At NATO summit, a question of what the alliance wants from the Pacific

It’s been a busy two months of travel for Lithuania’s defense minister.

In June, Laurynas Kasčiūnas traveled to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense conference — and one, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that’s seen far more Europeans in attendance.

And this month he was in Washington for the NATO Summit. This time, he didn’t have to go do the Indo-Pacific. It came to him.

For the third straight year, a group of countries with ties to the alliance, called the Indo-Pacific Four, have sent officials to attend the summit in person. Members of NATO say this is a sign that the two regions increasingly see their security as shared.

“It’s interlinked,” Kasčiūnas said in an interview.

That point was obvious in the Washington summit’s communique — a plan for the alliance over the next year. Alongside critiques of North Korea, it featured the harshest-ever criticism of China, urging an end to support for Russia’s defense industry.

“The [People’s Republic of China] continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security,” the document reads.

And yet, it’s still hard to see how those interests become action.

The Washington Declaration includes a list of “flagship projects” on cyber, disinformation, technology and Ukraine-related issues for the two regions. Members of the alliance point to these as signs of real commitment.

“It’s not just about political messaging,” a senior NATO official told reporters before the summit. “It’s about practical cooperation.”

Others in the alliance, though, are more ambivalent about the new partnerships, or skeptical that they amount to much yet. And the side projects, while beneficial, only matter on the margins compared to what America and Indo-Pacific partners may really want from Europe, said Max Bergmann, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The biggest thing Europe can do for the Indo-Pacific right now is take more responsibility for Europe,” he said.

‘East Asia tomorrow’

Only weeks before the NATO summit, Bergmann published a report on Europe’s role in Indo-Pacific security.

It tracked a rise in European countries sending their forces to the region, even temporarily. Beside the longtime players of Britain and France, countries such as Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have sent military vessels around Asia. Other European states are joining large military exercises hosted in the region as well.

Driving this increase is mainly Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Countries in Europe have seen how key China has been to Russia’s war effort, sustaining Moscow’s defense industry through a huge rise in trade . And countries in the Indo-Pacific started to take the threat China may pose to Taiwan or the Philippines more seriously.

“Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio earlier this year. European officials have since echoed his quote.

At the summit, officials from the four Indo-Pacific countries — Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan — met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And Australia pledged its largest-ever package of military aid to Kyiv shortly after: $250 million of air defense interceptors, munitions and other supplies.

“We’re breaking down the traditional silos that have been around defense alliances,” said Matt Thistlethwaite, Canberra’s assistant minister of defense, in an interview.

He mentioned military exercises as an example. The week of the NATO summit, 20 nations participated in Pitch Black, a military drill in Australia’s Northern Territory. The list included NATO nations as well, including Italy and Spain joining for the first time.

Thistlethwaite said there was even a revived push this year to open a NATO office in Japan. The plans were never ambitious — only a few junior officers to be stationed in Tokyo to avoid long flights between there and Brussels. But they collapsed last year after some in the alliance, in particular France, said the new office would provoke China. Bejing chafes at any sign that countries are forming an alliance against it and regularly accuses the U.S. of building an Asian version of NATO.

Despite the new talks, opposition to the office within the alliance hadn’t ended. Speaking before the summit, a European official told reporters that his country didn’t support the office and didn’t feel pressured to anymore.

“This issue was not discussed at all for the Washington Summit,” the official said.

The same official made the traditional counterarguments for NATO becoming involved so far from its borders: it lacks the expertise and the capacity to do so, and the risks may outweigh the benefits.

European countries have been trying to surge their defense industries since Russia’s full-scale invasion. But more than two years later, the results have been slow.

The incremental progress means that America is still somewhat tied down in Europe. Most in Washington say it’s in America’s interest to support Ukraine’s self-defense, and the administration has spent more than $51 billion on security aid for Kyiv since 2022.

But the last two presidents have said their top challenge is China. And while the weapons going to Ukraine mostly wouldn’t matter for Taiwan or the Philippines, some of America’s forces are in a zero-sum game.

“The United States should clarify to NATO allies the impact an Indo-Pacific contingency would have on the European theater,” reads Bergmann’s report .

And if European countries are to become more involved in Asian security, they should weigh carefully whether they do so under the label of NATO, multiple analysts and officials told Defense News. Because the alliance is so reflexively threatening to China, the earlier European official said, using it could be “counterproductive” toward maintaining peace.

Still, the official supports lower-level cooperation like that seen in the Washington Summit’s final plan. This kind of work is what the two regions will likely focus on in the near future, said Bonnie Glaser, an expert at the German Marshall Fund: countering terrorism and disinformation, protecting against climate change and work on cybersecurity.

Even getting the two regions to see each other as security partners has been a win for this White House, she argued.

“When [U.S. President Joe] Biden came to power, Europe’s attention to possible war in the Taiwan Strait was negligible at best,” said Glaser.

