The 75th anniversary summit of NATO was held in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday last week. Its main focus was the reinvigoration and revitalization of NATO, along with its expansion. The shadow of domestic electoral politics could not be avoided. The focus was on whether US President Biden would deliver his speech at the NATO summit cogently. Biden’s fitness to run in the next US presidential election in November was under assessment.
NATO is acquiring more coherence and teeth. These were perhaps more evident than Biden’s future. The link to the Biden candidacy is critical for NATO. If Biden loses to a resurgent former US president Donald Trump, the NATO consolidation that the Biden administration has undertaken in the wake of the Ukraine crisis could transform during a Trump administration, despite their assertion to “reaffirm the enduring trans-Atlantic bond between our nations.”
Mainly, this could leave Ukraine more on its own. The front-line European states could be facing more heat than traditional Europe, which despite increasing its domestic defense budgets to support NATO, might feel abandoned once again. Therefore, the assessment of Biden at the NATO summit had not only domestic, but NATO implications as well.
NATO has come a long way since its formation 75 years ago. It remains an organization that is younger than Biden. Today, NATO is back to being an anti-Russian coalition in the midst of a hot, rather than cold, war.
“Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security,” NATO’s Washington summit declaration says.
Unlike the time when NATO was formed, its expansion has brought in most of the old Warsaw Pact Soviet allies, and since the Ukraine crisis, Sweden and Finland joined NATO.
That raises Russian anxieties about the American intent in curbing Russian influence in Europe, which is now barely down to Belarus and some Caucasus outposts. As a result of the 75th summit, NATO seeks a more coherent policy to check Russia, where defending Ukraine more robustly is on the cards.
Twenty-one NATO countries have increased their defense budgets to 2 percent of GDP and are contributing to Ukraine even at the risk of diminishing their stockpiles. They have undertaken the biggest reinforcement of collective defense in more than a generation. Space, cyber, underwater domain and nuclear readiness are emphasized.
The second important aspect emanating from the summit is that for the first time, China is now seen as a rival of NATO, and not just a competitor. While individual NATO countries have comfortable economic relations with China, there is a greater sense of realization that Beijing is stoking the Russian power play and helping Moscow continue its war in Ukraine. NATO sees this China-Russia axis as detrimental to its approach and has hence castigated China.
“The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern,” it said.
Belarus, Iran and North Korea are also specifically mentioned as problems.
From the Indian point of view, the most important issue is the perceived reduction of barriers between NATO and the Indo-Pacific, since India is active in the Indo-Pacific, but not in NATO.
NATO summits have now made it a routine for its Indo-Pacific allies, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, or the Indo-Pacific Four (IP-4), to participate in their summits even though they are not NATO members. The IP-4 are likely to be integrated into the military-industrial cooperation with NATO countries more robustly through the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge. More exercises between NATO members and the IP-4 are under way, including the US-led RIMPAC, Japan-led Pacific Skies and Australian-led Pitch Black.
NATO is following the template provided by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue last month when he spoke about “the new convergence in the Indo-Pacific.” Defense stockpiles in NATO countries have been reduced, and now the effort is to focus on using the industrial bases of Japan, South Korea and Australia to enhance production and contribute to NATO’s war efforts.
Besides this, joint projects to enhance partnerships are on the anvil. Deals in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, disinformation and Ukraine have emerged from the first-ever NATO defense industry forum held alongside the NATO Summit.
They aim to “harness the unique strengths of highly capable democracies to address shared global challenges,” said US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who believes that European events impact the Indo-Pacific and vice versa.
However, this is not a view that India shares. This is partly due to the assessment that the rapid expansion of China’s military-industrial complex is now a strategic threat to NATO and the IP-4. Therefore, a joint production of defense systems and cooperative maintenance of aircraft and flotillas would now become more common between NATO and IP-4 countries. India could be a non-NATO part of this.
NATO’s role in counterterrorism is endorsed through NATO’s Updated Policy Guidelines on Counter-Terrorism and an Updated Action Plan on Enhancing NATO’s Role in the International Community’s Fight Against Terrorism. These would guide NATO’s counterterrorism effort.
All 32 NATO members have promised to increase their military-industrial complexes at home for the first time in the organization’s history. This builds on the earlier commitment to increase defense spending to at least 2 percent of their budgets. NATO is also now looking at integrating its systems through common standards so that ammunition, communications, tanks and aircraft systems are more standardized, which would lead to easier common servicing and ammunition facilities. Such interoperability is now being taken much more seriously by NATO and would perhaps overcome the discordance among small militaries of many NATO countries.
India will remain wary of NATO’s expansion into the Indo-Pacific region. It welcomes intensified partnership with individual countries, but does not share an enthusiasm for NATO as an institution.
Gurjit Singh is a former Indian ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, ASEAN, Ethiopia and the African Union.
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