NATO needs to reimagine its role to defend two fronts, in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region
The Chinese hegemonic intentions are visible from its deteriorating relations with the West and India, the growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, apart from the human rights issues in Tibet and the Xinjiang region.
Financial crises in Sri Lanka and Pakistan further worsen matters. In 2020, China replaced the United States as the EU's largest trading partner. By 2021, Beijing had built 50 per cent of the total ships in the world. Through various mechanisms such as design collaboration agreements, cyber espionage, and acquisitions, China has copied advanced innovative ship designs, endangering the West's future naval productions. In a nutshell, the world is witnessing China's coercive policies in international politics and geo-economics, a deeply embedded civil-military fusion through espionage and dual-use production facilities, which raises sovereignty issues for several countries.
On the other hand, from the French President's statement in 2019 that NATO is "brain dead" to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict and the completion of the accession protocols of Sweden and Finland, the alliance has been reinvigorated with its new Trans-Pacific identity through the 2022 Madrid summit. The heads of the states of NATO's Asian regional partners — Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — attended the NATO Summit, a new development indicating the expanding horizons of Asia's militarization to counter the Chinese hegemonic designs. The message stands clear, NATO is pivoting to Asia. The NATO 2022 'Strategic Concept' minced no words to state that the "PRC's malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target Allies and harm Alliance security". It strongly indicates that NATO now prioritizes the Indo-Pacific region. Before the 2022 summit, the foreign ministers of these four countries met at the North Atlantic Council (NAC) in December 2020 for the first time to push the emerging multilateral interoperability in the Indo-Pacific. This was in the backdrop of the "NATO 2030" expert reflection group that had labelled China as a "full-spectrum systemic rival, rather than a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor."
However, President Barack Obama was the first leader to foresee the Chinese threat and announced the "pivot" policy in 2011, while addressing the Australian Parliament. Further, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton penned an essay titled "America's Pacific Century," where she argued for a "strategic turn to the region", which indicated relocating the US navy from West Asia to the South China Sea. The policy did not receive much attention, given the U.S. engagements in West Asia and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, today, the region's shifting sands, whereby the U.S. has snowballed the peace process through the Abraham accords and the Saudi-Turkey peace process, strongly indicate that the upcoming days in the Indo-Pacific will be highly turbulent. From another essential perspective, the militarization of the Indo-Pacific region would also provoke China and Russia to react, thereby offsetting the relative peace on Russia's Eastern and Southern borders. Over the last few decades, Russia has adopted a relatively peaceful approach in the two directions to entirely focus on its Western front. The change in NATO's strategy thus would be testing for the Sino-Russian friendship as Russia is more focused on Europe.
Nevertheless, the prelude to the new Cold War, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has led to a consensus in Europe that it needs to view Russia as its primary geopolitical challenge. At the same summit, NATO also decided to increase its rapidly deployable troops by 300,000, apart from doubling or tripling to the brigade level in the Baltic States and five other frontline countries. Further, it plans to increase munitions and other supplies in response to Russia's aggressiveness. This overhauling of the deployments would be complete by 2023. Currently, the defence spending of its members will increase by 1.2 percent in real terms by the end of 2022. Simultaneously, as Europe intends to reduce its energy dependencies, a pertinent question that needs to be pondered over is, at the same point of time, what would be the proportion of financial and military commitments of NATO towards first, the European Defence, and second, the containment of China in the Indo-Pacific region? Which objective would be a priority for the European countries? Can they counter two threats at the same time? The Ukraine-Russia conflict might continue for a couple of more months, if not years.
Moreover, what if China decides to invade Taiwan during the same period or creates crises in the Indo-Pacific region? It must be recalled that during the Russia-Ukraine conflict's initial phase, France and Germany were reluctant to cut off their gas supplies. The future is hard to predict, and so are the sustenance levels of multiple military alliances. What then happens to the safety of allies in Asia is worth pondering. Thus, NATO needs to develop a genuinely transatlantic China policy in addition to the deployments in the Indo-Pacific, which might make China more reactionary and possibly provoke it to test the unity of NATO.
Three crucial issues emerge regarding South and Central Asia and the recent developments. First, attempts by Russia and China to expand their joint sphere of influence to include countries having an anti-American perspective, such as Iran and Pakistan. The emerging counter quad can present a formidable challenge to the West's allies. Second, the destruction of the agricultural fertility of Ukraine will lead to increased demand for food grains. One of the most critical inputs for good agricultural produce are phosphates, the supplies dominated by China, which can be used as an essential geopolitical tool against the West via the supplier countries, especially in South and Central Asia. Third, the impact of the conflict would be the rise in the earth's average temperatures, particularly in the Arctic region; hence, melting the ice would be a new strategic issue. The opening of the new sea routes, especially in the arctic, would further bring the Indo-Pacific region to the centre of the gravity of the upcoming new conflicts.
India firmly believes in multipolarity and hence has its presence in China-led SCO, BRICS, and RIC apart from its strategic partnership in the Quad grouping. The multialignment policy of PM Narendra Modi has yielded positive results. As the militarization of Asia is imminent and there are increased chances of confrontations, the moment presents India with an opportunity to delicately balance hegemonic tendencies and democratic ideals without compromising India's security and sovereignty. For this, it becomes essential that the country adjusts its budget to soon emerge as a self-reliant defence actor to maintain the strategic autonomy, failing which it might be sandwiched between the arms trade geopolitics of the West and Russia. Even for a couple of years, some hard decisions to divert financial resources towards indigenous development and emergency procurements of cyber and space capabilities is a must. On the flip side, we also need to evolve our policies in case the hegemonic tendencies pose an imminent threat. In such a case, New Delhi’s traditional ally, such as Russia, might side with China and hence would allow India to find military and tactical support from the willing partners, thereby bringing profound changes in the South Asian security architecture.
The author is Assistant Professor, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda