Although I agree with his fundamental premise, I disagree with Graeme Dobell’s conclusion in this piece at The Strategist. The fundamental premise is that the importance of Asia is rising. The conclusion is that NATO should extend its operations into Asia.
Even a world stepping back from peak globalisation won’t slow an Indo-Pacific reality that’s turned from long-term trend to today’s fact. The power balance will be set in the place where most of the world’s people live and where most of the world’s wealth will be created.
The West will matter greatly in determining the central balance that’ll be defined in the Indo-Pacific. But as in much else, no longer will the West dominate.
The message of last month’s NATO summit was that the security of Europe and the security of Asia are joined; that’s why the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea attended.
I would put it this way. The United States has direct national interests in Europe, particularly Western Europe. Our interests in Eastern Europe are somewhat indirect. The United States has direct national interest in Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and Philippines and to some degree Taiwan. We also have interests in Australia and New Zealand. Our national interest in China is, honestly, discretionary. We’ve chosen to have interests in China.
Given our Atlantic and Pacific interests we have a more general interest in maintaining freedom of maritime commerce.
The United Kingdom has interests in Europe, to a lesser extent in Eastern Europe, and in Australia and New Zealand. Its interests in China are discretionary. Our other NATO allies’ interests in China are discretionary.
In recognition of the different national interests of its members, perhaps a division of labor is in order. The interest of our European allies in European wars is necessarily greater than ours. They should be prepared to wage them and take the greater part of the responsibility for doing so. We, on the other hand, have greater interests in Asia than they and should be prepared for that. We should also cultivate relations with our Asian allies, encouraging them to undertake responsibility for their own defense.
Such a division of labor would certainly beat the heck out of the U. S.’s being prepared to defend everybody everywhere. The more responsibility we take in European wars the less predisposed our allies are to undertake that responsibility and similarly with our Asian allies.
In Europe, my defense line is Germany, Austria, Italy. Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Finland, and Sweden are on their own.
In Asia, it is Japan and the Philippines, and maybe Australia and New Zealand. I have some concerns about enabling the Australian and New Zealand police states. But then Canada and UK are pretty much police states too. South Korea is on its own, and, as we agreed in 1972, Taiwan is a province of Communist China.
One thing we could do is to stop antagonizing and threatening countries that are at peace with us, like Russia was and China is. We continually threaten the basic security interests of those countries (and many others), and we pretend to be surprised when we get a war in Ukraine. Well, we are working on a war in the South China sea, too, and we have a good chance of getting it.
Our generals, who in 30 years of war couldn’t defeat a single Muslim militia, think they can defeat Russia using Ukrainian cannon fodder. So, their strategy is to throw away NATO’s war stocks for Russian target practice. Let’s hope Russia will be satisfied with Ukraine, and that they don’t try out Belgorod/Poseiden on NYC.