By Takuya Karube,
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's participation in a NATO summit for the second straight year demonstrates the strategic interests of Asia and Europe are increasingly converging as China's global security and economic footprint broadens, but with the relationship still in its infancy Tokyo's role appears largely symbolic.
Kishida's oft-repeated notion that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is "inseparable" -- as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, coupled with concern over China's aggressive posture toward Taiwan and actions in the South and East China seas -- has been well received among member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The major objectives of his visit to Vilnius through Wednesday were to flesh out the agreement Japan reached last year with NATO to expand cooperation and make Tokyo's presence felt as a leading democracy in Asia.
"We were able to share (our) thoughts with the participating countries," he said before heading for Brussels after staying in the Lithuanian capital for about 24 hours.
"We will continue to work with NATO, its members and partner countries to maintain and strengthen a free and open international order based on the rule of law."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, "No partner is closer than Japan" when holding a one-on-one meeting with Kishida, welcoming his attendance at the summit together with the leaders of Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
Now the question is where this expanding cooperation is heading in practical terms, as not all NATO members are in agreeance on how involved the 31-nation alliance should become in issues outside the Euro-Atlantic area.
"European and Pacific countries will continue to have different interests, but the overlap between the two appears to be growing," said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in U.S. strategy in Asia.
But Cooper at the same time noted that the cooperation involving Japan is more about "hardware and software" and less about actually deploying forces to one another's regions.
One area of practical cooperation that may be fruitful, he said, is Japan over time adopting some NATO equipment standards to make it easier for them to operate together, which would also pave the way for the co-production of hardware.
Japan and NATO agreed on a document outlining 16 areas of cooperation through 2026 on the sidelines of the two-day summit. They range from cyber defense and outer space to disinformation and climate change, but what they are going to do in each field remains vague.
NATO last year referred to China in its strategic guiding document for the next decade, recognizing the need for the world's most powerful military alliance to tackle "systematic challenges" posed by Beijing's policies and actions.
Yet, experts of foreign and defense affairs suggest European perceptions of China's threat to regional security are not alike, or more precisely speaking, each country takes a different approach depending on national interests, with economic motivations especially playing a big role.
"France is probably not the only country that is wary of stronger NATO involvement in the Asia-Pacific. Especially Hungary, due to its ties with Beijing, is strongly opposed to it. I think Germany and Turkey are also quite uncomfortable," according to Mathieu Droin, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"So it's hard to find a consensus on these issues," said Droin, who works under the Washington-based institute's Europe and Eurasia program, adding his assumption is that the United States is increasingly aware NATO is probably not the most appropriate venue to coordinate actions on China and Taiwan.
Cooper also said he does not think NATO will be particularly active in East Asia in the near term, considering the alliance is fundamentally focused on the Euro-Atlantic area based on its charter.
Next year's NATO summit marking the 75th anniversary of its foundation will be held in Washington.
It is hardly difficult to imagine that U.S. President Joe Biden will showcase developing strategic cooperation between U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific under his administration.
Liselotte Odgaard, a nonresident senior fellow at Hudson Institute and professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, thinks that NATO's emerging collaboration with U.S. core allies in the Indo-Pacific in itself will not make a major difference in managing the security challenges from China and Russia.
Odgaard also pointed out that coordination between NATO and the European Union has not very often worked well. But she believes there is still room for the complex network of the U.S.-led alliance in the two regions to transform.
"NATO discussions of operational defense cooperation between U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific were unthinkable a few years ago, but now this is no longer the case because it is necessary for the security and even survival of these countries as part of a liberal international world order," she said.
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NATO leaders back Ukraine membership, seek closer Indo-Pacific ties
