Future Trends in the Indo-Pacific

At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, allied leaders met with the leaders of Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand in what was widely seen as a powerful sign of NATO’s growing interest in the Indo-Pacific region. Indeed, the Alliance’s 2022 Madrid Strategic Concept argues that “developments in the Indo-Pacific can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security”, and calls for “strengthening dialogue and cooperation with new and existing partners in the Indo-Pacific to tackle cross-regional challenges and shared security interests”. At the same time, the Strategic Concept asserts that “the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge (NATO) interests, security and values”, and casts China’s strategic rise as a global challenge. Specifically, the Concept alludes to China’s role in the Ukraine war, and warns that “the deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests”.

Against this backdrop, there is a greater need to understand precisely how developments in and around the Indo-Pacific, including China’s strategic rise, may affect Euro-Atlantic security; and how the allies should respond, including through cooperation with existing and new partners across the Indo-Pacific. This is the main purpose of the new Science for Peace and Security (SPS) project “Futures in the Indo-Pacific”, coordinated by the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the VUB in cooperation with the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences-Po Paris.

Through their “Futures in the Indo-Pacific” project, CSDS, NIDS, ASPI and CERI will convene a track 1.5 dialogue that brings together key decision-makers and experts from the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific to a) analyse key geopolitical and security trends in the Indo-Pacific and their possible impact on Euro-Atlantic security; and b) issue specific recommendations for NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners. The project will consist of four main meetings, in Canberra, Tokyo, Paris and Brussels. After each meeting, project experts will publish briefing papers on each set of trends. Those three papers will then help inform the final report, which will provide a deeper account of key geopolitical and security challenges in the Indo-Pacific, assess its implications for NATO, and issue a series of specific recommendations for the Alliance.

Project Deliverables

“Alliance Networking in Europe and the Indo-Pacific“, War on the Rocks (Lotje Boswinkel, Luis Simón, Alexander Lanoszka and Hugo Meijer).

“Military-Technological Cooperation Across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific“, War on the Rocks (Daniel Fiott).

“The Long Shadow? China’s Military Rise in the Indo-Pacific and its Global Implications“, CSDS Polocy Brief (Masayuki Masuda and Alexander Mattelaer)