Primed for Deterrence? NATO and the Indo-Pacific in the Age of Great Power Competition

By Luis Simón, Daniel Fiott, Alexander Mattelaer, Masayuki Masuda, Lotje Boswinkel, Alexander Lanoszka and Hugo Meijer.

14/2024

As the United States prioritises deterrence of China in the Indo-Pacific, the question of how Europeans can take primary responsibility for conventional defence in Europe will take centre stage at NATO’s upcoming 76th Summit in The Hague. Against this backdrop, the future of the Alliance’s own Indo-Pacific agenda hinges on the ability to reconcile two seemingly contradictory pressures. On the one hand, NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners must think about how their cooperation can add value in the context of strategic competition with China. On the other hand, however, they must ensure that their cooperation does not detract from what must be their overriding priority: shoring up deterrence in their respective regions. This In-Depth Paper outlines a way to square that seemingly impossible circle. Ultimately, NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners face a strikingly similar conceptual and operational problem: how to implement deterrence by denial in their home regions. This underscores the potential for synergies. We advocate for NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners to strive towards a cross-theatre ecosystem of concepts, doctrines, capabilities, technologies and standards that i) bolsters deterrence by denial; and ii) respects the principle of regional prioritisation. Such cross-theatre deterrence ecosystem, we argue, would simplify standards and reduce the number of systems, platforms and munitions produced by the US and its allies, thus potentially yielding significant gains in terms of efficiency, scale and speed of delivery.

NATO SPS Final Report

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