France is reluctant to approve plans for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to open an office in Tokyo, Japan, next year, according to a US report.
Paris purportedly believes that NATO should limit its reach to the region set out specifically in the bloc’s charter – the “North Atlantic”. France’s leader, President Emmanuel Macron, was leery of getting on board with any plan “that contributes to NATO-China tension,” an insider was cited as saying.
Furthermore, the alliance’s would-be liaison office in Japan could ostensibly undermine European ‘credibility’ with the People's Republic of China (PRC) amid efforts to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow. Earlier in the year, the EU accused the PRC of mulling supplying lethal support to Moscow amid the Ukraine conflagration – something that China has rejected. Beijing has underscored that it was “the United States and not China that is endlessly shipping weapons to the battlefield”.
Macron was also cited as saying just a week earlier that, "If . . . we push NATO to enlarge the spectrum and the geography, we will make a big mistake."
Indo-Pacific 'Engagement'
The US report added that if NATO did establish a Tokyo office, it would make the alliance's "Indo-Pacific engagement" formal and sustainable. However, establishing a new NATO office would require unanimous support from all members of the bloc's North Atlantic Council.
There has not yet been any official comment on the issue beyond the confirmation of "ongoing deliberations." But Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told US media on May 10 that Tokyo is in talks to open a NATO liaison bureau, which would be the first of its kind in Asia. "We are already in discussions, but no details (have been) finalized yet" the top Japanese official said. Japanese Ambassador to the US Koji Tomita similarly told reporters that the country was "working" towards opening such an office but provided no further details.
NATO has liaison offices scattered across the globe, and Japan and the bloc have been cited as discussing the opening of a Tokyo office since 2007, when then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the military bloc's headquarters. Tokyo, which is not a formal member of the 31-nation collective defense alliance, but is its "global partner," has been bolstering its ties with NATO of late, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida becoming the first Japanese leader to attend an alliance summit in June 2022. The government of Japanese PM Kishida has approved a spate of policy documents which envisage doubling the nation's defense expenditures within the next five years.
The French hesitance to greenlight the move comes as back in April, following Macron's visit to Beijing for talks with Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese officials, the French leader let forth a string of statements that set him up for a barrage of heavy flak from politicians in Washington and Paris’s allies in Europe. Macron had urged the EU not to allow itself to be sucked into the confrontation between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, stating that Europe must diminish its dependency on the US and build up its "strategic autonomy". Europe should avoid being "caught up in crises that are not ours," the French president had said, implying China-US tensions over Taiwan.
After the swift backlash, Macron doubled down, clarifying that “being an ally” of Washington “does not mean being a vassal…does not mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” Paris, he said, “supports the One China policy and the search for a peaceful resolution” to the Taiwan tensions, and should not be “followers” of Washington’s “agenda.”
The French president is also known for his 2019 claim that NATO was experiencing what he called "brain death", as the US under then-President Donald Trump was scaling down its defense commitments in Europe. The French head of state also pushed for Europe to build up its own defense capabilities and a more independent foreign policy. However, he backtracked on his statements following the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, amid spiraling US-China tensions over Washington's ties with Taiwan, NATO allies have been bolstering their presence in the Indo-Pacific region, whether it is the alliances, such as AUKUS, which groups the country with Australia and the UK, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) with Australia, India and Japan. On top of that, Washington is part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) initiative, which was established in May 2022 and now includes 13 other members, such as Australia, Brunei, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand.
The United States argued it was not trying to create a NATO-like alliance in the Indo-Pacific region, with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin saying at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that it was, "rightful that European countries would remain interested in making sure that we have good relationship with” countries in the region.
However, China has warned that such a policy is fraught with consequences for the region.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore, China's Defense Minister Li Shangfu argued that "in essence, to push for" such alliances in the Asia-Pacific region is "a way of kidnapping regional countries and fuelling confrontation, which will only plunge the Asia-Pacific into a whirlpool of disputes and conflicts."