Indian foreign minister says does not share Ishiba vision for Asian NATO
Jaishakar told an event at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country.
India does not share the vision for an “Asian NATO” called for by Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday.
Jaishakar told an event at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country.
“We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind,” he said when asked about Ishiba’s call. India and Japan, along with the United States and Australia, are part of the so-called Quad grouping of countries established as a counterbalance to China.
“We have … a different history and different way of approaching…,” said Jaishankar, who spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York last week and will meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell later on Tuesday.
Ishiba on Tuesday said he would seek deeper ties with friendly nations to counter the gravest security threats his country has faced since World War Two.
He has called for the creation of an Asian NATO, the stationing of Japanese troops on US soil and even for shared control of Washington’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Japan’s nuclear-armed neighbours, China, Russia and North Korea.
He argues that the changes would deter China from using military force in Asia.
The United States has brushed off the idea.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last year that Washington was not looking to create a NATO in the Indo-Pacific and this month Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said it was too early for such talk.
Ishiba nevertheless doubled down on his idea on Friday, telling a press conference that “the relative decline of the US might” made an Asian treaty organisation necessary.
On Sept. 21, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined US President Joe Biden, Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida and Australia’s prime minister for a Quad summit at which they announced joint security steps in Asia’s trade-rich waters in the face of growing challenges from China.
However, even though the Quad is increasingly addressing security matters, India has stressed that it is not intended as a military alliance.
