Chris and the Peak team proudly introduce the newest contributor for Peak Insiders, the Forward Observer geostrategic intelligence summary. Each week, Mike Shelby will share the intelligence, observations, details and foresight impacting global affairs. This week, he explains the latest moves by NATO and how China is responding.
Executive Summary:
- NATO’s Strategic Concept identifies China as a strategic competitor.
- NATO coordination and integration with South Korea, Japan New Zealand, and Australia.
- Signals a new role to defend the Western order around the globe.
- The Chinese are building a competing international order and responding to “Global NATO” with Xi’s new Global Security Initiative.
Eastern Flank
NATO officials unveiled a new Strategic Concept, which focuses on Russian deterrence and adds China as a strategic competitor. NATO uses the report to reinforce sentiment that they don’t seek military confrontation with Russia, but also don’t discount the possibility of a Russian attack on NATO countries or interests.
As a part of the new Strategic Concept of increased deterrence, NATO is mobilizing some 300,000 troops for a “high level of readiness” in order to contain Russian military activity to Ukraine. The decision will involve some heavy lifting from the United States, which has already deployed the headquarters company of the 101st Airborne Division to Europe and plans to rebase the Army’s V Corps headquarters to Poland. The new posture also includes rebasing attack aviation, Stryker units, an infantry battalion, air defense, and F-15s from interior bases in Germany and the UK to Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, among others. NATO currently describes this as its “Eastern Flank” but would be the front lines if a high-end conventional fight were to break out.
Russia will see this as escalatory, especially as NATO’s borders are expanding to Finland and Sweden. In previous years and in another theater, U.S. military officials have warned about misperceived actions on either side in the Indo-Pacific leading to war with countries like North Korea or China. NATO’s new deterrence strategy runs the same risk. European and U.S. intelligence and military officials have described the Ukraine conflict as likely lasting for years, while one U.S. military leader said that the U.S. seeks to use future deployments to change Russia’s decision making for the next 10-20 years. The risk of an expanding conflict drastically increases over this time horizon as the West desires regime change in Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to expand his buffer zone and reconstitute the Russian Empire. Either one will likely lead to a broader military conflict and could ignite another world war.
China
The second major development this week came as NATO identified China as a major player in the strategic environment and a potential threat to stability in the Transatlantic. Top concerns include China’s use of cyber exploitation, the development of space weapons, economic and maritime coercion, its expanding military footprint (to include the Arctic), and their “deepening partnership” with Russia to overturn the U.S.-led, Western-supported “rules-based international order.”
It’s here where NATO’s Transatlantic mission begins to blur into global security. Officials from South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand joined the NATO Summit this week, but this isn’t the first sign of increased security and defense cooperation. South Korea and Japan have been open about their desire for increased U.S. and NATO presence in the Indo-Pacific to counter expansionary China and the network of nations committed to overturning the global status quo. Japanese officials said just this week that their attendance at the NATO Summit was intended to “promote the idea that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific region are inseparable.” Last month, NATO defense officials were in South Korea to discuss defense cooperation and military integration.
Under the Trump administration, many criticized NATO as being obsolete – a vestigial defense organization belonging to the bygone Soviet era. The picture that’s now emerging is that NATO is no longer obsolete if its new mission is to look beyond the Transatlantic and defend the Western order around the world. Since at least 2017, U.S. defense and foreign policy wonks have openly discussed the concept of “Global NATO” – not a formal organization, but the collection of U.S. and European allies around the globe. The Defense Department’s “Integrated Deterrence” concept depends on this network of allies to deter future conflicts. That strategy has failed in Ukraine, giving U.S. and NATO officials a strong sense of urgency to ensure it doesn’t fail in the Pacific. South Korea and Japan have a great deal to lose if the Western order fails and gives way to a Chinese-led world order.
This week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused NATO of hypocrisy for claiming to be a regional security organization while expanding security and defense ties into the Pacific. Zhao pointed to NATO member air and naval forces participating in military drills in the Indo-Pacific as proof of creeping expansion. Zhao also accused NATO of harboring Cold War mentality and driving East-West bloc confrontation.
China is noticing exactly what’s happening, but they’re far from an innocent victim – their talk of replacing the existing order drives this new twist on an old alliance. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced back in April that “Asia’s time has come in global governance.” A week and a half later, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a “Global Security Initiative” that would start with uniting Asian countries against Global NATO. For as much as China opposes “bloc confrontation” they are beginning to engage in it. For now, we know relatively little about China’s GSI. I’ll detail what we do know in next week’s Geostrategic Intelligence Summary (INTSUM).
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