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

立陶宛国防部长过去两个月一直忙于出差。

6 月，劳里纳斯·卡斯丘纳斯前往新加坡参加香格里拉对话，这是亚洲最大的防务会议——也是自俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰以来，欧洲人出席最多的一次防务会议。

这个月他去了华盛顿参加北约峰会。这一次，他不用再去处理印太事务了，事务主动找上门来。

连续第三年，与北约有联系的印太四国集团派出官员亲自出席峰会。北约成员国表示，这表明这两个地区越来越意识到彼此的安全是共同的。

“这是相互关联的，”卡斯丘纳斯在一次采访中说道。

这一点在华盛顿峰会的公报中显而易见——公报制定了未来一年的联盟发展计划。除了对朝鲜的批评外，公报还对中国进行了有史以来最严厉的批评，敦促中国停止对俄罗斯国防工业的支持。

文件指出，“中华人民共和国继续对欧洲-大西洋安全构成系统性挑战”。

然而，我们仍然很难看出这些兴趣如何转化为行动。

《华盛顿宣言》列出了一系列针对这两个地区的“旗舰项目”，涵盖网络安全、虚假信息、技术和乌克兰相关议题。联盟成员认为这些项目是真正承诺的体现。

一位北约高级官员在峰会前告诉记者：“这不仅仅是政治宣传的问题，而是务实合作的问题。”

然而，联盟中的其他成员对这些新伙伴关系持更为矛盾的态度，或者怀疑它们目前能否产生多大影响。战略与国际研究中心分析师马克斯·伯格曼表示，这些附属项目虽然有益，但与美国及其印太伙伴可能真正希望从欧洲获得的东西相比，其重要性微乎其微。

他说：“欧洲现在能为印太地区做的最重要的事情就是承担起更多对欧洲的责任。”

“明日东亚”

在北约峰会召开前几周，伯格曼发表了一份关于欧洲在印太安全中作用的报告。

报告追踪到越来越多的欧洲国家向该地区派遣军队，即便只是暂时的。除了长期以来在该地区驻军的英国和法国之外，德国、意大利和荷兰等国也向亚洲地区派遣了军舰。其他欧洲国家也参与了在该地区举行的大规模军事演习。

推动这一增长的主要因素是两年前俄罗斯对乌克兰的全面入侵。欧洲各国已经意识到中国在俄罗斯的战争行动中扮演的关键角色，中国通过贸易额的大幅增长支撑了莫斯科的国防工业。印太地区各国也开始更加认真地对待中国可能对台湾或菲律宾构成的威胁。

“今天的乌克兰，明天可能就成了东亚，”日本首相岸田文雄今年早些时候如是说。此后，欧洲官员也纷纷呼应了他的说法。

在峰会上，来自印太地区四个国家——澳大利亚、新西兰、韩国和日本——的官员与乌克兰总统泽连斯基举行了会晤。会后不久，澳大利亚承诺向基辅提供有史以来规模最大的军事援助：价值2.5亿美元的防空拦截器、弹药和其他物资。

“我们正在打破围绕国防联盟的传统壁垒，”堪培拉国防部助理部长马特·西斯尔斯韦特在一次采访中说。

他以军事演习为例。在北约峰会召开的那一周，20个国家参加了在澳大利亚北领地举行的“漆黑行动”军事演习。参演国家中也包括北约成员国，意大利和西班牙则是首次参加。

蒂斯尔斯韦特表示，今年甚至有人重新推动在日本设立北约办事处。该计划原本并不雄心勃勃——只是计划在东京驻扎几名初级军官，以避免往返东京和布鲁塞尔的长途飞行。但去年，由于一些北约成员国，特别是法国，认为新办事处会激怒中国，该计划最终搁浅。北京对任何国家结成反北联盟的迹象都感到不满，并经常指责美国正在打造一个亚洲版的北约。

尽管重启了谈判，但联盟内部对设立该机构的反对之声并未停止。一位欧洲官员在峰会前告诉记者，他的国家不支持设立该机构，并且不再感到有任何压力。

这位官员表示：“华盛顿峰会根本没有讨论这个问题。”

这位官员也提出了传统的反对北约介入远离其边界地区的事务的论点：北约缺乏这样做的专业知识和能力，而且风险可能大于收益。

自俄罗斯全面入侵以来，欧洲各国一直在努力发展国防工业。但两年多过去了，成效却十分缓慢。

这种渐进式的进展意味着美国在欧洲仍然受到一定程度的牵制。华盛顿的大多数人认为支持乌克兰的自卫符合美国的利益，自2022年以来，美国政府已向基辅提供了超过510亿美元的安全援助。

但最近两任总统都表示，他们面临的最大挑战是中国。虽然运往乌克兰的武器对台湾或菲律宾的影响微乎其微，但美国的部分军事行动却处于零和博弈之中。

伯格曼的报告指出：“美国应该向北约盟国澄清印太地区突发事件会对欧洲战场产生的影响。”

多位分析人士和官员告诉《防务新闻》，如果欧洲国家要更多地参与亚洲安全事务，就应该仔细权衡是否要以北约的名义参与。此前一位欧洲官员表示，由于北约对中国构成本能的威胁，利用北约可能对维护和平产生“反作用”。

不过，这位官员仍然支持像华盛顿峰会最终方案中体现的那种低层合作。德国马歇尔基金会专家邦妮·格拉泽表示，这类工作很可能是这两个地区在近期内的重点：打击恐怖主义和虚假信息、应对气候变化以及网络安全。

她认为，即使只是让这两个地区将彼此视为安全伙伴，对本届白宫来说也是一项胜利。

格拉泽说：“拜登上台时，欧洲对台湾海峡可能发生的战争的关注度微乎其微。”

诺亚·罗伯逊是《防务新闻》的五角大楼记者。他此前曾为《基督教科学箴言报》报道国家安全新闻。他拥有弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡威廉与玛丽学院的英语和政治学学士学位。

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。