NATO’s “Global Partners” in Asia: Shifting Strategic Narratives

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how NATO officials perceive the Alliance’s global partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, South Korea, and Japan. In doing so, it seeks to establish the degree of conformity within the alliance about how useful and important the partnerships are, and connectedly, how NATO’s strategic narrative about its global security role is changing. The article argues that while NATO is committed to maintaining links with each of the countries analyzed, a process of retrenchment can be identified within the alliance, driven by the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and a deteriorating security environment in the Middle East and North Africa. This is reflected in new strategic narratives within the alliance that focus on NATO’s eastern and southern flanks.

Notes

1. The Partner Across the Globe grouping also includes Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These states are not included in the analysis.

2. Laura Roselle, Alister Miskimmon, and Ben O’Loughlin, “Strategic Narrative: A New Means to Understand Soft Power,” Media, War and Conflict 7, no. 1 (2014): 70–84. See, in particular, pages 76–79.

3. See for example: Beatrice De Graaf, George Dimitriu, and Jens Ringsmose, eds., Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning Domestic Support for the Afghan War (New York: Routledge, 2015); Mary Kaldor, Mary Martin, and Sabine Selchow, “Human Security: A New Strategic Narrative for Europe,” International affairs 83, no. 2 (2007): 273–288; Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order (New York: Routledge, 2013); Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, eds., Forging the World Strategic Narratives and International Relations (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Michigan University Press, 2017); Kalathmika Natarajan, “Digital Public Diplomacy and a Strategic Narrative for India,” Strategic Analysis 38, no. 1: 91–106, February 12, 2014.

4. As explained in the introduction to this special issue, three types of narrative are used by actors in an international relations context: system narratives, identity narratives, and issue narratives.

5. Anthony Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement,” September 21, 1993. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/lakedoc.html.

6. NATO, “The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept,” November 8, 1991. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_23847.htm.

7. Costanza Musu, “NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue: More than Just an Empty Shell?” Mediterranean Politics 11, no. 3 (2006): 419–424.

8. Rebecca R. Moore, “Partnership Goes Global: The Role of Nonmember, Non-European States in the Evolution of NATO,” in NATO in Search of a Vision, edited by Gülnur Aybet and Rebecca R. Moore (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010), 220.

9. For more on the ICI see: NATO, “Factsheet on The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI)”, April 2014. http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2014_04/20140331_140401-factsheet-ICI_en.pdf.

10. It should be noted that Japan is removing or weakening some of these constraints and that this process started in the mid-2000s. See Takashi Inoguchi and Paul Bacon, “Rethinking Japan as an Ordinary Country,” in The United States and Northeast Asia: Old Issues, New Thinking, edited by G. John Ikenberry and Chung-In Moon (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

11. For further discussion of the importance of NATO narratives in Afghanistan, see: Jens Ringsmose and Berit Kaja Børgesen, “Shaping Public Attitudes Towards the Deployment of Military Power: NATO, Afghanistan and the use of Strategic Narratives,” European Security 20, no. 4 (2011): 505–528.

12. Hillary Clinton, “U.S. and Europe: A Revitalized Global Partnership,” November 29, 2012. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121129_transatlantic_clinton.pdf.

13. Alan J. Kuperman, “A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya Campaign,” International Security 38, no. 1 (2013): 105–136.

14. Jens Stoltenberg, “Projecting Stability Beyond Our Borders,” March 2, 2017. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_141898.htm.

15. NATO, “Partnerships: Projecting Stability through Cooperation,” December 16, 2016, http://www.nato.int/cps/on/natohq/topics_84336.htm.

16. Julia Gillard, “Joint Press Conference with NATO Secretary General,” October 7, 2010. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_66567.htm?selectedLocale=en.

17. Emerging Security Challenges, Brussels, June 11, 2015.

18. Sam Perlo-Freeman, Aude Fleurant, Pieter Wezeman, and Siemon Wezeman, “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2015,” April 2016. http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1604.pdf.

19. Associated Press, “Australia and France Sign Deal to Build 12 Submarines,” December 20, 2016. https://phys.org/news/2016-12-australia-france-submarines.html.

20. Quoted in Moore, “Partnership Goes Global,” 229.

21. Philip Shetler-Jones, “What NATO Should Do About Asia,” in NATO and Asia Pacific, edited by Alexander Moens and Brooke A. Smith-Windsor (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016), 65.

22. Mark Webber, “The Perils of a NATO Rebalance to the Asia Pacific,” in NATO and Asia Pacific, edited by Alexander Moens and Brooke A. Smith-Windsor (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016), 98.

23. NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Political Committee, “China in a Changing World,” April 20, 2016. www.nato-pa.int/shortcut.asp?FILE=4365.

24. Robert Ayson, “Asian Roles for NATO: Ideas of Force or the Force of Ideas?” in NATO and Asia Pacific, edited by Alexander Moens and Brooke A. Smith-Windsor (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016), 101.

25. Moore, “Partnership Goes Global,” 233.

26. Interviews were conducted across several NATO divisions, including Emerging Security Challenges, Political Affairs and Security, Defence Policy and Planning, and Public Diplomacy. Interviews included officials up to Military Committee Chairman and Deputy Assistant Secretary General level. Interviews were also conducted with a geographically diverse group of the national delegations to NATO HQ and with officials with specific responsibility for NATO partners. Most of the interviews were structured interviews based on a series of 20 questions on NATO’s role in international affairs. Some interviews were off the record and not for attribution and formed the basis of background material for this article and Special Issue. All interview quotations have been fully anonymized.

27. Petr Pavel, “EU Capabilities Could Complement NATO’s Military Efforts,” October 20, 2015. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_124125.htm.

28. The three core tasks were articulated in the Strategic Concept 2010. They are collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security.

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58. See Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliance (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) (New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

59. E.Adler and M. Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joe Burton

Dr. Joe Burton is a senior lecturer in the Political Science and Public Policy Programme and the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato. His research focuses on regional responses to transnational security challenges, most notably cyber security, with a focus on the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific regions.