European leaders dead worried about the return of Donald Trump to the White House later this year and the possibility of him moving the US away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to accomplish his “Make American Great Again” goals, the former is taking steps to expand NATO to Asia to keep it relevant. Donald Trump has vowed more than once to counter China. He has also expressed optimism to use diplomacy to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Combined with his disdain for NATO, the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict could erode NATO’s credibility and legitimacy. Therefore, European and NATO leaders, including the current US leadership, are expanding NATO to Asia. In their calculation, this would help keep NATO relevant, especially as a key component of Trump’s anti-China policies. Will this work as planned? An SCO challenge is emerging already.
NATO Ups the ante against China
A recent report in the New York Times said that the new NATO chief, Mark Rutte, will have to be “ready for Trump, if required”. A few days later, at the summit celebrating the alliance’s 75th anniversary in Washington and preparing for Trump, NATO formally accused China of supporting and supplying the Russian military effort in Ukraine. All 32 leaders of the alliance endorsed this statement. The statement said that China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” adding that China’s “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base” was proving to be the key to the NATO’s failure to defeat Russia.
This is nothing short of an extraordinary statement, especially because, until a year ago, most European leaders were hesitant to call China out directly for its ties with Russia. Now, all of a sudden, they appear to be threatening Beijing with consequences, although they did not specify what these consequences could be. What changed their mind?
Reports in the US media indicate that the Biden administration, to prove China’s role, provided intelligence to NATO/European leaders to convince them. However, what made the latter even more docile was their own fear of what the next administration – in this case, Donald Trump – would do to NATO and its constant supply of weapons to Ukraine. (NATO has recently decided to supply F-16 fight jets to Ukraine.)
On the one hand, the current NATO leaders from Europe and North America are taking steps to fill Ukraine with weapons before the November elections in the US, and on the other hand, they are taking steps to integrate NATO more deeply with states in the Indo-Pacific to counter China. All of this is to do as much as possible before Trump captures and makes all of this impossible. The Washington-summit made some pertinent announcements in this regard.
NATO: From Europe to Indo-Pacific
Several new initiatives were agreed upon at its annual summit in Washington DC involving the development of cybersecurity, tackling hybrid threats, promoting interoperability and beefing up general defence cooperation. The linchpin for this expansion was explained by Antony Blinken a week earlier at the Brookings Institution when he said that our “partners in Europe see challenges halfway around the world in Asia as being relevant to them, just as partners in Asia see challenges halfway around the world in Europe as being relevant to them.”
Whether the convergence that Blinken spoke about really exists or not is a moot question. Some countries in the Indo-Pacific do see China as a threat. It includes, for example, Japan. But whether they will be willing to go to war against China in the near future and/or in the long run carries an even bigger question mark. In any case, war may not even be a preferred option for NATO and/or its leaders who, unlike Trump, continue to see the alliance as useful. They think that expanding NATO into the Indo-Pacific as a weapon against China could present Donald Trump with a fait accompli, i.e., it will be very hard for him to damage the alliance that has a demonstrable usefulness against China. Because Donald Trump is expected to continue his “trade war” with China, he will do better if he has NATO’s support as well. This will, according to this calculation, force Trump to keep US support for NATO alive in Europe too. In the end, the whole idea of Europe extending the North Atlantic security setup to Asia means the West offering its ‘services’ to the rest of the world for ‘peace and prosperity’. The world, according to this, remains West-centered and unipolar.
The SCO Challenge
The objectives notwithstanding, this will be a lot harder to achieve in Asia than in Europe. The recent SCO summit turned out to be one space where both Russia and China not only reinforced their friendship – which NATO ultimately wants to counter – but also reinforced their intent to make the world multipolar.
At the summit, Russia’s Vladimir Putin said that the “multipolar world has become a reality”, adding that the SCO and BRICS “are the main pillars of this new world order”. Endorsing this thinking, China’s Xi said that the SCO needs “to have a complete set of measures under the security cooperation mechanisms because more lines of defence will give us more protection.”
The fact that both Putin and Xi chose the SCO summit as the place to reinforce these ideas shows that both leaders see the organization as a future counterpart to NATO, especially its expansion into Asia. Although the SCO does not currently have any established military infrastructure, nothing is denying its future expansion. The SCO already beats NATO in terms of territory and population. It also accounts for 30 % of global GDP. Its members prefer a multipolar world, which is one reason they joined SCO in the first place!
Therefore, even if the current NATO leadership, including Biden, can push NATO into Asia to present Trump with a potentially irreversible situation, it does not mean that NATO will get a walkover. A Russia-China reaction, including in military terms, will make the situation a lot more complicated for NATO soon, requiring more military spending. Will Donald Trump, who has continuously vowed to reduce the American military footprint across the world, be willing to increase defence spending? He will be more than willing to continue the “trade war”, but expansion in military terms presents very different situations to tackle. NATO’s worries with Trump, therefore, don’t end with promises of expansion. They may become even more pressing.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.