Beyond Europe: How NATO will shape Asia’s security order

The Ankara NATO Summit was presented and seen as a meeting about Europe. However, its numbers and future needs pointed towards a much wider strategic outlook.

NATO’s 32 allies reaffirmed collective defence, seen as critical in being the de facto protector for all of Europe, and Ankara hastened the phase from commitment to implementation. This is evident in the more than US$50 billion in new procurements, US$40 billion for counter-drone capabilities over five years, €27 billion to modernise fuel storage, distribution and pipelines, and €70 billion in assistance for Ukraine. Most of the immediate fear behind this mobilisation is conventional and European in nature, stemming from fear of the expansion of the Ukraine conflict and future testing of the resilience of the NATO eastern flank.

Yet the capabilities prioritised at Ankara, from artificial intelligence to integrated missile defence, are not geographically limited to Europe; they are also the capabilities that will determine future deterrence and the power equation in the Indo-Pacific.

This reflects Ankara’s deeper message: while NATO’s territorial obligations remain Atlantic, its strategic ecosystem is becoming global.

Trump’s transactional transformation of NATO

President Trump has transformed the political bargain and new defence commitment on which NATO operates.

Defence expenditure increased by nearly 20 per cent in real terms in 2025, and combined spending reached more than US$571 billion. For the first time, all NATO members reported reaching the previous 2 per cent benchmark.

Trump’s NATO will continue to survive, evolving into a more conditional alliance. Washington will continue to be seen as the main anchor providing nuclear deterrence and advanced capabilities, while Europe is expected to do more for conventional defence.

This burden shift is hoped to ensure NATO stays relevant beyond the scope of European and North American security alone, as it also serves another American priority: releasing strategic resources for greater power competition in the Indo-Pacific.

Global defence spending has skyrocketed, and current and future threat settings reflect the underlying urgency, further hastening NATO’s own shifts. World military expenditure reached US$2.887 trillion in 2025, while Europe’s spending rose by 14 per cent to US$864 billion. Asia and Oceania recorded the fastest annual growth since 2009, increasing spending by 8.1 per cent to US$681 billion.

China alone spent roughly US$336 billion, almost half the Asia-Oceania total, but this still pales in comparison with the United States, which remains the world’s largest spender at US$954 billion.

This new shift creating room for future focus on the Indo-Pacific is not new. Most are cognisant that transatlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres are no longer distinct.

Increasing European rearmament gives Washington more parallel flexibility in Asia, while a growing Asian defence-industrial capacity helps Europe replenish its arsenals.

For now, NATO is certainly not preparing to extend Article 5 to Tokyo, Seoul, Canberra or Wellington, but rather setting the stage for closer partnerships with Asia. This might involve connected defence industries, military interoperability, logistical access and other areas, without creating a single Indo-Pacific collective-defence guarantee.

The Indo-Pacific Four - Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - are central to this emerging network but all four have distinct ideologies, although they generally share common threat concerns.

Japan has the strongest strategic pursuit and rationale for deeper NATO ties. Tokyo is facing its worst threat environment since WWII, with a three-pronged threat from Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang, and it fears the aftermath of a possible Taiwan crisis.

Despite the security umbrella provided by Washington, NATO is seen by Tokyo as a strategic multiplier. Cooperation is seen to provide access to European defence technology, cyber expertise, intelligence networks, and common standards that will increase interoperability capacity and synergy and in enhancing the Self Defence Force to be more interoperable with a wider coalition. NATO is therefore part of an integrated shield by Japan apart from the main security setting with the US, the Quad, regional partnership and extended ones including the Squad, and its own SDF transformation in its national strike and missile-defence capabilities.

South Korea’s NATO policy is more calibrated, cautious of the need to preserve trade and economic ties with Beijing, while avoiding the notion that its European engagement is part of an explicit coalition against China. Seoul’s NATO connection is more centred on industry, technology and procurement, and this could give Korean companies access to NATO common-procurement market.

Seoul’s calculation is that it can also have a dual advantage in expanding its defence exports and absorb operational knowledge through NATO, wanting strategic relevance without strategic entrapment.

For Australia, its ties with NATO serves a three-pronged purpose. First, being connected to European industrial and technological capacity. Second, it underlines the notion that aggression and instability in one region affects deterrence calculations and responses elsewhere. Third, it gives Australia greater presence and influence over the understanding of European states on the Indo-Pacific and flashpoints in the region. NATO is seen as an extension in complementing its core AUKUS deterrence strategy, not as a replacement.

Maritime trade remains the region’s main lifeline.

The Ankara Declaration’s reference to freedom of navigation through Hormuz also reflected NATO’s growing recognition that military security and maritime energy security are now in an interconnected system, and the future also extends beyond Hormuz and hence the strategic importance of Strait of Malacca, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait now is further magnified, further adding to the conventional justifications for a renewed security partnership with this region.

The dilemma for the rest of Asia

Southeast Asian states and other regional powers share similar concerns and wariness on the increased instability around Taiwan, South China Sea, North Korean proliferation, risky supply chains and continuous disruption to energy and trade routes. Similarly, they are also wary of increased security dilemma architecture involving the increased  NATO-like expansion of bloc politics, which they fear might undermine their strategic autonomy and hedging concept.

But hedging has limits and risks, as how the region has felt now. Hedging becomes far less credible at times of blockades, clashes or sanctions regimes where access, intelligence and logistics are distributed according to strategic and security alignment.

NATO emerged from the specific setting of a devastated Europe, an emerging Soviet military threat, the presence of large conventional armies and a shared thirst for a permanent American security guarantee to face these challenges.

Asia’s post-war experience, meanwhile, was quite distinct. The region faced decolonisation movements, civil wars, interstate conflicts and competing nationalisms, but not one commonly accepted threat setting, at least until now.

A convergent threat perception remained vague for decades before this, and the need for political legitimacy and credible operational commitments for a security alliance meant that there has not been a credible platform for one for this region, as seen in the failure of SEATO.

ASEAN’s preferred order of inclusivity and hedging means that there is no integrated deterrent capacity, and the reliance on dialogue and diplomacy has been the preferred means over security alliances.

The Ankara Summit has shown that NATO has all the reasons to look beyond Europe, as the nature of security and geopolitical threats evolve and how the Indo-Pacific has been ever more entangled in the core security calculations of NATO members.

The Indo-Pacific has always feared the risks from grey zone tactics that can escalate into deeper uncertainties, in the absence of concrete deterrent measures and the lack of a formal security alliance apart from targeted and mini-lateral security arrangements. The tactics of coercion below the threshold of war, a possible  Taiwan contingency, North Korean escalation, cyber disruption, vulnerable trade and energy routes, and uncertainty over the future of US security umbrella and Indo-Pacific reset during the post-Trump era all remain volatile risk factors for the region.

While NATO is not expected to formally move into Asia, the technologies, industries, standards and security calculations that have been and will develop around NATO will increasingly shape Asia’s future.

For the region’s still dominant concept of being non-aligned, the prevailing question is no longer whether to join an Asian NATO, but whether strategic autonomy can remain credible and effective in the future without the needed military capabilities, industrial resilience and trusted partnerships to defend the stability and the rules-based order.

...............................

COLLINS CHONG YEW KEAT

Foreign Affairs, Security and Strategy Analyst

Universiti Malaya