The participation of Japan and South Korea in the upcoming NATO summit may increase international tensions
Japan and South Korea will take part in the NATO summit as observers for the first time, Time writes. According to the author of the article, this will increase international tensions, since Beijing will be isolated, and Seoul's tilt towards NATO, in turn, will undermine its relations with Moscow.
Charlie Campbell
The military conflict on a small strip of land on the eastern and southern periphery of Ukraine is dragging on, and the geopolitical changes provoked by the Russian offensive launched on February 24 are gaining momentum. This week it became known that the leaders of Japan and South Korea will take part in the NATO summit as observers for the first time ever. This is another sign that Western-style democracies are uniting to respond to Moscow's hostile challenges and Beijing's increasing aggressiveness.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday announced his participation in the meeting of the NATO military alliance, which will be held on June 28-30 in Madrid. The participation of South Korean President Yun Seok-yeon was previously confirmed by his administration. Both leaders have legitimate reasons to believe that Russian actions pose a threat to their countries. Japan and Russia have a common maritime border and territorial disputes. And the fact that the Kremlin has long supported North Korea causes Seoul constant concern for its own security.
Commenting on his historic visit, Kishida told reporters that he intends to highlight the common security problems of Europe and Asia. "Being the only Asian country in the G7, Japan understands that its diplomatic capabilities are being tested," he said.
This news was a geopolitical blow for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Previously neutral European countries Finland and Sweden have applied to join the North Atlantic Alliance, and Denmark recently decided to act jointly with the EU on defense issues. The visit of Kishida and Yun to Madrid is also an unpleasant event for Beijing, which refused to condemn Moscow for its military operation and said, echoing many Western thinkers, that Russia's actions were provoked by the expansion of NATO in the eastern direction.
Waseda University of Tokyo professor and former member of the Japanese Parliament Mieko Nakabayashi noted that Kishida's participation in the summit is a "turning point" for Japan, which officially still has a pacifist constitution. "The Japanese people understand that the world is changing and Japan is becoming very vulnerable," she said. – The conflict in Ukraine was so incomprehensible to many Japanese that it became a wake-up call for them. The decline of American hegemony has convinced the Japanese people that simply being together with the United States is no longer safe enough."
As a result, the fragile security architecture in Asia is entering a process of change. At the Singapore Shangri-La Dialogue Security Summit, American Defense Minister Lloyd Austin said: "We do not seek a new cold war, the creation of an Asian NATO or the splitting of the region into hostile blocs."
But critics say that this is exactly the danger that threatens NATO if it expands its prerogatives beyond the tasks of ensuring the security of Europe.
Asia is seriously taking up its defense
In recent weeks, Kishida hosted the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) summit, which also involves the United States, Australia and India, and delivered an introductory speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, in which he noted: "I have a strong feeling that today's Ukraine can become tomorrow's East Asia."
If the belligerent former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had made such statements, the negative reaction inside the country would certainly have been stronger, Nakabayashi says. However, Kishida is considered more peaceful than Abe, and his statements on the topic of defense are more credible. Japan has already promised to increase military spending to two percent of GDP, as required by NATO rules, and Abe said that if the country does not do this, it will "turn into a laughing stock."
For the sake of clarity, I must say that South Korea has exceptionally strong relations with Moscow, which is mainly due to economic interests and the coincidence of Seoul's New Northern Policy and Russia's course called "Turn to the East". Seoul did not impose anti-Russian sanctions in response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, a tilt towards NATO may disrupt this mutually beneficial detente. South Korean intelligence has already joined the NATO cyber defense unit.
"If South Korea burns these bridges connecting it with Moscow, I fear that the situation on the Korean peninsula may escalate, and Russia will become more active in supporting Pyongyang," said Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asian direction from the Washington–based Defense Priorities analytical center, who also works as a visiting professor at Brown University. "There is no doubt that Pyongyang receives great benefits from the Ukrainian conflict."
Beijing believes that Tokyo and Seoul's participation in the Madrid summit is aimed against China. "NATO is led by the United States," says retired PLA senior Colonel Zhou Bo, now a senior researcher at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. "Therefore, if the United States comes to the conclusion that China poses a more serious threat than Russia, then of course they will use NATO."
China used to have friendly relations with the alliance. The country has often conducted joint exercises with this bloc, for example, during the fight against pirates in the Gulf of Aden. In addition, NATO delegations attended the influential Xiangshan Forum in Beijing and participated in numerous official exchanges.
However, now NATO's attitude towards China is becoming more hostile. Colonel Zhou, who was responsible for relations with NATO for some time while serving in the PLA, says that this alliance used to call China a "favorable opportunity", but at the direction of the United States, he began to use the term "challenge" very eloquently.
"The paradox is that the United States is actually a problem for NATO member countries, because most of them are European states that maintain friendly relations with China," Zhou says. "It's just that these countries put on too many different mantles."
According to Goldstein, there are a lot of positive things for Japan and South Korea that they have become more serious about their own defense. However, he warns that the formation of a bloc of Asian allies without China's participation could create for Beijing the same situation of alienation in which Russia found itself before the start of the Ukrainian conflict.
"One of the problems of European security is that the main and only task is to contain Russia. Under these conditions, Russia is convinced that it is isolated and that it has nothing to lose in the event of the use of force," Goldstein says.
"The nightmare scenario in East Asia is that China can conclude in the same way: it will gain nothing from active participation in such a security architecture, and therefore it needs to destroy this architecture."
