Photo: AFP/Emmanuel Dunand
Mariann Őry
11/07/2023 06:00
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol also attends the summit, alongside the leaders of Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Reuters reported.
According to Bloomberg, some NATO states share the view that the biggest challenge to the alliance is not Russia, but China, and "NATO is more willing to display a military presence — if mostly confined to joint drills — closer to China". The article added that "there have also been concerns about pitching an alliance with a defensive remit into a broader tussle for influence between the US and China".
For months, NATO officials have been discussing plans to open a liaison office in Japan, which would represent the allies’ first outpost in the region at a time of growing tension between the West and China, Politico recalled in an article last week. The newspaper reported that "French President Emmanuel Macron has put his foot down, insisting such geographical expansion would risk shifting the alliance’s remit too far from its original North Atlantic focus". "We are not in favour as a matter of principle," an Elysée Palace official told reporters on Friday. "As far as the office is concerned, the Japanese authorities themselves have told us that they are not extremely attached to it," the official added. The French official insisted that NATO is geographically confined to the North Atlantic.
According to Nikkei Asia's source, "while there is general consensus on the need to deepen engagement with Indo-Pacific partners given modern-day concerns such as cybersecurity that transcend geography, allies remain divided over the expansion of NATO's footprint into the region. Significantly, language over establishing a NATO liaison office in Tokyo was removed from the final joint communique". "A sentence noting that NATO will continue discussions with the Japanese government toward opening an office in Tokyo had survived several rounds of discussions, but was deleted in the last round of talks," the source added.
The news agency reminded that "France had openly opposed the plan on the basis that it would send the wrong message to China and to Southeast Asian countries that are nervous about choosing sides in the broader Washington-Beijing rivalry". According to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Southeast Asia would "broadly would see NATO's Indo-Pacific institutionalization in Tokyo as a challenge to ASEAN centrality".
