ASIA, NATO AND ITS PARTNERS: COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIPS ?

The author writes about NATO’s new partners, which come from in or around Asia and about how each side sees the other, and what the way to ensure both benefit from working together is. In this respect, he approaches NATO from a few standpoints: as a political partner, as a means of cooperation with the US, as a multilateral school, mentioning the role played by the Alliance in operational cooperation and noting that as the world’s biggest and most capable political-military alliance, it carries a certain – both intended and unintended – weight in international security affairs and that in fields as interoperability, standardisation, joint procurement, research and development, multilateral planning and defence planning, NATO has an unparalleled unique set of expertise and experience. To conclude, he presents the challenges ahead for NATO, emphasising that the Alliance has been successful in assisting partners aspiring to become a NATO member. However, it is still a new business for the Alliance to cooperate with non-European advanced democracies.