NATO: A Euro-Atlantic alliance?
The Reframer | No. 01.2024
This week, NATO is holding its 75th anniversary summit in Washington, the city where the original North Atlantic Treaty was signed. Since its foundation, the alliance has seen Russia as the main threat, though the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began to feature in annual summit declarations and communiques from 2019, being most pronounced in 2021. NATO allies now define the PRC as a ‘systemic competitor’ or ‘challenge’ to Euro-Atlantic security. But it is unclear whether Britons and Europeans have come to terms with what this means, and a noisy American caucus would like them to remain focused exclusively on Russia. Here, we attempt to ‘disrupt’ orthodoxy and ‘reframe’ outmoded thinking in terms of strategic geography, the PRC and NATO’s purpose.
We do not need to worry as we have reached ‘Peak China’
Not necessarily. It is true that the Chinese economy has slowed substantially from its rapid growth during the 2000s and 2010s. As early as 2013, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Community Party (CCP), noted that the PRC’s economic and social model was ‘unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable’. The PRC’s export-led growth economy is overly dependent upon other countries’ absorption of Chinese manufacturing surplus. This model is slowly losing its viability. In addition, Xi’s increasingly repressive political environment, combined with American, Japanese, European and British concerns over the CCP’s intent, are deterring foreign direct investment, which has plummeted in recent years.
So far, the CCP – a Leninist autocracy – has failed substantively to address the PRC’s overreliance on exports as doing so would require political reform and a loosening of state control over the economy. Domestically, the long term effects of the one-child policy have led to a shrinking labour force and potential future labour shortages, while rising debt, pollution, demographic decline and water scarcity may impede the CCP’s plans to supplant the United States (US) as the dominant superpower by 2049.
Yet, even if the Chinese economy has entered a plateau, it retains a significant industrial base with which the CCP can pursue its objectives. This means that Beijing will uphold a substantial, even growing, international profile. And mainland China’s geographic location – at the heart of the Indo-Pacific – may facilitate a ‘concentration effect’ distant rivals such as the US will find it hard to overcome.
Fine, but China is not a ‘hostile state’
What? Under Xi’s leadership, the PRC has adopted an increasingly uncooperative stance towards democracies and the existing free and open order. Xi frames the CCP’s actions through the lens of ideological ‘struggle’ against ‘hostile foreign forces,’ portraying the US, in particular, as intentionally seeking to contain the PRC’s rise. This adversarial worldview underpins Xi’s concerted efforts to reshape the international order in line with CCP interests and values, and ensure the survival of its one-party regime.
Xi’s ‘China Dream’ envisions ‘national rejuvenation’ and global leadership by 2049, aiming to make the PRC the world’s pre-eminent power in ‘comprehensive national strength’ and ‘international influence.’ These goals entail: the annexation of a democracy of 24 million people, Taiwan; the ‘reclamation’ of its claimed (and contested) territories in the South China Sea; becoming the world’s foremost scientific and technological superpower by 2030, and configuring global governance to subjugate liberal international institutions and ideals – including electoral democracy, civil society, rule of law, and freedom of the press – under those of authoritarianism.
Accordingly, the PRC challenges the dominance of free and open countries across multiple interlinked domains – economic, technological, military, and ideological – while cultivating their dependencies upon it. To question further whether the CCP’s vision really is one which is hostile to democracies, one might simply look at the quasi-alliances it has forged with Iran and North Korea or the unwavering support provided to its ‘friend without limits’, Russia, in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Very well, but China demonstrates ‘no military threat’ towards Europe
Hardly. The tentacles of CCP power, manifest through the Belt and Road initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Security Initiative, as well as the growing strength of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), mean that the PRC is pushing west across the Indian Ocean, towards the Middle East and Africa – even the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans. The Integrated Review Refresh and NATO’s Strategic Concept have already identified the ‘systemic challenge’ the PRC poses to the international order. Part of this involves maintaining trade dependencies, but it also includes driving wedges between the two sides of the Atlantic and fomenting political discord.
Russia is central to the CCP’s ambition. Whether a genuine ‘no limits’ partnership exists between the PRC and Russia is not important. What matters is that it is not in Beijing’s interests for Moscow to fail or suffer defeat. Russia’s routing in Europe would free up NATO allies such as France, the UK and the US to focus their naval and military power beyond the Euro-Atlantic, especially in the areas in which the PRC has the greatest interest. Though he may hold his nose and restrain the Kremlin from excesses, Xi is on Russia’s side.
Whatever, but as a Euro-Atlantic alliance, NATO should ‘stay out of Asia’
Yes, on paper. Without a shadow of doubt, NATO is a Euro-Atlantic alliance. This is written into the North Atlantic Treaty; Article 6 modifies Article 5 to preclude territories outside of Europe, North America and the Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer. This excludes British, European and American overseas territories beyond those areas, even non-contiguous parts of the US and France, such as Reunion and Hawaii. The exclusion also applies to critical nodes in the British and American global defence system, including Guam and British Indian Ocean Territory.
For much of the Cold War, it did not matter that NATO focused on Central Europe. But, today, a different approach may be required. In the event of Chinese forces targeting US assets in the Western Pacific (or British and French territories in the Indian Ocean), what action would NATO take? Can it really abandon the alliance’s nuclear custodians to face the wrath of the PRC alone? Would the PRC encourage Russia to widen the conflict? Would the Kremlin use the opportunity to secure its objectives in Eastern Europe?
These are difficult questions, and ones which require careful consideration. Britain has had a ‘Europe-first’ approach since Ernest Bevin established it in 1947; this is not in question. But if NATO is to remain relevant, it has to adapt to new geopolitical realities. Atlantic-Pacific connectivities can no longer be ignored.
Elizabeth Lindley is Policy Fellow in the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy. James Rogers is Co-founder and Director of Research at the Council on Geostrategy.
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