Recent years have witnessed growing security engagement and cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and key U.S. allies in East Asia — Japan and South Korea, most prominently. The two countries along with Australia and New Zealand — together dubbed “AP4” — have been invited to the annual NATO summit since 2022 and attended this year’s gathering in Washington. The development of security ties between the world’s greatest military alliance and Washington’s East Asian allies has gained momentum as they increasingly find a need for cooperation to counter security threats posed by the perceived revisionist ambitions of authoritarian Russia, China, and North Korea, and the solidifying partnership between the three.
However, rather than enhancing security across Eurasia, such developments may lead to further escalation of current flash points and the creation of new ones. Instead, Washington and its allies in both regions should prioritize conflict resolution and management in Europe and East Asia without needlessly interlinking the two.
Two Theaters, One Vision?
The concerns about an emerging authoritarian bloc among the so-called “Axis of Upheaval” are not unfounded. China and North Korea have each enabled Russia to prosecute its ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine through active commercial exchanges and supplies of weapons, respectively. At the same time, China and Russia have enabled North Korea’s continued nuclear development — by looking the other way as Pyongyang evades international sanctions; and in Russia’s case, through the outright expansion of economic and military ties with the northern regime.
In light of this, the interlinking of NATO and U.S. alliances in Asia more closely to bolster allied security cooperation across the two theaters has appeared to gain traction among U.S. leaders and their European and East Asian counterparts.
Washington has not been secretive about its motivation to promote greater alignment between NATO and its Asian allies in order to bolster U.S.-led collective security. In his 2023 Foreign Affairs op-ed, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan highlighted the Biden administration’s efforts to develop a “connective tissue between U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe,” suggesting how Asian allies can contribute to Euro-Atlantic security by providing “staunch support” for Ukraine, and how European allies can contribute to Indo-Pacific security by working alongside the United States to promote “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” Sullivan also noted how European and Asian allies meeting each other’s security needs in this manner would reduce America’s security burdens.
Reflecting such thinking, the NATO alliance has increasingly stressed how the “challenges confronting the Euro-Atlantic area and the Indo-Pacific region are increasingly converging.” Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January, “Today it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it could be Taiwan.” Highlighting the dangers of a growing alignment between Russia, China, and North Korea, Stoltenberg, in a recent interview, called for an ever tighter alignment between “countries believing in freedom and democracy,” reiterating that this is why Japan and South Korea were again invited to this year’s NATO summit. NATO’s former supreme allied commander, James Stavridis, even suggested that the alliance should expand to include East Asian members.
Leaders in Tokyo and Seoul have generally seemed to resonate with the belief among their NATO counterparts that Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security is interlinked, and tighter security cooperation between the two theaters is necessary. Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in 2022, notwithstanding the heavy risks involved, alarmed Tokyo and Seoul over the possibility of China or North Korea replicating Russia’s actions, thus motivating them to tighten security ties with the U.S. and NATO partners.
Japan’s interest in cooperation with NATO has been oriented around deterring China — which makes sense given their active territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and Tokyo’s likely significant involvement in any U.S. operation to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. Asserting that “Ukraine may be the East Asia of tomorrow” and “the security of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are inseparable,” Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and his foreign policy aides have enthusiastically promoted the expansion of Japan-NATO security ties.
For South Korea, which lives under the constant threat of conflict with North Korea and is anxious that Pyongyang, emboldened by its ever-growing partnership with Russia, will become more belligerent, the overriding interest in cooperation with NATO has been containing North Korea. President Yoon Suk-yeol and his security team have hoped that an elevated South Korea-NATO partnership would exert more pressure on North Korea.
Clearly, a sense of mutual belief seems to have developed between Washington and their European and East Asian partners that a tighter security network between U.S. allies in Europe and Asia would improve security environments in both regions. And this belief has materialized into some real progress thus far.
In the Euro-Atlantic, South Korea and Japan have stepped up as significant providers of aid to Ukraine against Russia — with Seoul known to have indirectly supplied more 155-mm artillery shells to Ukraine than all European countries combined and Tokyo being among the largest donors of non-military aid to date. While so far avoiding direct provision of weapons to Ukraine, both countries have contributed to restocking American and European defense wares, allowing more flexibility for the United States and NATO countries to supply their stockpiles to Ukraine.
In the Asia-Pacific, NATO states — including the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain — have worked with Japan and the United States to conduct joint military exercises in defiance of China’s assertive activities around the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. While South Korea’s engagement with NATO in regard to North Korea has so far remained largely limited to non-military dimensions, such as cybersecurity and sanctions monitoring, it may hope to develop more intimate security ties with NATO as their relationship continues to evolve. For example, in a recent interview, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik floated a hopeful scenario in which “NATO will be aiding South Korea in the event of contingency breaking out on the Korean peninsula.”
