Reading the daily news, you’d think that NATO and Red China were edging ever closer to war.
China sees NATO as an important component of U.S.-led “bloc confrontation”—which it views as a strategy of weaving webs of international coalitions to contain China’s rise. The issue is most acute in the Indo-Pacific, which includes AUKUS, the Quad, and the newly established “Squad,” which aims to integrate the Philippines…. But China also worries about NATO’s “Asia-Pacificization,” which has the potential of involving European powers more directly in Pacific affairs. Although NATO keeps emphasizing that it has no plans to expand its mandate toward the Indo-Pacific, [NATO] cooperation between the alliance and the AP4 is gaining pace in numerous domains, and welcomed by the Pacific states as well.
NATO meetings now regularly include “the ‘Asia-Pacific 4’ (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea), which have been invited to its summits.”
Further, “NATO and Japan work together bilaterally on a range of global security challenges such as cyber defense, technology and innovation, and maritime security, as well as through NATO’s broader relations with its partners in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Why is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fishing in Pacific waters? It seems to be building linkage between the security of Europe and Asia whether or not this is real or warranted.
A rhetorical Rutte
The rhetoric can be intense.
In early July, the former Dutch prime minister and now NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “There’s an increasing realization, and let’s not be naive about this: If Xi Jinping would attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, residing in Moscow, and telling him, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this, and I need you to keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory.’ ”
Isn’t Rutte’s Netherlands or even NATO itself a longtime very junior partner of the United States?
The demeaning and childish baiting in this statement is as bad as the geopolitics that inform it. If Putin were somehow to say no to an invasion of Europe, if he were to fail to “keep them busy”—what threat would NATO pose to China? What use would it be to the defense of Taiwan? Why would neutralizing NATO be the first thing the communists try to do?
Rutte is puffing up NATO here. He can get away with it because that organization is so poorly understood.
Article 5
Start with the famous Article 5. The National Security Journal, which should know better, writes, “Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty…stipulates that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all, and obligates NATO members to defend their allies in the event of an attack.”
This is the popular idea of Article 5 and is false. Here is the full text (emphasis added):
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Participation is optional (“such action as it deems necessary”). Responding with military force is optional (may not be deemed necessary). Any response in concert with alliance members is optional (“individually and in concert”).
Do you see how a strongly worded letter to the editor might satisfy treaty obligations in full based on the way the treaty is currently written?
However, notice also the specificity in “North Atlantic area.” There is no pathway to membership here for Japan, Australia, etc. To expand into Asia, NATO would have to act irregularly and against its own charter. Red China in a way recognized this when its spokesman said that Beijing “told the alliance not to bring…‘chaos’ to Asia.” Academia has also recognized it insofar as “some scholars have pointed out that the alliance should update its mandate to better fit the realities of 21st century global competition.”
The weak idea of joint offensives has legs, nevertheless. NATO’s military commander, U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, recently said: “The U.S.-led NATO alliance must prepare for the possibility that Russia and China could launch wars in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously, with 2027 being a potential flashpoint year.”
We remind ourselves of the institutional imperatives: getting more money, getting more people, promoting relevancy.
NATO versus countries
Let’s distinguish between NATO—a bloated bureaucracy, an employment agency for militaries overstaffed with generals, a gravy train for ex-politicians—and the countries which comprise NATO. Individual European members may have interests in Asia; but NATO, the organization, does not and must not contrive them.
NATO began to interest itself in Chinese affairs more than ten years ago. More recently, “NATO’s Strategic Concept, adopted in June 2022, was the first to reference China, noting that Beijing’s ‘stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.’ ”
It’s one thing to say that the interests, security, and values of certain individual European states might be challenged by the actions of a remote communist power (see for instance Red China’s trade war with Lithuania), another to say that a sprawling military institution is so challenged.
NATO will seek new ways to be useful. But the flaming rhetoric and the aggressive pose of what is essentially a paper tiger…these are not useful or helpful to anyone.
The only NATO-China war on the horizon is a war of words. And neither side is good even at that. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
