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China report warns against European-led Nato 3.0 expansion in the Asia-Pacific

The alliance’s expanding military cooperation in the region will leave the bloc ‘increasingly at odds’ with multipolar world order

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The show of unity at the Nato summit in Ankara last week could not hide growing European unease at the increasingly hard-nosed US approach. Photo: Reuters
Cao Jiaxuanin Beijing
The transition of the North Atlantic military alliance to a more Europe-led “Nato 3.0” will fail to heal deep-seated strategic rifts between Washington and the European capitals, according to a leading Chinese think tank.
In a report published on Monday, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) also warned that Nato’s expanding military and defence cooperation with Asia-Pacific nations such as Japan would leave the bloc “increasingly at odds with an accelerating multipolar world order”.

The report follows the transatlantic security alliance’s summit in Ankara last week where the Nato 3.0 concept was formally embraced as its latest strategic direction.

What is Nato 3.0?

The term broadly refers to a structural overhaul that shifts greater responsibility for conventional defence on to Europe, while the United States recalibrates its global commitments.

According to the CICIR, this marks a new phase in Nato’s evolution: from Cold War-era territorial defence against the Soviet Union, through out-of-area interventions and crisis management, to a Europe-led model centred on home defence and deterrence.

The shift is being driven in large part by the Trump administration’s renewed emphasis on burden-sharing.

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How does Trump’s latest fallout with traditional allies play into Beijing’s hands?
Washington’s National Security Strategy, released in late 2025, gives priority to the western hemisphere, putting added pressure on European allies to take “primary responsibility” for their own conventional defence.
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