Newly installed Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s idea for an Asian NATO is probably not achievable in the short term. It’s a good idea for the more distant future, but for the moment there’s nowhere near enough support and preparedness in Japan and elsewhere in the region for it to go ahead.
The idea is not new. Michael Green pointed out the emerging plausibility of such a bloc last year, noting the urgency of collectively countering China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. Shinzo Abe promoted less formal cooperation between such democracies as Australia, India, Japan and the US to dissuade China from aggression. Since China has become more aggressive, not less, formalising the integration of the hub-and-spokes alliances centred on the US should be part of strategic discussions in the coming years.
Even a mere proposal for Asian NATO would be helpful. It warns China that its aggression could result in the formation of a multilateral alliance to oppose it.
Ishiba has promoted the idea for more than 10 years. In the context of enabling collective self-defence in Japan in 2014, he stressed the importance of extending collective self-defence with countries that shared democracy and freedom, especially with other US allies, including Australia. And an Asian NATO may be an unspoken goal of the US policy to build collective military capability through a latticework of western Pacific alliances.
Nonetheless, Ishiba’s proposal does not look like an immediate remedy for the deteriorating Indo-Pacific security environment.
First, Ishiba himself noted in 2014 that Asia had greater disparities of military and economic resources and more ethnic and religious diversity than Europe, so the Asian NATO ambition would take time and energy.
His intention appears to have turned from general collective defence to specifically deterring China from attacking Taiwan. Just before the LDP leadership race in 2024, he raised the idea of a coalition of democracies with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, implying that Taiwan would be in an Asian NATO and, given China’s ambitions, become its main concern.
But, across the region, there is no consensus support for using force to protect Taiwan. A Lowy Poll in 2023 revealed that only 42 percent of Australian respondents supported the Australian Government sending troops to Taiwan to defend it. In another survey, such support in South Korea was 34 percent.
Crucially, only 11 percent of Japanese survey respondents said they would want their country to force alongside the US to protect Taiwan; 56 percent backed logistical support to US forces, and 27 percent opposed working with US forces at all in such a contingency. In Southeast Asia, the ISEAS survey found that 15 percent of Filipinos supported military help for Taiwan, and even that was higher than the average of 5.7 percent across the Association of South East Asian Nations.
Second, Japan already extended the right of collective self-defence to the United States and potentially US allies, without an Asian NATO. In the 2014 interpretation of its constitution, it can exercise the right of collective self-defence only ‘when attacks against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan threaten Japan’s survival and pose a clear danger to its people’.
While Japan’s response to the Taiwan contingency remains ambiguous, the US-Japan alliance would end if Japan failed to extend the collective self-defence to the US forces fighting for the island.
An obstacle to creating an Asian NATO would be the continuing political unacceptability in Japan of an obligation to use military force, like that created by Article 5 of the NATO treaty. If Japan wants to establish an Asian NATO, it should take the first steps of amending its constitution and taking more responsibility for its own defence.
Ishiba does want delete Paragraph 2 of Article 9 of the constitution, which prohibits possession of offensive military potential, and reform Japan’s military as more than a self-defence force. Still, achieving that would be as hard for him as walking on the Moon, and then creating an Asian NATO would be as hard as walking on Mars.
Also, Ishiba may have quite enough to do in trying to revise Japan’s status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) with the US. He dislikes Japan’s asymmetrical obligation to allow foreign (US) forces on its territory.
All in all, the benefit of promoting an Asian NATO is highly limited.
Moreover, in mobilising political, diplomatic and military resources to pursue the ambition, Ishiba could switch attention away from, and thereby weaken, less ambitious but useful attempts at deterring China. Examples are improving interoperability and responsiveness, and achieving smoother coordination in command and control. The US and its allies should focus on concrete and practical next steps of patchworking bilateralism and minilateralism to address the China challenge, rather than dreaming of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.