My Take | New Nato doctrine on China resurrects old geopolitical row

The Atlantic and the Pacific may be two separate oceans. But in geopolitics today, the two are being merged. The West is primed to reassert dominance over the East. And so the most powerful military alliance of the world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is set to expand its mission to cover East Asia and the Indian Ocean, or the Indo-Pacific. Some Western politicians such as Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium, have already been complaining that Nato’s current name does not cover its coming expansionist role.

First the United States formulated this strategic shift – by recasting the former Asia-Pacific strategic domain as the Indo-Pacific – during the Donald Trump presidency, though his predecessor, Barack Obama, already talked about “the pivot to Asia”. It’s only natural that Nato now evolves an expansionist doctrine, that is, going well beyond eastern Europe to the Russian borders but also all the way eastward to Asia. Verhofstadt has suggested renaming it as the World Treaty Organisation, but WTO may clash with the World Trade Organization. Why not the Treaty Organisation of the Seven Seas? That should pretty much cover it.

I wonder if all this is not old wine in a new bottle, as it is reminiscent of the century-old controversy between the Heartland theory and the Rimland theory in geopolitics. To cut a long story short, for all the updated technological conflicts, supply chain disruptions and trade route chokepoints, the new Nato doctrine sounds awfully like the resurrection of the old Rimland theory of Nicholas Spykman, an American geographer, during World War II.

But first consider some of the more outlandish claims of the new Nato doctrine before homing in on the more concrete geopolitical space.

Essentially, under the new doctrine, any advance made by China in multiple domains, from technology and the internet to infrastructure investment and finance, will pose a challenge, if not a threat. 5G, new internet protocol, quantum computing … you name it, and it’s a possible threat. These also include, according to the council study, “strategic ports, telecoms, power grids, defence-related supply chains”.

Naturally, China’s maritime disputes with its neighbours in the South and East China seas also pose a significant challenge to Nato under its redefined security mission. As the study puts it, “China’s aggressive territorial claims in the South and East China Seas, and its threats to the integrity of Taiwan, present a real risk of conflict in the Indo-Pacific, including direct confrontation between China and the United States.