SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. strategists might as well have lit celebratory cigars after watching Asia-Pacific leaders mingle with their European counterparts at the NATO summit last week in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Media attention inevitably focused on the war in Ukraine, the fate of Sweden’s bid to join NATO and other matters closer to home, but the representation of East Asian democracies at the gathering of Western military affiliates heralded the rising unity of U.S.-allied democracies on both flanks of the Eurasian landmass.
For the second straight year, leaders of the Asia-Pacific 4 — Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea — joined NATO’s annual summit. Japanese and South Korean militaries rank among the 10 strongest in Global Firepower’s 2023 survey.
The hosts and guests stressed the importance of making alliances.
“We will continue to work with NATO, its members and partner countries to maintain and strengthen a free and open international order based on the rule of law,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.
“In today’s ultra-connected era, we cannot separate the security of Europe from that of Asia,” said South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
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In their final summit communique, NATO leaders wrote: “The Indo-Pacific is important for NATO, given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security. … We welcome the contribution of our partners in … the region. We will further strengthen our dialogue and cooperation to tackle our shared security challenges.”
No mutual defense treaty links NATO with Indo-Pacific powers, but China and Russia are feeling the blowback of the common ground they have found.
Unintended consequences
In a bit of diplomatic irony, the warming ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping helped accelerate the East-West coalition building against them.
“With China and Russia announcing a ‘no-limits partnership’ shortly before the invasion [of Ukraine] … the balancing coalitions at either end of Eurasia became strongly linked together,” said Joel Atkinson, an international politics professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.
Events in Vilnius showed a coalescing network of industrial democracies in North America, Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The U.S.-led world order is arguably facing its most serious economic and political challenges since the Cold War, with both sides reaching out to developing and nonaligned nations.
“Challenges to the liberal world order are becoming more serious, so now I think the democracies are uniting or cooperating in a kind of backlash against this authoritarian agenda,” said Daniel Pinkston, an international relations professor at Troy University.
Various capitals have differing degrees of enthusiasm for this “backlash.” Hungary remains an outlier, while France opposes a NATO office in Japan.
Yet the ties linking the democracies look firmer than those binding authoritarian Eurasian powers. Despite their stated “no limits” partnership, China has declined to arm Russia, leaving Iran as the sole “friend” filling Moscow’s depleted armory.
The U.S. is the only power with fully deployed forces in the Atlantic and Pacific, though France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain have sent carrier groups, jet squadrons and ground troops to drill with Asian partners in recent years.
Although the European expeditionary forces are far smaller than those deployed by China and the U.S., more promising avenues of cooperation have opened in domains unconstrained by geography, such as diplomacy, technology, cybersecurity and space.
Because of separate alliances with the U.S., Eastern and Western democracies increasingly use the same NATO-standard arms, munitions and components. That enables joint weapons production, arms sales and increased interoperability of equipment.
West welcomes East
The ever-closer relationship was on display in Vilnius, even if it wasn’t garnering many headlines.
“No partner is closer than Japan,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a meeting with Mr. Kishida on the sidelines of the summit.
Japan fields a 240,000-strong, professional military. As constitutional constraints loosen, forces are increasingly deployable to hot spots in East Asia. Tokyo has quietly built a large and effective naval force, complete with major surface and subsurface components, and two light aircraft carriers armed with F-35 fighter jets are coming online.
Japanese units are increasingly exercising with regional partners, including Quad members India and Australia, and with Britain and the strategically located Philippines. Japan’s arms industry has not supplied Ukraine but is developing its next-generation stealth fighter in partnership with Italy and Britain.
At the summit, Japan and NATO signed an individually tailored partnership program to boost cooperation in 16 areas, including maritime security, emerging technologies, cyberspace, outer space and disinformation.
With 555,000 troops, South Korea fields the largest army of the Asia-Pacific 4. Most of its forces are postured to deter North Korea on the divided and heavily armed peninsula, and its troops are overwhelmingly conscripts, reducing their availability for deployment far from home.
South Korea’s arms industry has surged to prominence during the Russia-Ukraine war. Seoul has agreed to manufacture equipment for Warsaw in an “offset” deal conservatively valued at $15 billion. The military package will bolster NATO’s eastern flank with tanks, self-propelled guns, rocket artillery and combat aircraft while enabling Poland to send its used equipment to Ukraine.
While declining to help arm Ukraine, South Korea has “lent” the U.S. a half-million 155 mm artillery shells from its stockpile, freeing up Washington to draw on its stocks to supply Ukraine in its war with Russian occupying forces.
In Vilnius, South Korea and NATO signed an individually tailored partnership program covering 11 areas, including counterterrorism, nonproliferation, emerging technologies, cyberdefense and the arms industry.
Australia and New Zealand field more minimal militaries than Japan and South Korea, but they have competent forces, boast plentiful expeditionary experience and are crucial to countering Chinese influence in the South Pacific. They have also assisted Ukraine with equipment and training.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a deal to supply Germany with light armored vehicles and pledged more for Ukraine. New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins agreed to cooperate with NATO on climate change, cyberdefense and technology.
Is it sustainable?
Although NATO’s communique reserved its main ire for Russia, it said China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” The alliance said China aims to “subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains.”
Those lines sparked anger from Beijing, which warned NATO against “meddling in affairs beyond its borders.” A government spokesman said China “resolutely opposes NATO’s eastward expansion into the Asia-Pacific.”
Even so, the trend for greater cooperation and coordination between NATO and East Asian democracies is “growing,” Mr. Atkinson said.
“This will continue until the power of the Russia-China condominium peaks, or there is a split, in which case trans-Eurasian unity will decrease even as the respective coalitions in Europe and Asia, each facing their respective primary antagonist, continue to strengthen,” he said.
How far the cooperation will go is an open question.
“In global politics and international security, you will see things like AUKUS” — the deal offering Australia, British and American nuclear submarine technologies, Mr. Pinkston said. “We will see these one-off, case-by-case examples.”
The U.S. will be continually challenged to balance its interests and alliances in European and Asian theaters where Washington does not always have a firm grasp of events.
“The U.S. will find it’s a mixed blessing: China and Russia are in the driver’s seat, [and] this means the U.S. doesn’t have complete freedom to set the pace,” said Mr. Atkinson. “For example, the Biden administration is trying to tone down competition with Beijing — something the Europeans would like to see, but now you see India being worried about how far the U.S. will go.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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