“NATO plans a joint statement Summit with South Korea and Japan”

Belgium — According to Nikkei, NATO is considering publishing a joint announcement for its upcoming summit with four observer countries from the Asia-Pacific in a show of cooperation against Russia and China.

According to a senior European diplomat and a NATO official, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand would be included in the joint statement that NATO members would be negotiating.

At the June summit of the previous year, NATO for the first time invited the leaders of the four countries as partners. According to a second NATO official, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg intends to ask for the same quartet to this year’s summit, which is planned to take place in July in Vilnius, Lithuania.

According to the NATO official, Stoltenberg has begun preliminary negotiations with several NATO countries and has brought up the notion of the expanded joint statement.

The official stated that “they have a similar statement to the outside world on security problems and risks.” The insider stated that this was primarily a political and messaging implement and that it appeared to be the first time that this technique would be used “to coordinate communications on the highest level.”

When speaking with Nikkei, U.S. enduring representative to NATO Julianne Smith said that a unified statement from NATO and the Asian allies would discourage China from taking military action, but she did not confirm that the proposal was on the table. She also hailed the cooperation of the Asian and NATO allies in helping the Russian opposition in Ukraine.

Nobody is retreating. All of the consent is steadfast. Instead, we now witness steadfast resolve and unwavering support for Ukraine. Hopefully, it will send a clear message to every nation in the world that is considering going against these U.N. Charter principles, making them reconsider their decision, said Smith.

Utilizing the acronym for the citizens of the Republic of China, the nation’s official name, she continued, “I have a suspicion that the PRC is keeping a careful eye on how the rest of the world reacts to what’s occurring inside Ukraine.

The United States thinks that showing solidarity among democratic states and delivering a message that there will be consequences for using force against China in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait will be a deterrent.

Compared to some of the other totalitarian governments in the region, including Russia and North Korea, Xi Jinping, the Chinese President  “has been much more a reasonable actor and more of a professional politician,” according to a senior U.S. defense official.

The U.S. intelligence agency has discovered that  Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, made the decision to invade Ukraine without sufficiently considering how the rest of the world would react. According to the American defense officer, though, Xi is less likely to commit the same error.

As a show of defiance against China’s attempt to alter the status quo, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have sent warships and aircraft carriers to the Indo-Pacific region.

Another U.S. defense official stated, “The Chinese don’t like that.” Beijing was quoted in the source as criticizing the “Cold War mentality” of Europe and the US to promote their alliances in Asia.

According to the military source, such language is “pejorative phrasing that’s trying to portray what we think to be practical and historical connections with some of our critical partners something negative.”

Charles Edel, the Australian chair at the U.S. belief tank the Center for International Studies and Strategic said that while joint statements are undoubtedly a start in the right direction, Beijing reacts to substantive actions more so than it does to symbolic ones (CSIS). In Europe, there is a widespread conviction that sending military forces to Asia would only be a short-term solution with negligible impact on deterrence.

The outcomes of a wargame simulating a Chinese incursion of Taiwan were published by the CSIS last month. The simulation was accomplished by not accounting for European support provided to the American troops in the early phases of the fight.

According to the CSIS, it would take time for Europe to put a judgment to intervene militarily into action. This indicates that it is doubtful that Europe would develop into a power significant enough to alter the path of a crisis affecting Taiwan.