What a difference a preposition makes! For years, there has been a debate (among security types, at least) about the prospects of a “NATO for Asia.” In recent weeks, however, the discussion has morphed into one about the role of “NATO in Asia.” The latter is more pressing but it’s the less important of the two.

NATO will always have a minimal role to play in Indo-Pacific security. It can contribute, but it is just too far away, with more urgent concerns upon which it must focus its energies and resources. The model of a collective security organization is another matter, however — in theory, at least. That has profound implications for regional security, even if there is little chance of a NATO-like institution emerging in this part of the world.

Closer ties make sense. Security is indivisible, at least insofar as the ability of one country to violate international law with impunity will inspire others to do the same. Even if distance prevents NATO countries from making substantial material contributions in an Indo-Pacific crisis, they signal their interest in the region with peacetime deployments, boosting deterrence by making it clear to any revisionist state that its transgressions will at least be punished with diplomatic sanctions.

Deployments also create uncertainty for an aggressor: A wartime contribution may be unlikely, but it is not impossible. That too contributes to deterrence. And European efforts to goose defense capabilities free up resources for the U.S. to use in a crisis in this theater.

While there has been a mutual courtship by Tokyo and NATO's headquarters in Brussels for several decades, debate over the role that NATO can play in Asia has shifted into high gear over the last year. The four major Indo-Pacific partners — Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, the AP4 — attended last year’s annual NATO summit together for the first time and are expected to join next month’s summit in Vilnius. The most recent iteration of NATO’s Strategic Concept, the document that guides alliance planning and policy, which was released late last year, included the threat posed by China for the first time, noting that Beijing's stated ambitions and coercive policies “challenge our interests, security and values.”

Each of the four “partners across the globe” are working on an Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP), upgraded relations in a higher form of partnership, that will facilitate cooperation on a range of issues such as maritime security cooperation, cybersecurity, new and emerging technologies, outer space, combating disinformation and the impact of climate change on security. Since the spring, there have been reports that NATO is considering the opening of a NATO liaison office in Tokyo next year, to facilitate implementation of those ITPPs.

To promote closer ties, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, among other things, visited NATO headquarters and hosted its secretary general in Tokyo. In addition, he reportedly discussed the alliance with French President Emmanuel Macron when they met at the Group of Seven summit last month. It was also on the agenda of the May 9 Japan-France "two-plus-two" meeting of ministers of foreign affairs and defense. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace applauded closer ties with Japan at the Shangri-La Dialogue, saying that a Tokyo office “is in the interest of NATO” and “important for a number of issues,” one of which is “to share the knowledge of the threat.”

Predictably, a NATO presence in the Indo-Pacific faces opposition. China objects, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson warning that “the Asia-Pacific does not welcome group confrontation, does not welcome military confrontation.” France too is reportedly unhappy, concerned that it could distract the organization from its core mission of defending Europe, that it might provoke China and that it could alarm the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

French doubts are the product of geography and history. For most of NATO’s existence, an Indo-Pacific (or Asia-Pacific) presence was considered an oxymoron: What is a North Atlantic security alliance doing in Asia? Not only were the two theaters distant, but they were often thought to compete for the attention of the U.S. Until two decades ago, Europe was the geopolitical prize and even U.S. commitments to Asia were weighed against the potential weakening of the defense of Europe. Only with the rise of Asia — not the rise of China — has the calculus shifted.

When NATO was discussed in this part of the world, it was usually as a model for multilateral cooperation — a NATO for Asia — and almost immediately dismissed as inapplicable. The U.S. objected. It preferred to deal with Asian allies one-on-one, in the hub-and-spokes model that gave Washington an outsize role in their defense decision-making. So too did Asian nations, which had no desire to commit themselves to the defense of other regional countries. (One attempt to create a regional security structure, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO, was undermined by the U.S. failure to make meaningful security commitments.)

In Southeast Asia, there is no appetite for a Western-inspired security structure. The scars of European colonialism and imperialism are still fresh. Newly independent nations have not been willing to relinquish hard-won sovereignty; they worry about subordination to Western governments and getting sucked into their proxy wars. They reject Western arrogance that reasons a one-size-fits-all approach is suitable to this region and insist that there are alternative models for multilateral cooperation. ASEAN and its institutions are more suited to regional needs and new institutions might undercut their role.

Evan Laksmana, a keen observer of Southeast Asian security, explained in a 2021 essay that regional elites are wary of charges that China is a destabilizing force, remembering “how the U.S. trampled on the order in the name of the global war on terror.” They consider talk of a rules-based order “a necessary diplomatic veneer for defending shared principles, but most see it as hollow chatter. And some privately assess it as just a snipe against China.”

The region, he continued, is historically inclined to hierarchy, rather than power balance. “There is no regional concurrence over a ‘China challenge,’ nor that any one power is ideologically or morally superior.” Instead, regional leaders are focused on domestic legitimacy and China is key to that, providing vital economic benefits; after all, China is the number one trading partner of most Asian states.

China encourages this reflex. In 2014, Xi Jinping issued his call for “an Asia for Asians,” which aimed to restrict the participation of outside states in regional decision-making as well as undermine the credibility of their decision-making mechanisms. In March of this year, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang condemned the U.S. “Indo-Pacific Strategy” as an “attempt to gang up to form exclusive blocs, to provoke a confrontation by plotting an Asia-Pacific version of NATO.”

Most discussion focuses on Article 5 issues — the treaty section that triggers collective action — but another dimension of the “NATO for Asia” discussion is of growing importance: the need for coordination of the expanding array of security institutions and initiatives that are flowering in this part of the world. Alliances are being modernized, relationships among “spokes” forged or intensified and new initiatives launched. There are an expanding number of partnerships, trilaterals, quadrilaterals and mini- and plurilateral arrangements. (I tackled this in a previous column, as did Gabriel Dominguez recently.)

The sheer number of meetings weighs heavily on defense bureaucracies; the NATO model offers a way to cut them down. It establishes regular, credible and reliable communications channels. It provides a continuous process of coordination, refinement and dissemination of ideas and practices. It creates habits of cooperation, building trust and confidence among all participants.

Maybe we should try another preposition: NATO notwithstanding Asia?

Brad Glosserman is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Center for Rule-Making Strategies at Tama University as well as senior adviser (nonresident) at Pacific Forum. He is the author of “Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions” (Georgetown University Press, 2019).