China takes centre stage at NATO summit

The drills, reportedly a mix of hostage rescue drills and anti-terror training, are strikingly timed. In a press conference last week, a senior Belarusian commander described the maneuvers as a response 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.

This moment reflects the growing place China occupies in NATO’s strategic perspective. A decade ago, the country played no role in NATO deliberations as the North Atlantic alliance focused on its traditional mission of protecting the territorial integrity of much of Europe and fending off Kremlin ambitions. But the escalation of the war in Ukraine and the increasingly global nature of security threats – with the alliance more concerned with cybersecurity and space challenges – have thrust the Asian juggernaut into the spotlight.

At this week’s summit, NATO leaders issued a joint communiqué saying China’s “declared ambitions and coercive actions continue to challenge our interests, security and values” and that the “deepening” Russia-China alliance is working to “undermine and reshape the rules-based international order.” Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing NATO secretary general, on Wednesday called China the main “enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine – a reference to the transfer of dual-use goods and electronics from China that help Russia supply its war machine – and warned Beijing it “cannot have a normal relationship” with the West if it “continues to fuel war in Europe.”

Beijing reacted angrily to the events in Washington. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian repeated his government’s usual arguments at a briefing on Thursday, condemning NATO as an anachronism steeped in a “Cold War mentality” and saying the United States “after causing trouble in Europe, should not now cause trouble in the Asia-Pacific region.”

But China’s own friction with countries in Asia has led to a tightening of security partnerships in the region, especially among the United States’ closest allies. The NATO summit brought together top representatives of the Indo-Pacific “four” of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, even though they are not members of the alliance.

“China is trying to shape the world around it in a way that we haven’t seen for about a decade, and that affects our national interests,” Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, told me, while acknowledging the close trade and economic ties that most Asian countries have with China.

Marles, the most senior Australian official present in Washington, referred to the moment when China and Russia signalled their “boundless” friendship on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “A war in Eastern Europe suddenly became profoundly relevant to the Indo-Pacific,” he said, pointing to a “connectedness” between Asia and the West that many governments “feel and see very clearly”. He added that he and his Asian counterparts had expressed their concerns about China and were simply focused on “maintaining a system where countries resolve their differences through the rule of law”.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly stated that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia.” His administration has left open the possibility of NATO opening a liaison office in Tokyo – an option that is more symbolic than practical, but which irks Beijing, which sees the potential “NATOization” of Asia as a challenge to its rise. But in reality, no one is talking about an “Asian NATO” to counter China.

“We know NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” a senior Japanese government official, who asked not to be identified, told me. “We do not expect physical intervention in the region, but we need a strong partnership and cooperation 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 taking “unilateral action to change the status quo” – a reference to Beijing’s assertiveness over Taiwan and maritime disputes elsewhere in the region – could be mitigated by the involvement of a broader “international coalition,” the official said.

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

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

“Half-hearted measures to counter China could ultimately spark the very conflict the alliance seeks to defuse,” the authors added.

Such a view finds sympathizers within NATO. “NATO is a defense alliance… we cannot organize it into a bloc against China,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters. His boss, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, arrived in Washington after a controversial trip through Moscow and Beijing, underscoring his government’s disregard for the West’s liberal establishment.

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

“If we look at the world from a bipolar perspective, that’s a danger,” Kurtulmus told me, referring to the politics of the Cold War in the 20th century. “If you look at the coming developments from the perspective of a multipolar world, it means that you can develop partnerships in the interests of both countries.”

Kurtulmus said the ignominious U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 signals the end of a certain era of U.S. dominance on the world stage, a moment when Washington thought it could call the shots. “We are in a new era, just at the beginning, but this new situation of the world system is much more conducive to creating peace,” he told me. “It shows us that no one country can dominate or manipulate the world system and that we need some kind of balance of power.”

Many lawmakers in Washington see things differently. At NATO’s public forum, Senator James E. Risch (R-Idaho), a diehard foreign policy hawk, made clear what he thinks the real priorities are. “What’s going on with Russia is a warm-up for this century. China is the problem,” he said, adding later, “The challenge for us in this century is how we all inhabit this planet without killing each other.”