Lavrov: US, NATO Try to Militarize Asia-Pacific Amid Alliance’s Efforts to Expand Regional Clout

The US and NATO are trying to militarize the Asia-Pacific region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines of a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh on Sunday.

Washington and its NATO allies “are trying to lay claim to the Asia-Pacific space that has developed for several decades around ASEAN initiatives, around which an inclusive, open, and equal structure of security and cooperation has been created,” Lavrov said.

He added that not long ago, a US concept of the Indo-Pacific strategy had been put forward, a document that stipulates promoting “formats that are not open to everyone.”

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According to the Russian foreign minister, these formats, which “rival the inclusive structures created around ASEAN, envisage the militarization of this region with an obvious focus on containing China and Russian interests in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Lavrov noted that one of the specific signs of the policy line of the US and NATO regarding the development and militarization of the Asia-Pacific region was the creation of the military bloc AUKUS (the US, Australia, and the UK), which is now actively trying to entice New Zealand, Canada, and Japan into entering the organization.

The top Russian diplomat stressed that while Moscow and China uphold the necessity of preserving the formats that have been created around ASEAN, the West continues to develop its own plans.

“Everyone pays lip-service to the need to recognize the role of ASEAN, but in reality, they stick to their line and promote those confrontational mechanisms and tools,” he underlined.

On NATO, Lavrov argued that the alliance has shed its defensive focus and that it currently wants to play a leading role in the Asia-Pacific region.

He noted that “NATO no longer says that they are a purely defensive alliance, which was in place when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact existed.”

“Since then, NATO has moved its so-called line of defense closer to our borders several times, and now they announced at the Madrid summit this summer that they bear global responsibility and that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific region is indivisible," the Russian foreign minister said, adding that the line of defense is already being shifted to the South China Sea.

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The remarks came after Lavrov told Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of an ASEAN ministerial meeting in Cambodia in early September that “there is an obvious tendency to use AUKUS to advance NATO interests in the Indo-Pacific region” and that “actually, the NATO members do not hide this”.

Last year, the US, the UK and Australia signed the so-called AUKUS trilateral partnership, which promised to strengthen Australia's fleet with nuclear-powered submarines and boost defense cooperation between the countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

In a separate development in 2021, Russia published its security suggestions for NATO and the US amid growing tensions over Ukraine. Moscow specifically requested guarantees that the alliance would not expand eastward to include Ukraine and Georgia and would not establish military bases in post-Soviet countries. Russia’s security-related proposals were rejected out of hand, with Washington insisting it will not allow anyone to slam NATO's open-door policy shut.