Alliance Networking in Europe and the Indo-Pacific

By Lotje Boswinkel, Luis Simón, Alexander Lanoszka and Hugo Meijer

17.12.2024

War on the Rocks

Will Donald Trump’s return to the White House lead to an unraveling of the security ties that the United States has cultivated in and between Europe and the Indo-Pacific? U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific have cultivated closer security ties with each other in recent years, as illustrated by NATO’s efforts to expand cooperation with its four Indo-Pacific partners (Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand), growing bilateral ties between individual European and Indo-Pacific allies, and various high-profile defense-industrial projects such as the AUKUS submarine deal or the development of a next-generation fighter jet between the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy. Interestingly, such growing cross-regional security cooperation among U.S. allies in distant regions is gaining ground at a time when the U.S.-led regional alliance systems in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are themselves exhibiting important changes, and evolving towards more nodal or flexible patterns of bilateral and “minilateral” defense cooperation. The 2023 Camp David agreements between the United States, Japan, and South Korea are a case in point..

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This paper was completed with the support of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme. It is part of a project looking at the future of the Indo-Pacific region and NATO, and the authors wish to thank the participants of a conference organised under the project on 9 February 2024 in Paris, France, which was hosted by Sciences Po.