Vidushi Nautiyal, Pune
India doesn’t align with Japan’s vision for an “Asian Nato” said External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Tuesday. In a Hudson Institute paper published last week the new Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba, had expressed his views on forming alliances to dissuade China from using military force.
The External Affairs Minister India stated that India has never been a treaty ally of another nation, unlike Japan at a gathering held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank headquartered in Washington.
“We have never been a treaty ally of any country. We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind,” he added in reference to Ishiba’s vision. The United States, Australia, Japan, and India are the members of the so-called Quad grouping of nations, formed as a counterweight to China.
In order to combat the security challenges his nation has faced since World War Two, Ishiba also stated that he would work to strengthen ties with friendly countries. He proposed the establishment of an Asian NATO to dissuade Japan’s nuclear-armed neighbors, China, North Korea and Russia by stationing Japanese troops on American land, and even the sharing of authority over Washington’s nuclear weapons. He has explained that these adjustments will help deter China from employing military force in Asia but the ideas has been dismissed by the US.
The Foreign Minister countered this by saying that he could envision why the PM would be concerned but that wouldn’t be India’s thinking because we have a different history and manner of thinking.
“We have … a different history and different way of approaching…,” continued the External Minister. Jaishankar spoke last week in New York at the U.N. General Assembly and will meet Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State and Kurt Campbell, the Deputy Secretary of State later on Tuesday.
The United States’ assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Daniel Kritenbrink, has said that it is premature to discuss the formation of an Asian NATO, echoing remarks made by Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, last year, that Washington did not want to create a NATO in the Indo-Pacific.