The case for an Asian NATO

During a tour across Asia from October to December 1953, the US vice-president, Richard Nixon, posed a vital question: why, four years after the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was there no such equivalent in the Pacific? With the rising global threat of communist expansionism, the establishment of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO) a year later did little to assuage such fears. Succumbing to ineffectiveness and declining interest among its members, SEATO collapsed in 1977. Over successive decades, East Asia would rely instead upon its postwar ‘hub-and-spokes’ security architecture. With Washington as a hub, regional security was guaranteed not by a collective defence system but individual bilateral ties with the hegemon.

Seventy-three years since Nixon’s sojourn, questions of an East Asian NATO have anything but abated, as Euro-Atlantic, Middle Eastern and Indo-Pacific theatres of conflict grow increasingly intertwined. As Japan and South Korea become two of the most badly affected non-combatant states by the conflict in Iran, the need for East Asian unity to deter common threats has never been greater. Today’s geopolitical reality is such that neither Seoul nor London, each over 4,000 miles away from Tehran, are immune from the consequences of the US-Iranian war.

Disruption to the transport and provision of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) are the most immediate economic consequences for non-combatant states. The Strait of Hormuz has revealed itself to be a core global chokepoint on the flow of oil: 20 per cent of global oil and the same proportion of global LNG supply pass through the waterway. Approximately 70 per cent of South Korea’s crude oil supply flows through the Strait. It is a similar picture for Japan, which, while possessing a greater supply of emergency reserves than its South Korean counterpart, relies upon the Middle East for around 95 per cent of its oil.

For East Asian states, the conflict brings additional dilemmas concerning allegiances. South Korea may have recently secured over 270 million barrels of crude oil and naphtha from Kazakhstan, Oman and Saudi Arabia until the end of the year, but another source of naphtha remains: Russia. While Seoul suspended purchases of crude oil and naphtha from Moscow in February 2022, its purchase of 27,000 metric tonnes of Russian naphtha at the end of March highlights how, when it comes to receiving energy (or not), the distinction between ally and adversary can be brushed away. Doing so only plays into the hands of Russia, China, and North Korea, in what is another momentary victory for the anti-western axis.

One recent advocate of the need to address this interconnectedness of conflict theatres has been the former Japanese prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru, who spent most of his premiership from October 2024 to October 2025 repeating a maxim first proffered by his predecessor, Kishida Fumio: ‘Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.’ Through such an adage, Ishiba, a vocal proponent of an ‘Asian NATO’ prior to his election, sought to emphasise how a world of geographically contiguous theatres would be confined to the past. The assumptions held by many when the Cold War ended in 1991 were fast unravelling. Growing economic interdependence between friend and (former) foe did anything but usher a new world order in which localised conflicts would quickly resolve themselves.

While Ishiba tamed his advocacy for an Asian NATO during his premiership, he remains heartily committed to this prospect. Only last week, he told an audience in Seoul, of which I was a part, that ‘it is a matter of the highest importance to consider building such a framework for the broader Asia-Pacific’. For Ishiba, it is not enough to strengthen bilateral ties between the United States and Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Rather, the ‘realistic’ next step involves ‘developing those ties into a NATO-like framework in the future’. Whether realistic or idealistic, the fact these discussions are growing in importance emphasises the need for East Asian ‘spokes’ to institutionalise ties, many of which have been encumbered by the legacies of history. As other former Japanese officials stressed, doing so will be cumbersome and burdensome. The mismatch of election cycles across Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, coupled with intra-party factionalism are just two significant hurdles to overcome.

Nobody said that foreign policy would be easy. There is no louder clarion call for spoke-to-spoke cooperation than the unholy mélange of interconnected theatres of conflict with a solidification in ties between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. With Washington’s East Asian allies also facing a more transactional United States, there is no more opportune moment to combat mutual threats together. Yet, the US’ transactionalism, whether threatening to withdraw from NATO or abandoning South Korean or Japanese allies, is not unique to President Trump. Nearly two decades after calling for an East Asian NATO, Richard Nixon would withdraw approximately 20,000 US troops in South Korea from the Seventh Infantry Division between 1970 and 1971. The consequences of global war today, however, are hardly the same as during the Cold War.

Forming an East Asian NATO is easier said than done. The risks of diverging interests given the longevity and embeddedness of the network of bilateral alliances poses one obstacle; so, too, are the challenges of domestic politics. One need only look at the Japan-South Korea General Security of Military Information (GSOMIA) intelligence-sharing pact, signed in 2016 to bolster cooperation between Tokyo, Seoul and Washington in the wake of increasingly acute North Korean nuclear and missile threats. Falling prey to Seoul’s leftwards political swing in 2017, GSOMIA only became normalised under a conservative South Korean government in 2023.

Global conflicts will not wait for partisan politics. Increasing defence spending, by Tokyo and Seoul, is a useful first manoeuvre. Yet, co-operation between Seoul and Tokyo must also be formalised beyond leader-to-leader statements and drumbeats, if East Asian states are to step up their ability to tackle individual and collective threats from coercive authoritarian actors. In this vein, Tokyo and Seoul should formalise the Acquisition and Cross-Serving Agreement – a much higher-level agreement than GSOMIA – which allows mutual supply of ammunitions, military logistics support and enhanced military mobility during emergencies.

Back in November 1953, having met Nixon, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek expressed his frustration with the United States. Lamenting that Washington ‘still has no Far Eastern policy’, Chiang concluded that Asia and the world must ‘get at the heart of the matter and drive the Communists out of China’. The possibility that Asia would have to go it alone, through forming an Asian NATO or otherwise, was hardly remote from Chiang’s considerations, much as it is on the forefront of Tokyo and Seoul’s thinking today. Beyond the need to deter Beijing, Washington’s current Far Eastern policy may still be evolving. While saying that we need an East Asian NATO is one thing; to say that East Asian states can establish such an organisation is another. Nevertheless, in the meantime, western allies and partners must not sit idly by.