Opinion | Nato’s big challenge is not China, but how to keep the transatlantic alliance alive

A military alliance is possible precisely because America has been willing to provide a security umbrella to others who could not or would not do it for themselves

Making an enemy of China, which would keep the alliance strong, would only push it towards even closer relations with Russia

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Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the media during the Nato foreign ministers’ meeting at the US State Department in Washington on April 4. China-Nato relations don’t have to be hostile. The relationship can be business-like, if not mature. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:30pm, 18 Apr 2019Updated: 1:13am, 19 Apr 2019

China has never before been a key conversation topic for Nato. Therefore it is interesting to see how, at the 70th anniversary celebration of the transatlantic security alliance in Washington in early April, China’s rise was reportedly discussed for the first time by the foreign ministers of Nato member states. In his opening remarks, US Vice-President Mike Pence said: “Perhaps the greatest challenge Nato will face in the coming decades is how we must all adjust to the rise of the People’s Republic of China. And adjust we must.”

The question is how. Thanks to the “tyranny of geography”, China and Nato members are geographically disconnected, although Turkey is also currently a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. China’s security concern is primarily on its periphery while Nato remains very much focused on security concerns originating from its immediate neighbourhood, namely, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa. Nato has no specific policies towards Taiwan, the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea.

The “greatest challenge Nato will face”, in fact, is how its member states, most of whom are EU countries, might “adjust” to avoid being hijacked by the US. China is already seen as a primary competitor by the US, but it is the European Union’s second-largest trading partner. China’s huge investment in Europe includes generous financing for infrastructure improvements in eastern and southern Europe as part of its “Belt and Road Initiative”.

If an accident between a Chinese and an American ship were to trigger a conflict, say, in the South China Sea, would Nato consider this a Chinese “attack against them all”, according to Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty? Or would it just provide some kind of political support to the US, since this is neither in Europe nor in North America, as the treaty obligates?

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg recently said in an interview with Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, that Chinese naval drills in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas had brought the Chinese military closer to Nato member countries. If these joint military exercises really raised concern because they were in Nato’s “backyard”, what about Nato’s partnership with Afghanistan, Japan, South Korea and Pakistan in China’s periphery? Couldn’t China argue equally that, because the warships of Britain and France, two Nato member states, have sailed in the South China Sea, Nato has therefore come to the South China Sea?

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