The NATO summit that took place on 29-30 June 2022 in Madrid, Spain, provided more than one historic moment. For the first time, NATO’s Strategic Concept (SC)declared China a security challenge. This can be seen as the third consecutive diplomatic win for the Biden administration after the successful announcement of Indo Pacific Economic Framework and G7 Joint Communique covering two most crucial geostrategic, geoeconomic and geopolitical regions. At the summit for the first time hosted that the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand held a meeting outside the summit highlighting the importance of Indo-Pacific regional countries in the global multilateralism. Despite China’s overt criticism of all three events, the coming together of several countries across the regions in various formats only points toward the growing discontentment with Chinese unilateral policies, aggressive behaviour and ambiguous values. Founded under the Treaty of Brussels in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is one of the Cold War legacy institutions to contain the spread of Communism and create a collective defense alliance. The Transatlantic security alliance is presently comprised of 30 members including US and EU countries. NATO has been rediscovering its purpose to exist since the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Nevertheless, the NATO membership kept expanding and many of the East European countries also became members in subsequent enlargements under its Open-Door Policy.
In its recent ninth enlargement, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia are waiting for their application to be approved whereas Ukraine’s NATO application became the central reason for its invasion by Russia. In fact the war compelled Sweden and Finland too to seek NATO membership.
China factor for NATO, G7 and IPEF: Strategic, economic and normative reasons
NATO releases SC every 10 years that reaffirm its purpose after laying down the existing security environment. The last SC was adopted in 2010. The 2002 document mentions a succinct yet pointed paragraph on China that highlights “Chinese opaque strategies, intentions and military build-up, “malicious hybrid and cyber operations and confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target Allies”. It further refers to China’s approach to “control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains”. It called out China for using its “economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence.” The SC also mentioned about Beijing’s subversion of the rules-based order in the space, cyber and maritime domains. However, it is the growing strategic partnership between PRC and Russia “and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests” that seemingly became the reason for NATO to bring Beijing under SC’s ambit. There are several reasons given by the NATO leaders for including China in the document. The Russian invasion of Ukraine allows the propagation of the wrong idea that can result in a catastrophic miscalculation such as China invading Taiwan that the former claims as a province. Another reason to worry about Beijing is its growing economic and military presence in the South China Sea and beyond. The signing of a security pact between China and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific and Chinese-Russian military cooperation on Russia’s oft-forgotten Pacific coast are some such cases to point. What is more distressing is China had become more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules and norms where the often used terms such as “common prosperity”, “shared values of peace, development, fairness, justice, freedom” etc. are ill-defined to its partners”. Nonetheless, the US as well as the NATO Secy Gen Jens Stoltenberg have put on record that China is not their adversary but a challenge, in an attempt not to corner the world’s second-largest superpower.
A week prior, G7 major democratic economies included tough language on China in their communique, released days after launching an infrastructure investment plan to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It unveiled a $600 billion plan to combat China’s BRI. Launched in 2013 by Xi Jinping as a global infrastructure development project, BRI has been seen subverting economies and even adopting predatory policies against its lender countries, sometimes forcing them to lease their territories (read Sri Lanka, Pakistan) in place of non-payment of loans.
President Biden during his Tokyo visit in May launched Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) as an economic alternative to BRI in the region. The IPEF has 13, including the members of the Quad, seven members of ASEAN, South Korea and New Zealand. The four pillars of IPEF have targeted the vulnerabilities of BRI’s existing economic model to make the Indo-Pacific trade and economic system—Connected (with higher standards and rules, Resilient (to withstand disruptions), Clean (green energy commitments) and Fair (practices and non-corrupt). By not making IPEF a binding treaty/agreement, Biden avoided Congressional approval and ensuing battle for ratification at the domestic level. IPEF has fallen short in outlining market access and tariff reductions.
Love lost between EU-China?
A large part of BRI envisaged Western Europe being physically accessible and economically viable for China via land and sea. However, in less than a decade, the troubles have started to crack this partnership model. Additionally, the EU-China Investment deal that was signed in 2020 after negotiating for seven years became quickly dysfunctional in 2021 after the EU raised Human Rights issues in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and Chin are fused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine even after five months. This also invoked China to impose counter-sanctions against EU institutions. Loans advanced by Beijing to the Central and Eastern European Countries have the potential to create financial instability, should the projects become non-viable.
Conclusion
The developing economies of the Indo-Pacific and even cash-crunched European economies are seeking build a more resilient, fair, equitable and non-coercive, rules-based order. It’s high time Beijing smells the coffee that its unilateral vision and aggressive postures are pushing countries to seek alternatives, not only in bilateral but also in a joint multilateral format. Else, being felt cornered in the plethora of new partnerships will be its own doing.
Dr Pooja Bhatt is an independent scholar on Asian security and maritime issues. She is the author of ‘Nine Dash Line: Deciphering the South China Sea Conundrum’ (Knowledge World, 2020).