Analysis | NATO sets its sights on China

The exercises, reportedly involving a mixture of hostage rescue drills and counterterrorism training, are conspicuously timed. Speaking in a briefing last week, a senior Belarusian commander framed the maneuvers as a reaction to the “West’s aggressive foreign policy toward Belarus” — a key Russian vassal — and the strengthening of NATO’s presence in neighboring Poland. The two autocracies have never coordinated exercises on this scale before.

The moment reflects the growing place that China inhabits in NATO’s strategic outlook. A decade ago, the country was a non-factor in NATO deliberations, with the Northern Atlantic alliance focused on its traditional mission of safeguarding the territorial integrity of much of Europe and deterring the ambitions of the Kremlin. But the explosion of the war in Ukraine and the increasingly global nature of security threats — with the alliance more preoccupied by challenges in the realms of cybersecurity and space — has thrust the Asian juggernaut into the spotlight.

At this week’s summit, NATO leaders issued a joint communiqué that claimed China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values” and said the “deepening” Russo-Chinese alliance was working “to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order.” In remarks Wednesday, Jens Stoltenberg, outgoing NATO Secretary General, cast China as the chief “enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine — a reference to the transfer of dual-use goods and electronics from China that’s helping Russia supply its war machine — and warned Beijing that it “cannot have a normal relationship” with the West if it “continues to fuel the war in Europe.”

Beijing reacted angrily to the events in Washington. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian rehashed his government’s customary talking points at a Thursday briefing, denouncing NATO as an anachronism suffused with a “Cold War mind-set” and saying that the United States should “not come stir up trouble in the Asia-Pacific after messing up Europe.”

But China’s own frictions with countries in Asia have provoked a sharpening set of security partnerships around the region, especially among the United Stes’ closest allies. At the NATO summit, top officials from the Indo-Pacific “four” of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea convened as part of the gathering, despite not being members of the alliance.

“China is seeking to shape the world around it in ways that we’ve not really seen prior to the last decade or so and that does engage our national interests,” Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, told me, while also acknowledging the deep trade and economic links most Asian countries have with China.

Marles, the senior-most Australian official in attendance in Washington, pointed to the moment China and Russia signaled their “no-limits” friendship on the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “A war in Eastern Europe suddenly became deeply relevant to the Indo-Pacific,” he said, gesturing to a “connectedness” between Asia and the West that many governments “feel and see very clearly.” He added that he and his Asian counterparts have aired their concerns to China, and are simply focused on “the maintenance of a system that sees countries resolve their differences through the rule of law.”

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly said that the “Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.” His government has left open the option for NATO to launch a liaison office in Tokyo — something that has more symbolic than practical relevance, but that irks Beijing, which sees the potential “NATOization” of Asia as a challenge to its rise. But nobody is actually talking about an “Asian NATO” to confront China.

“We know that NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” a senior Japanese government official told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We don’t expect any kind of physical intervention in the region, but we need strong partnership and collaboration with NATO.” The official highlighted Russia’s recent military agreements with North Korea as a reminder of developments that undermine the stability and security of both regions. The risk of China “using unilateral action to change the status quo” — a reference to Beijing’s assertiveness over Taiwan and maritime disputes elsewhere in the region — could be dented by the involvement of a broader “international coalition,” the official said.

Some analysts are wary that NATO’s increased engagement with the region will provoke China. “Even though concerns about Chinese aggression and lack of respect for international norms in arenas such as the South China Sea are steadily growing, most Asian countries tend not to perceive Beijing as an existential threat and in turn are unwilling to pick a side in the U.S.-Chinese rivalry,” wrote Mathieu Droin, Kelly Grieco and Happymon Jacob in Foreign Affairs. “Depending on the issue at hand, Asian countries may seek to work with China, the United States, neither, or both.”

The authors of the Foreign Affairs essay argue that the current atmosphere is “the worst of all worlds: it feeds fears about the alliance’s intentions and infuriates Beijing without giving Asian partners the means to further deter China.”

“Half-measures meant to counter China could end up sparking the very conflict the alliance is seeking to defuse,” the authors added.

Such a view has sympathizers within NATO. “NATO is a defense alliance … we can’t organize it into an anti-China bloc,” Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters. His boss, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, arrived in Washington after a controversial tour through Moscow and Beijing, underscoring his government’s defiance of the West’s liberal establishment.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also recently met Chinese President Xi Jinping at a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Chinese-led Eurasian security and economic bloc that includes countries like Belarus. Numan Kurtulmus, speaker of the Turkish parliament, rejected the idea that there was any contradiction between Turkey’s membership in NATO and increased participation in the SCO.

“If we see the world from a bipolar perspective, it is a danger,” Kurtulmus told me, gesturing to the Cold War politics of the 20th century. “If you look upon the upcoming developments from the perspective of a multipolar word, it means you can develop partnerships according to the interests of both countries.”

Kurtulmus said the United States’ ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 signaled the end of a certain era of U.S. dominance on the world stage, a moment where Washington thought it could call all the shots. “We are in the new age, just in the beginning, but this new situation of the world system is much more in favor of creating peace,” he told me. “It shows us that no country can dominate or manipulate the world system and that we need a kind of balance of powers.”

That’s not exactly the way many lawmakers in Washington see things. At NATO’s public forum, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), an inveterate foreign policy hawk, made clear what he thought the real priorities were. “What’s going on with Russia is a warm-up for this century. China is the issue,” he said, before later adding: “The challenge for us in this century is how we all occupy this planet without killing each other.”