Is the shadow of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) looming over India and the Asia-Pacific region? If one heard China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest security summit held in Singapore early this month, it is very much so. Taken together with a push to impose a security agenda on the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, the Asia-Pacific is turning out to be a major theatre of big-power rivalry. That puts India in a quandary.
Forging “NATO-like” alliances would plunge the region into a “whirlpool of disputes and conflicts,” Li warned at the summit, which was also attended by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. “Today’s Asia-Pacific needs open and inclusive cooperation, not buddying up into small cliques,” Li said. The “cliques” in question are the Australia, UK, and US (AUKUS) security pact as well as the Quad, of which India is a member along with Australia, Japan and the US.
Li’s warning comes in the wake of a US House Select Committee recommending the inclusion of India in NATO Plus, a security arrangement that currently includes NATO and five aligned nations—Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Israel. India has, however, brushed aside the idea, with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar saying that the “NATO template does not apply to India.”
In what is going to be the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region (“Indo-Pacific” in American lingo), a NATO liaison office will open in Tokyo next year. Last month, Britain and Japan signed a new strategic partnership and agreed to “deepen” collaboration between NATO and Tokyo. During the Shangri-La summit, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said having such an office in Japan is “in the interests of NATO”.
In addition, NATO plans to further strengthen collaboration with its four major partners in the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, a recent report in Nikkei Asia said. The alliance will formulate an Individually Tailored Partnership Program with all four countries—an upgrade to a higher form of partnership. Its details will be thrashed out during the forthcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on July 11 and 12, which all four leaders are expected to attend.
The curiously named House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party is chaired by Republican and China hawk Mike Gallagher who views the competition between China and the US as an “existential struggle”. According to the Select Committee, including India in NATO Plus “would build upon the US and India’s close partnership to strengthen global security and deter the aggression of the CCP across the Indo-Pacific region.”
“Winning the strategic competition with the Chinese Communist Party and ensuring the security of Taiwan demands the United States strengthen ties to our allies and security partners, including India,” says the report. Interestingly, India is being called up to the defence of Taiwan, with which New Delhi has no formal diplomatic relations. Nor does Taiwan appear anywhere in India’s defence calculations.
Meanwhile, there is a push to make the Quad embrace a security agenda. A report by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, released early this month, argues that the Quad needs more muscle to live up to its potential and for that, the group should focus on a security agenda, especially maritime security, to serve as a deterrent to China. The purpose is to make the Quad “capable of providing mutual support in crisis or conflict situations, even if its members are not aligned on policy or directly involved in combined operations.”
Although accused by Beijing of being an anti-China coalition, the Quad has hitherto refrained from deepening cooperation in the security realm. It has limited itself to contributing to global health as a provider of vaccines, working on climate change, building infrastructure, and cooperating in space. New Delhi has serious qualms about being part of a security alliance against China. The new report aims to whittle down such reservations and make the Quad countries share their capabilities to “seamlessly refuel, resupply and repair ships and aircraft from any of its members, and foster the ability to do so at very short notice.”
Amidst growing concern over China’s increasing naval activities in the region, some Asia-Pacific nations are already taking proactive measures to counter Beijing’s advances. Japan has announced plans to increase its defence budget by a whopping 56%. An AUKUS agreement will lead to Australian naval forces hosting nuclear-powered submarines. The Philippines has identified four additional military bases for the use of US troops.
With the Asia Pacific accounting for 60% of the world’s GDP and over half of the global population, the region will be the engine of the global economy in the coming decades. China’s looming presence over the region adds another dimension. Beijing has territorial disputes with Japan, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. India is on a permanent border standoff with China, having fought a full-scale war in 1962 and being embroiled in several territorial disputes over the years.
A NATO overreach to the Asia-Pacific will pose a major challenge to New Delhi’s much-touted “strategic autonomy”. The push to transform Quad into a security alliance focusing on China will also have the same effect.
India has resisted being drawn into rival blocs over Ukraine until now. Its refusal to take sides has brought the country under intense questioning in the West. Having moved on from its traditional non-alignment, New Delhi now boasts of “multi-alignment” as its new foreign policy mantra.
“So far, India has done an impressive job of maintaining its balancing act. Whether it can continue to do so in the years ahead is an open question,” says Nirupama Rao, former Ambassador to both China and the US. A prolonged invasion “could lead India to tussle more with Washington as the United States pushes harder for neutral states to come off the sidelines,” she says.
Although an Asian NATO remains a pie in the sky for now, an extended war over Ukraine will force India and the Asia-Pacific nations to bear the brunt of increasing big-power rivalry in the region.
E D Mathew
Former UN Spokesperson