The IP4 Partners: Where NATO Meets the Indo-Pacific

**Mike Green** (0:01)
Welcome to The Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Mike Green of the United States Studies Centre in Sydney and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to The Asia Chessboard. I'm Mike Green, joining you from a beautiful weather here at US Studies Centre in Sydney, Australia. We're going to talk today about the IP4, the NATO connection with America's allies in Asia, Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand. East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. But thanks to Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping, East and West have been meeting quite a bit to deal with what some people call a single front, the Euro-Atlantic, the Indo-Pacific. Joined today by three of the leading experts on international security to unpack where the IP4, where the Euro-Atlantic Indo-Pacific security relationship is, where it's heading. Delighted to have with me three scholars listeners will have heard of and read. Elizabeth Saunders is head of the Saltzman Institute and a professor at Columbia University. Luis Simón is a professor and director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy in Brussels, a leading thinker on NATO and NATO's relationship with the Indo-Pacific. Professor Chung Min Lee, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and long-time advisor to Korean governments on grand strategy and democracy and other things. We'll look at where we are with the IP4. I think it's fair to say there was great momentum and now there's uncertainty about the future of this connection between NATO and American alliances in the Indo-Pacific. But there shouldn't be uncertainty because the other side, sometimes called Krenk, China, Russia, and North Korea are certainly tightening up their relationships. So we'll come back to all that. But maybe start with the history. Luis, welcome back to Sydney. And if I can start with you, bring us up to speed on the IP4. And in particular, I think that the US has been on again, off again pushing for this. But the real change came within Europe, I think. And the current momentum really had a lot to do with Europe's relationship with China. But bring us up to speed on the IP4 and the NATO strategic concept and thinking in Brussels and across Europe about the relevance of the Indo-Pacific theatre to European security.

**Luis Simón** (2:24)
Thanks, Mike. And it's a pleasure to be here. As I see it, there are maybe two main factors that sort of underscore the EU strategic interdependence between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. One, which is more structural, it has to do with the fact that the security, the deterrence and alliance architectures of both regions sort of rely on the same final backstop, which is US military power. That was also the case during the Cold War, in which Asian allies felt more the presence and the importance of the European theater. Now it's sort of in a way the other way around. And the other factor is more contingent and relates to the growing strategic cooperation you alluded to to the crank, but perhaps more specifically between China and Russia, right? And I think over the last few years, with sort of on the coattails of the Ukraine war, we've witnessed the emergence of two sets of, if you will, adversarial geopolitical alignments, right? One which is more continental, this sort of pan-euration group of authoritarian powers, China, the cranks, you know, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And on the other side, we've seen growing cooperation between US allies in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific in particular. And this is more of a democratic, but also a Rimland and maritime connection, right? But I think it's important to note, and you also alluded to that, I think it's important to note that this paradigm of adversarial geopolitical alignments has been promoted in large part by the United States and more specifically by the previous administration, right? So the Biden administration sort of underscored the need for a global approach to security and to alliances and for defending global norms whenever and wherever they were challenged, right? And it sort of construed the war in Ukraine as part of a broader geopolitical struggle. It treated China and Russia, but also North Korea and Iran as a more or less coherent block and fostered cross-regional cooperation between US allies. And now we have a new administration in the US which seems to be challenging. And I say seems to be because it's not entirely clear to me yet. And there's also an interagency element to that discussion. And perhaps Elizabeth can talk more about that. It seems to be challenging each and every one of these premises, right? So far, Trump has established a clear ranking of priorities with China seemingly standing first and coming first and everything else being secondary, even superfluous. He also appears to reject the logic of treating China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as a block and may even be looking for divisions within this group. And it's also unclear to what extent he's interested in fostering cooperation between US allies as he's pushing US allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific to stick to the respective regions, right? So I think that's more or less where we are. Having said that, European and Indo-Pacific allies have their own interests. And even if they accept the Trump logic of focusing primarily in the respective regions, they also want to keep that global perspective. And at the same time, the partnership between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran is showing remarkable resilience. We talk a lot about resilience. Well, how about that for resilience? So there's pushback from reality, right? And in addition to that, I think the Trump administration's emphasis on outcompeting China also underscores the importance of cross-regional cooperation, particularly when it comes to economic security, tech and so on and so forth.