How NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners can work together in an era of strategic competition

In its landmark 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO identified three essential core tasks: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. The first two are rather self-explanatory, but the third was an important advancement. The notion of collective security as a core task starts with a recognition that NATO “is affected by, and can affect, political and security developments beyond its borders.” Because of this fact, the Alliance seeks out partnerships with other countries and organizations to enhance international security. The Alliance’s relationships with Indo-Pacific countries are prime examples, and for years after 2010, this task was seen primarily as supporting non-Article 5 crisis management operations.

These days, however, NATO is adapting its partnerships to respond to changed structural realities and the focus on strategic competition given the growing assertiveness and militarism of revisionist states such as Russia and China.

In that sense, there have been significant qualitative changes in the way NATO partnerships with the individual Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) countries—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—and the minilateral grouping operate today and challenges they face compared to when they were first created. Namely, both sides now see their respective partners as significant for their own defense and deterrence, rather than as interlocutors in the provision of security for third parties, as was the case in out-of-area missions, where crisis management and cooperative security were the central organizing principles of these partnerships.

NATO’s interest in the Indo-Pacific

Last month’s NATO Summit in Washington demonstrated that the IP4 countries occupy a pivotal place in the ecosystem of NATO’s partner states. This role began to emerge in its present form at the 2022 Madrid summit, which unveiled NATO’s current Strategic Concept. Substantive engagement between NATO and the IP4 countries has continued to develop since then. This year’s summit, for example, marked the third consecutive year that IP4 leaders attended, making it clear that this informal grouping is becoming a mainstay of NATO’s outreach to and strategic thinking about the Indo-Pacific.

The 2022 Strategic Concept referred to the Indo-Pacific as “important for NATO, given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security.” Such a diagnosis of the international security environment converges with the general assessment of trends as seen from Canberra, Tokyo, Seoul, and Wellington, which have also witnessed firsthand how Russia’s war against Ukraine is reverberating in their region. Furthermore, the Strategic Concept characterized China’s ambitions and policies as major challenges to the Alliance’s security, interests, and values. It also raised concern over increased China-Russia cooperation, which threatens to undermine the rules-based international order. The Washington Summit Declaration, issued on July 10, also underscored how these trends have continued to grow in pace and magnitude as North Korea and Iran provide direct military support to Russia.

In response, coordination and engagement channels between NATO and the IP4 have become even more relevant to the security of both Europe and the Indo-Pacific, creating a strong common basis for cooperation. However, the intra-Alliance consensus for engagement has not been easy to reach due to some notable differences among the thirty-two allies.

At the Washington summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted the “strong and deepening cooperation” between the Alliance and the IP4. Emblematic of the greater ambition behind NATO-IP4 cooperation has been a move to the Individually Tailored Partnership Programme agreements, which replaced the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme, and which all of the IP4 countries signed over the past year.

Moreover, NATO has pursued engagement with these partners as a minilateral group rather than as a collection of four individual partnerships. This commitment has resulted in four joint projects, announced by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in July, which will focus on assistance to Ukraine, artificial intelligence, combating disinformation, and cybersecurity.

At the same time, IP4 countries have continuously demonstrated their commitment to Euro-Atlantic security by providing military and economic aid to Ukraine, sanctioning Russia, and initiating a range of direct and indirect capacity-building initiatives. Some of the IP4 members’ leaders, such as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, have even urged US lawmakers to continue aiding Ukraine.

The future of NATO-IP4 cooperation

If managed well, NATO’s IP4 partnerships can be a vital tool to enhance the Alliance’s core tasks of cooperative security and crisis management. More importantly, these partnerships have the potential to contribute to NATO’s defense and deterrence, strengthen the Alliance’s competitive advantages, and shape the global security environment in ways that serve its interests and values.

To be successful, NATO must recognize and cater to the spectrum of ambition for cooperation among IP4 partners. The Alliance should tailor its approach and maximize the benefits of cooperation at various levels. For countries with lower levels of ambition, the benefits to cooperation with NATO come primarily from political consultations, and these talks should continue. These consultations foster a shared strategic domain awareness and enhance the understanding of how events in one region impact the security of others.

For those with greater ambitions for strengthening ties with NATO, there should be an emphasis on expanding cooperation in science and technology. This includes capacity building, which can have significant positive effects on the security of both NATO and its partners. With sufficient political will and consensus from both sides, individual IP4 partners can further develop their relationships with NATO. This cooperation could then lead to achieving, strengthening, and maintaining interoperability—that is, operating together according to agreed-upon rules and procedures, as well as using similar equipment. It also could mean working together on international standards-setting and the co-production and joint maintenance of military assets, expanding on existing cooperation between NATO and its partners in other initiatives.

The NATO-IP4 format has already proven useful for information sharing and presenting a unified front to promote common values vis-à-vis revisionist states. The Alliance should build on the significant groundwork that has already been laid for integrating the IP4 into various NATO structures and processes to continue the multiparty coordination and “regularize” these partnerships in a way that would shield them from domestic politics. However, considering that Chinese and Russian disinformation campaigns have propagated the narrative that NATO is attempting to expand into the Indo-Pacific, it is crucial for the Alliance to consistently emphasize that the partnerships with IP4 nations, or any future potential partners from the region, are not a prelude to full membership.

Finally, while it may seem self-evident, managing and reconciling expectations is crucial, as NATO operates on a consensus basis. Therefore, given the past episodes of disagreements among allies around NATO’s outreach to the Indo-Pacific, it is imperative to handle these relations carefully to avoid creating unnecessary intra-Alliance tensions and to demonstrate how nurturing ties with the IP4 serves the interests of both sides.

Gorana Grgić is a nonresident senior fellow at the Transatlantic Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

NATO’s seventy-fifth anniversary is a milestone in a remarkable story of reinvention, adaptation, and unity. However, as the Alliance seeks to secure its future for the next seventy-five years, it faces the revanchism of old rivals, escalating strategic competition, and uncertainties over the future of the rules-based international order.

With partners and allies turning attention from celebrations to challenges, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative invited contributors to engage with the most pressing concerns ahead of the historic Washington summit and chart a path for the Alliance’s future. This series will feature seven essays focused on concrete issues that NATO must address at the Washington summit and five essays that examine longer-term challenges the Alliance must confront to ensure transatlantic security.

Further reading

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NATO and its IP4 partners—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—should establish an Atlantic-Pacific Partnership Forum (APPF) to advance their cooperation.

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Mon, Jul 15, 2024

This might be NATO’s greatest struggle yet—and it’s global

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At its Washington summit, NATO acknowledged how China and Russia are working together to revise the global order. But what will the Alliance do about it?

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From blueprints to battlefields: How to ensure NATO’s future readiness

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NATO’s success hinges on allies’ ability to verify readiness, overcome capability gaps, revitalize the transatlantic defense industrial base, and integrate national defense plans with NATO defense plans.

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Image: The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and the Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Montreal conduct bilateral operations in the East China Sea, July 30, 2024. Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jamaal Liddell/US Navy.