NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but the alliance is, in a somewhat reckless manner, increasingly interested in the Asia Pacific region. Leaders of four Asia Pacific countries – Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand – have been invited to attend NATO’s annual summit for the second year in a row. After declaring China as a “threat” for the first time in history during last year’s Madrid summit, NATO extended its criticism of China at the recent Vilnius summit. Despite opposition from France, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claims that the question of opening a NATO office in Japan is still on the table.

To put it bluntly, NATO’s Asia Pacific footprint is likely to be counterproductive to peace and stability in the region.

First of all, the military alliance has failed to gain a good reputation in terms of delivering stability to the world since the end of the Cold War. Its bombing campaign during the Kosovo War was certainly in violation of the United Nations Charter, and the bombing by no means helped resolve the issues behind the war. It’s difficult to argue that NATO’s 20-year operation in Afghanistan has been a success story. NATO also played a role in the US-led invasion of Iraq. To a large extent, the chaos in Libya since 2011 stems from NATO’s attack on Muammar Gaddafi. In almost all those cases, NATO intervened with a self-proclaimed good intention, but the end result was way more tragedy and sufferings inflicted on civilians. And the war in Ukraine has shown how NATO’s cornering of big power, driven by a mentality of “us versus them”, has spelled the largest-scale military conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

Considering NATO’s track record, it’s highly skeptical that the alliance can be a force for good when it extends its presence to the Asia Pacific. The reasoning behind NATO’s expansionary attempt is that its security is increasingly linked to what happens in the Asia Pacific, and parallel drawing between Ukraine and Taiwan is a talking point embraced by some NATO leaders nowadays. From the perspective of many Asia Pacific countries, however, there is a real concern that NATO’s obsession with bloc confrontation will spread to the region like a virus, thereby giving rise to more regional tensions. “Leave us alone” is probably a prevailing message that the region hopes to send to NATO.

Related News

The new ‘donor-nomics’ in Ukraine, thanks to Western governments and their taxpayers

Declassified: CIA’s covert Ukraine invasion plan

This is not suggesting that disputes don’t exist in the Asia Pacific without NATO’s presence. Overall, however, the pursuit of cooperation and economic development, rather than group politics, is the main focus of the region. This can be seen from the fact that the world’s largest free trade agreement – RCEP – belongs to the region. The International Monetary Fund predicted in April that the Asia Pacific would contribute some 70% of global growth in 2023.

China plays a key role in regional prosperity, as it is the largest trading partner of most Asia Pacific economies. Even for countries such as Japan and Australia that geopolitically don’t get along with Beijing, trade with China matters to their economies. Last year, a Japanese government opinion poll showed that people in Southeast Asia viewed China as the most important future partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). With that in mind, when a North Atlantic alliance that is increasingly hostile towards China tries to weigh in on Asia Pacific affairs, there is no reason why ASEAN would welcome it.

When former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating recently branded Jens Stoltenberg a “supreme fool” for seeking to expand NATO to the Asia Pacific, there was little sign that he was seeking personal or partisan political gains. In fact, Keating and Anthony Albanese, the current prime minister, belong to the same political party. His comment was based on a genuine worry about the militarism that NATO could export to the Asia Pacific.

In history, many Asia Pacific countries including China fell victim to brutal Western colonialism as well as the atrocities of Imperial Japan. Most of them have moved on, but this doesn’t mean that a history of being bullied is easily forgotten. This is why, for instance, a multibillion-dollar lawsuit over land awards dating back to the era of British imperialism threatens to cloud the current European relations with Malaysia. Today, Japan is at the forefront of the attempt to ask for NATO’s presence in the Asia Pacific. The Vilnius summit has seen Japan and NATO complete a deal that is set to elevate their collaboration from traditional security areas to emerging technologies and strategic communications. Frankly, such a scenario runs a risk of bringing back the memories of colonialism and imperialism to Asian Pacific countries.

In addition, Asia Pacific expansion is unlikely to gain unanimous support within NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron has a well-known insistence that NATO is geographically confined to the North Atlantic. In fact, according to a recent survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, most Europeans agree with Macron in his point that “Europeans should not be just America’s followers and get caught up in crises that are not ours”. Macron made the comment earlier this year when he was returning from a visit to China. While hawkish European voices on China tend to receive more attention from the media, the reality is that quite a few European NATO member states – Hungary, Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc – enjoy cordial relations with China. In the words of Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, China is a country that you can take a lot of benefit from if you cooperate with it. None of these countries would like to see their China-related opportunities taken away because of a provocative NATO expansion in the Asia Pacific.

NATO claims that it has been revitalized by the Ukraine crisis, but the fact that most countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America have taken a neutral position on this war tells a lot about how NATO is really perceived in the vast non-Western world. Instead of looking to expand to the Asia Pacific, the alliance ought to have a serious reflection on its own mistakes.