The Folly of Interlinking NATO and U.S. Asian Alliances
It remains to be seen to what extent the security ties between NATO and the U.S. East Asian allies grow and whether their deepening alignment would allow them to more effectively counter the threats posed by China, Russia, and North Korea. U.S. policymakers, who have advanced the idea, and their like-minded European and East Asian counterparts, who have endorsed it may believe that a more tightly interlinked European-Asian security network — in which NATO states and U.S. allies in East Asia are coordinating more closely militarily and responding collectively to potential crises in their respective theaters — would eventually serve as “a linchpin for global security and stability.” However, the consequences of this path may prove to only worsen the existing escalation spirals with Russia, China, and North Korea and bring them closer together.
China’s pursuit of deeper strategic alignment with Russia in recent years has, to some degree, been motivated by Beijing’s heightened sense of urgency to counter what it perceives as a U.S. strategy to forge a web of alliances to contain China, with European NATO members supporting Washington’s China policy. Indeed, Beijing has repeatedly demonstrated its suspicion over NATO’s “Asia-Pacificization” and the underlying motivation behind it. While China has so far refrained from providing direct military support to Russia, attempts to introduce a greater NATO presence into the Asia-Pacific region would likely provide a further incentive for Beijing to strengthen its entente with Moscow. While Washington and its NATO allies are unlikely to be able to fully dismantle that entente, they should be doing everything in their power to avoid motivating it further.
It is also questionable whether NATO as an institution can meaningfully contribute to deterrence in the Asia-Pacific region. Some of the more hawkish members of NATO in the eastern flank, such as the Baltic republics, are willing to speak quite loudly against China, but the stick they carry in Europe, not to mention Asia, is remarkably small and would prove insignificant in any serious contingency. While larger, individual NATO members do participate in military maneuvers in the region, their core interests in the region are quite limited compared to those of the United States and their East Asian partners; any outbreak of violence would surely have them questioning just how their involvement is truly worth it.
The reality that many European alliance members lack the capability and political will to confront China in a crisis over Taiwan or regional maritime disputes should encourage Washington’s East Asian partners to rethink the utility of a greater NATO military presence in the Pacific as a means to counter China — especially Japan, which appears to have keenly embraced the idea. Although such a strategy may appear understandable in light of China’s often assertive maritime behavior, European military assets regularly making appearances in China’s vicinity may, in fact, do more to provoke Beijing and invite destabilizing responses rather than promote the intended deterrence.
Those European ships and aircraft, which would presumably “run back home” in the event of military crises in the Pacific, likely do not pose credible threats to Beijing, so are unlikely to have much deterrent effect on its behavior. Moreover, routine proximate European military activities in collaboration with the U.S. and Japanese militaries, evoking memories of China’s “century of humiliation” under Western imperialism, may exacerbate nationalist sentiments among the Chinese and further compel Beijing’s hardline countermeasures. China’s tendency over the years to meet relative accommodation with relative accommodation and confrontation with confrontation in security disputes with U.S. regional allies suggests that de-escalation this time as well may depend on the diplomatic search for mutual accommodation.
Likewise, South Korean policymakers hoping to contain North Korea through expanded security ties with NATO would be wise to recognize NATO’s limited role and remain conscious of their country’s geopolitical location. The role of Beijing and Moscow, which have active commercial ties and open communication channels with Pyongyang, remains decisive in constraining the regime’s belligerence. Seoul aligning more closely with the U.S. and NATO against Russia and China — for instance, by directly supplying weapons to Ukraine and embracing Washington’s containment policy vis-à-vis China to a greater degree — will inevitably push Moscow and Beijing closer to Pyongyang, narrowing the already slim window of opportunity to revive constructive regional diplomacy for threat reduction on the Korean peninsula.
For Washington, too, the immediate allure of interlinking its European and Asian allies more closely deserves deeper scrutiny and a clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis. While there may appear to be benefits on paper in presenting a united front across the entire Eurasian landmass, if (or when) that unity is seriously tested, it may prove to be a paper tiger.
The Ukraine War and recent elections in Europe have shown that European leaders have more than enough local concerns on their own continent to deal with. And whether under President Biden, Trump, or any future U.S. leader, U.S. involvement in European security affairs is unlikely to be as great as it is today, as its attention will keep shifting to Asia. The implications of that reality strongly suggest that Europeans should focus on regrouping themselves and concentrating their energies on Europe, rather than seeking to play a greater security role in Asia. By shouldering more of NATO’s responsibility on the continent, Europeans will, in fact, already be contributing to American efforts to divert resources away from Europe and towards the Asia-Pacific region, thus indirectly supporting Washington and directly benefiting themselves.
The United States’ European and Asian allies share many values, beliefs, and aspirations regarding the world order. In addition, the two theaters are indeed linked in numerous ways. Taking advantage of and utilizing these linkages should be for the pursuit of stability rather than for militarization, and for the advancement of European and Asian development, not the creation of confrontational blocs. Reversing the hardening of bloc alignments would give Washington the opportunity to “pivot” to Asia — where most countries have no interest in choosing between the U.S. and China — while simultaneously reassuring Beijing that the pivot is not intended to impose permanent subordination on China but for “healthy competition.”