My Take | Asians must just say no to Nato and resolve their own disputes
- They do not need the Western military alliance, which will be merely a fig leaf for declining US hegemony and turn the region into a powder keg
Let’s cut to the chase. Countries in Asia may want a continuing military presence of the United States as a counterweight to a rising China, but they don’t want a cold, or God forbid, hot war in their backyard.
They may like having the US Seventh Fleet around, but it’s doubtful they would want the kind of nuclear submarines proposed by the Anglo-American Aukus alliance to patrol their waters.
The powerhouses in Europe – Germany and France – prefer to exchange butter than bullets with China, and they certainly don’t want to increase their commitment to Nato when, over many years, they had been dragging their feet to meet military spending benchmarks, until the Ukraine war.
Nobody sensible would want to turn a region that is the economic engine of the 21st century into a powder keg like Europe was in the last century.
At the very least, most Europeans still recognise what the alliance’s initials stand for; they don’t include Pacific or Asia.
While Britain likes to talk big, its leaders must realise in their heart of hearts that the Great Game was over for them almost three quarters of a century ago. That’s not my opinion; I am quoting Simon McDonald, a former top British diplomat in an interview with the New Statesman magazine.