Faced with threats from Russia and its Asian supporters, NATO and Indo-Pacific partners get closer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Four Indo-Pacific countries attending the NATO summit issued a joint statement Thursday to “strongly condemn the illicit military cooperation” between Russia and North Korea, showing how the military alliance and its Pacific partners are forging closer ties to counter what they see as shared security threats.

For the third year in a row, leaders or their deputies from Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia — which are not NATO members — attended the high-level meeting of the 75-year-old military alliance of European and North American countries. In Washington, they launched cooperative projects on Ukraine, disinformation, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

“We will address our shared security challenges, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, China’s support for Russia’s war economy and the growing alignment of authoritarian powers,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said when meeting officials of the four Pacific partners. “We must work even more closely together to preserve peace and protect the rules-based international order.”

“Our security is not regional. It is global,” he said.

The White House said it welcomed the attendance of the four Indo-Pacific countries at the NATO meeting because the threats and challenges among the regions are interconnected.

In an interview with the South Korean news agency Yonhap, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Washington wants to “institutionalize” the grouping of the four countries as Washington refocuses its attention in the region.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol told fellow leaders that solidarity among like-minded countries has become more important than ever when facing interlinked challenges such as the war in Ukraine and provocations from Pyongyang.

He said South Korea welcomed an airworthiness certification from NATO for Korean aircraft, which he said would ensure “mutual military compatibility.”

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he would promote a foundation for a “long, lasting collaboration” between NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners.

Kishida told reporters that Japan and NATO would “reinforce” procedures for sharing highly sensitive intelligence and that Japan would conduct a joint exercise with NATO in the Euro-Atlantic region, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

New Zealand signed a partnership program with NATO, though details were not immediately known. Stoltenberg wrote on the social platform X that it would take the cooperation between New Zealand and the transatlantic alliance to “unprecedented levels.”

The Australian government announced its largest single military assistance package, worth nearly $250 million Australian dollars ($167 million U.S.), for Ukraine.

“The delivery of highly capable air defense capabilities and air-to-ground precision munitions represents Australia’s largest single support package for Ukraine, and will make an enormous contribution to its efforts to end the conflict on its terms,” said Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy along with other leaders from the Indo-Pacific region.

China, which NATO on Wednesday called out as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war efforts, has opposed NATO’s reach into the Indo-Pacific region. It harms China’s interests and disrupts peace and stability in the region, said Lin Jian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.

“Don’t bring instability to the Asia-Pacific after it has done so to Europe,” he said Thursday.

But it is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s growing alliance with Russia, and China’s role as the main supplier of dual-use technology to Russia that are driving the cooperation between the 32 NATO member countries and the four Indo-Pacific nations, said Kenneth Weinstein, the Japan chair at the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute.

The growing partnerships, he said, are “key to bolstering deterrence.”