Bloomberg: Pacific allies could join NATO

Bloomberg has published an article by James Stavridis claiming that expansion of the NATO alliance to include far-away Japan, Australia and others is not unthinkable. CaliberAz reprints the article.

I generally hate sports analogies, mainly because many people who don’t follow the world of athletics won’t get the point. But as I think about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization these days, along with this week’s trilateral meeting between President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and the Philippines, I’m reminded that college athletics have been undergoing some significant geographic changes.

Many marquee teams have been moving out of their natural conferences — the ones with which they have always been identified — to join more distant aggregations. The biggest perhaps is the departure of two California powerhouses — the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles — from their natural home in the PAC 12 to join the Big Ten, centered 2,000 miles away in the Upper Midwest. This move, which has annoyed and mystified fans, has its basis in mutual gains: particularly money and television exposure.

How does this idea of geographic sports realignment and mutual gains apply to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and security in the Western Pacific?

If you think of NATO as a major college sports conference, it is a very big one. With the recent additions of Finland and Sweden, it boasts 32 nations (twice as many as the Big 10, which now bizarrely has 16 members). The collective defence budget is well north of $1 trillion, and the combined GDP is half of the world’s output. NATO has three million men and women under arms (almost all volunteers), plus tens of thousands of combat aircraft, tanks, warships and cyber-defence operations.

But with Russian President Vladimir Putin knocking at Europe’s door with his invasion of Ukraine; a Middle East literally in flames; increasing tension in on the Pacific Rim — between the US and China, and between Beijing and its neighbours over the South China Sea; cyberattacks against states and corporations proliferating; and the Islamic State seemingly on a comeback, NATO should think about recruiting a few new members from outside its traditional boundaries.

In East Asia, there are a handful of natural partners that share the alliance’s vision of freedom, democracy, liberty and human rights. At the top of the list are Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — all formal treaty allies of the US, and for the most part with each other, thus pledged to defend one another if attacked. Likewise, the Philippines and Thailand have mutual defence treaties with the US. Singapore, not a formal ally, has a deep defence relationship with Washington. (For a full list of this complex web of Pacific alliances, see this State Department explanation.)

In the post-World War II era, the US had a vision to create several regional alliances, with NATO in Europe (along with Canada) at the top. There were two other analogous treaty organizations. One was the Southeast Asia Treaty organization (SEATO, formed in 1954), which included many of the nations above plus the UK, France and Pakistan. It foundered over US involvement in Vietnam and was disbanded in 1977. The other organization was focused in the Middle East (CENTO, founded in 1955) and included the US, UK, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey. It likewise fell apart in 1979, due to the Iranian revolution.

Obviously, there are serious hurdles to expanding NATO geographically to include a group of Asian democracies.

The first is the NATO Treaty itself, which is very specific about the geographic boundaries of the alliance falling within the North Atlantic region. A second would be the forging the political consensus among the 32 members to bring in Asian partners — look at the difficulties of admitting Sweden, a screamingly obvious candidate, blocked for over a year by Turkey and Hungary over trivialities.

A third hurdle would be the cultural, linguistic and geographic differences. We are talking about a vast space — all of the world’s land mass would easily fit within the Pacific Ocean. We would face what in military terms is called the “tyranny of distance,” encompassing all the challenges to train, exercise and operate together from halfway across the world.

Finally, it makes it even harder to gain broad consensus on any given mission. When I was NATO’s supreme commander, getting the then-28 members to concur on even relatively modest deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq was maddening. Adding Asian partners to the mix could make the job of my successors as SACEUR even more frustrating.

But there are serious reasons for considering Pacific expansion as well.

Adding the immense GDP of the Asian nations is attractive — particularly Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. Japan is doubling its defense budget, which will soon be the world’s third-largest as well. Australia is purchasing nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines from the US and UK and cementing further ties in the AUKUS program. Singapore has very competent, high-tech naval and air forces. South Korea has a big economy and a capable military that has spent decades training and preparing to “fight tonight” against invasion by the murderous North Korean regime.

Additionally, the preamble to the NATO Treaty says that the organization exists to further “the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” While these Asian nations didn’t embody those qualities when the alliance was founded in 1949, they certainly do today. The power of those values can be vastly magnified by including as many other like-minded countries as possible.

I’d say the challenges and the benefits feel roughly balanced, but given the practical and political hurdles, it is probably too soon to consider a global NATO. But perhaps there is a middle path, which might entail more formalized relationships between the alliance and the Asian democracies. These would include clearly articulated security guarantees; more frequent and mutually beneficial training and exercises; joint procurement of advanced weapons systems; and deep cooperation in cyber-defense and in AI for military purposes.

Over time, the idea of more formally connecting the world’s democracies is appealing, especially in an era of authoritarian aggression. Perhaps Biden can get the discussion rolling with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines this week. And it certainly merits serious consideration in Asian capitals and at NATO headquarters in Brussels. If the college sports icons of Los Angeles can join those of the Rust Belt, anything can happen.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired US Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.