At the same time, the allies are concerned about the protectionist thrust of the Biden administration’s industrial policy. As reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S. is encouraging European companies to move production to America in order to qualify for the huge subsidies on offer. The U.S. ban on semiconductors for China and restrictions on investments in targeted technologies present a formidable obstacle to European (and Asian) industrial competition, particularly for countries such as Germany. 

Although the U.S. trades more with China than with nearly any other country, the European allies are more exposed because their economies are more trade-dependent. The European Union is the world’s largest exporter of goods and services; it is also the largest market for the exports of many other countries, accounting for 14 percent of the global import-export trade.  

Moreover, Europe is more reliant on China than America is for the supply of critical rare-earth elements for its electronic equipment. The rupture of investment between the West and China would lower European GDP by 2 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund, more than twice that of the U.S.

Hardening ties with Beijing in common cause with Washington would have profound commercial effects in Europe, notwithstanding the rhetorical bromide of de-risking that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently offered in Beijing to incredulous Chinese leaders. Worse would be a U.S. war with China over Taiwan, which the allies would be hard-pressed militarily to support. 

It is because of the risks inherent in decoupling that French President Emanuel Macron has urged strategic autonomy to avoid becoming a “vassal” of the United States. According to a poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations, 62 percent of Europeans agree with Macron; they would opt for neutrality rather than the democracy versus autocracy framework of the Biden administration.      

The China debate in Europe, however, is far from settled. French and German reservations about a tougher line on China are countered by opinion in Eastern Europe as well as the views of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is reportedly close to President Biden. But it is hard to see how NATO’s out-of-area venture into Asian security affairs will enhance the security interests of Europe or the U.S.   

At a minimum, it will detract from the alliance’s unified support for Ukraine. More perniciously, closer security ties with the Indo-Pacific will intensify military tensions between the West and China. Promoting the division of the world between the democratic West and an autocratic coalition of China, Russia and possibly Iran will accelerate the mindless drift toward a renewed cold war. 

A NATO-Asia nexus would reinforce President Xi Jinping’s argument that the U.S. and Europe are intent on impeding China’s rise. It would alienate the public in the global south that shares China’s view that the rules-based order is imposing a Western value system on the rest of the world and does not want to choose between the West and China. Finally, it would derail Washington’s resuscitated dialogue with Beijing and preclude China’s help in getting Russia and Ukraine to the peace table. 

A career officer in the Department of State, Hugh De Santis was responsible for NATO, East-West relations and arms control on the policy planning staff of Secretary George Shultz. He also served as senior advisor for Asian regional affairs in the directorate of analysis at the CIA. His most recent book is “The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism and the Coming Multipolar World Order.”