WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s the third year. Ukraine WarNATO plans to deepen ties with four Indo-Pacific partners that are not part of a military alliance but have become increasingly important as Russia and China forge closer ties to counter the United States and as North and South Korea support opposing sides in European conflicts.
The leaders of New Zealand, Japan and South Korea will attend the third consecutive NATO summit, which begins Tuesday in Washington, D.C., while Australia will send its vice prime minister. China, concerned about NATO’s growing interests beyond Europe and the Western Hemisphere, will be closely watching the summit.
“European partners are increasingly viewing the challenges of Asia, which is on the other side of the world, as being relevant to them. Challenges on the other side of the world in Europe “The United States sees this issue as relevant to us,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Brookings Institution last week.
The top American diplomat said the United States was working to break down barriers between its European alliance, its Asian allies and other partners around the world. “It’s part of a new situation, a new structure that we’ve established.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that NATO allies and Indo-Pacific nations will launch four new joint projects on Ukraine, artificial intelligence, disinformation and cybersecurity.
“While each effort is different, our primary goal is the same: to leverage the unique strengths of highly capable democracies to address shared challenges,” Sullivan told a defense industry forum.
Countries that share security concerns: Increasing competition between the US and ChinaWashington is Curbing Beijing’s ambitions This is to challenge what Beijing dismisses as a US-led world order aimed at containing China’s inevitable rise.
Beijing has reacted angrily to the prospect of greater cooperation between NATO and its four Indo-Pacific allies.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian on Monday accused NATO of “violating China’s borders, expanding its authority, intervening beyond its defense sphere and inciting conflict.”
The war in Ukraine, which has pitted the West against Russia and its friends, has strengthened arguments for closer cooperation between the United States and its European and Asian allies. “Today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the U.S. Congress in April.
The United States and South Korea have condemned North Korea. Supplying Russia with ammunitionMeanwhile, Russian President Putin visited North Korea last month and met with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Mutual Military Assistance.
Meanwhile, South Korea and Japan are sending military supplies and aid to Ukraine. The United States is also China is supplying machine tools to Russia.Microelectronics and other technologies that would enable the production of weapons for use against Ukraine.
South Korean President Yoon Seok-yol will send a strong message to Washington on military cooperation between Russia and North Korea and discuss ways to strengthen cooperation between NATO allies and Indo-Pacific countries, Chief National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo told reporters on Friday.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the discussions would “focus on our joint efforts to support the rules-based system.”
The partnership doesn’t make NATO a direct player in the Indo-Pacific, but it can work with the four nations on issues of common interest, said Mirna Garrick, senior policy analyst for China and East Asia at the United States Institute of Peace. For example, NATO can share information and align on actions such as providing sanctions and aid, but it won’t intervene in military crises outside its own region, she wrote in her analysis.
The NATO summit will enable the United States and its European and Indo-Pacific allies to push back against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, according to Louis Simon, director of the Centre for Security and Diplomacy Strategies at the Free University of Brussels.
“The Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alliances are built around the explicit anchor of U.S. military power, which gives them a stronger cohesion and strategic advantage than the sort of interlocking partnerships that bind China, Russia, Iran and North Korea,” Simon wrote in War on the Rocks last week.
Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University in eastern China, said Beijing is concerned about NATO’s shift eastward. Beijing has said NATO should stay out of security affairs in the Indo-Pacific region and change its view of China as a strategic adversary.
“NATO should view China as a positive force for regional peace and stability and global security,” Zhu said. “We also want the war in Ukraine to end as soon as possible… and we have rejected a return to tripartite relations with Russia and North Korea.”
“In today’s unstable and fragile world, Europe, the United States and China should strengthen global and regional cooperation,” Zhu said.
NATO and China had little to no conflict before tensions rose between Beijing and Washington in 2019. That year, a NATO summit in London described China as “a challenge that we needed to address together as allies.” Two years later, NATO upgraded China to a “systemic challenge” and said Beijing was “cooperating militarily with Russia.”
The leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand attended a NATO summit for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and in a statement cited the geopolitical challenges posed by China. Beijing accused NATO of “working with the US government to fully suppress China.”
Now Beijing is concerned about Washington forming a NATO-like alliance in the Indo-Pacific region.
Senior Colonel Cao Yan, a researcher at the China Institute for Warfare, asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last month. Was the US trying to create an Asian version of NATO? By emphasizing partnerships and alliances, including the United States and the United Kingdom, the Australian group, the Australian, Indian and Japanese group, and the Japanese and Korean group.
“What impact do you think the strengthening of U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific will have on security and stability in the region?” Cao asked at the Shangri-La Dialogue Security Summit in Singapore.
Austin responded that the US was simply working with “like-minded countries that share similar values and a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Beijing is drawing its own conclusions.
“The true intention of the US Indo-Pacific strategy is to integrate all the small circles into a larger circle as an Asian version of NATO so as to maintain US-led hegemony,” Chinese Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng said at the forum.
___
Associated Press writers Chen Wangqing in Beijing and Ammar Madani in Washington contributed to this report.
