Why Europe Still Matters to Asia's Security

Welcome to the Asia Chess Board, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Mike Green of the United States Studies Center in Sydney and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to the Asia Chess Board. I'm Mike Green, joining you from Sydney and the US Studies Center and sometimes from CSIS Georgetown in Washington. Today we are going to talk about the transatlantic alliance and the European connection to Asian security. In the last episode we talked about India and the Indo-Pacific because of the name change of Indo-Pacom back to Pacom and whether that means that somehow India and the Indian Ocean are less important strategically. That was just a name change. The transatlantic relationship is going through through something much more tumultuous and problematic that has obvious bearing on the security of Europe but important implications for strategy in the Indo-Pacific. For American interests but also Japan, Australia, Korea and India. There's really no one who could help us unpack this better than Dr. Garana Gerkich. Garana joining us from Zurich. Thanks so much. We miss you here in Sydney but thanks for joining. >> Great to be with you. Thank you so much for having me. >> She is the head of security studies at the ETH Zurich Center for Security Studies. She was with us at USSC and played a critical role in analysis here in Australia and for the entire Indo-Pacific region on the Europe card if you will, on the role of NATO in Indo-Pacific security and the importance of the Indo-Pacific to NATO security. Garana has a classic academic scholar practitioner career. She was at the NATO Defense College and then was brought in to red team and help shape the 2022 NATO strategic concept which in a way was NATO's pivot or partial pivot or wink towards playing a role in the security of you know Pacific and we'll talk about this in more detail but the Ukraine war North Koreans fighting in Ukraine Russian support for Iran the so-called crinks China Russia Iran North Korea this axis of authoritarians revisionist powers spurred more of a connectivity between NATO and the Asia Pacific alliances and Grana was right there at the founding and building of this concept drawing on her scholarly work and now the question is is it all coming apart is the Euro-Atlantic part of Asian strategy and Asian security in peril and Grana you're going to help us answer that question so thank you very very much for joining let's start you've been on the podcast in the past but let's just quickly remind people your own background and how you came to Australia how you became interested in security and how you came to Zurich to work on security in Europe >> Yes thank you so much for having me Mike and I'll try to make this super short because trying to explain the sort of random bulkiness of of the variable that was my academic and professional journey that far but if anyone asked it was all pre-planned you know part of a great great strategy and in plan yeah so originally I'm a creation native but I spent some time doing my undergrad studies in Singapore and then I decided to venture out even further east or southeast which got me to Australia so I was in Sydney for a decade and a half with some stints at Harvard at NATO Defense College you mentioned Hertie School in Berlin and basically over the past half a decade I was slowly making my way back to Europe and so now I find myself in Switzerland which is a very interesting place to be because you're right in the middle of Europe but sometimes you don't feel like you're in Europe given that Switzerland is famously not part of any of these projects of European integration but these days is cooperating a lot more with all of them. And so, my personal journey is sort of, you know, like personal is a bit political because for a long time I was a lone transatlanticist in rooms full of Indo-Pac experts when I was in Sydney, as you might recall. And these days, as I head the global security team here at ETH, I often find myself as one of the more lone voices of pointing out why Europeans should care about the Indo-Pacific in usually rooms full of people who are simply preoccupied now with only European security affairs and of course for very good reasons. >> Yeah, East is East and West and West and never the twain shall meet unless Gorana is there. >> Exactly, yeah. Yeah. I try to be the counter-Kipling sort of here, yeah. >> Yes, the counter-Kipling. I'm going to remember that. But, you know, I ask people how did you get into strategy, international relations of Asia? And usually there's some childhood story of I had a map on my desk or I had a trip to Japan with my family, all right. But, your yours is much more intimate. You grew up in the Balkans, I guess, towards the end of a very dark period in the security of that part of the world. So, that I think probably prompted your interest in a way that's a bit more visceral than it would be for Americans or Canadians looking at security. You understand the significance of a breakdown of security. >> Absolutely. So, for a lot of us who are sort of my generation, late '80s kids, we all were born in a country that no longer exists, but we are often reminded of that, especially if we immigrate anywhere, you know, then if we try to select, as I was born in or what I think is Croatia, that country for the year of my birth wasn't actually the the kind of geopolitical entity of reference. So, of course, the collapse of Yugoslavia and then subsequent wars that happened on that territory are something that was part and parcel of very much of my growing up. Unfortunately, unfortunately for anyone who hails from that part of the world, and I guess even more intimately, my dad was military officer, actually, professional military. So, we had again unfortunate front row experience of what that means. So, when I talk about conflicts and when I talk about wars, this is something that strikes also on a personal level. So, I was always interested, and this is something that I did in my PhD as well, to understand why actually, like the basic question, right? Why people go into wars? Why they decide to take arms to protect these what Benedict Anderson called the imagined communities. But, you know, what is it that drives humans to sacrifice their lives? And then, these days, you know, to see some of the things, and especially, you know, what's been going on in Ukraine has so much resonance actually with some of the things that we've seen in the Balkans, but on a way, way worse and greater scale, of course, now, given that this conflict has been going on longer than World War I, right? That it's taken so many lives. So, there is that personal quadrant, of course, professionally. Then, when you start learning more and sort of understanding different sort of levels and and variables that are part of these dynamics and processes, you just, at least in my mind, become even more interested to know more. And I feel like I'm a forever student actually of security. >> I appreciate you sharing that, and I think it is important people understand it because there's a focus in your work on explaining the causes of war and peace, and a disinterest in fads or jargon. And so, it's very important work, and also, you make these connections, like the European connection to the security of Asia, and vice versa. Before we get to the sorry state we're in right now, and decide how sorry it really is, or how long this lasts, or how much it matters to the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific, let's rewind, and and you were there for a lot of this at NATO Defense University and and in Brussels. Explain for people how the IP 4, the NATO strategic concept, the focus on China grew. I just quickly as you know, I was in the White House in charge of Asia in the Bush administration where we had tension, nothing like today, but we had tension with Western Europe or as Rumsfeld called it Old Europe, Germany and France in particular over the Iraq war and the war on terror. And we had disagreements over things like the EU move to lift the arms embargo on China from Tiananmen, and they moved to do that 2005, and we had very difficult discussions saying, "Hold on, that's going to hurt security in Asia." Those difficult discussions grew into a more regular cadence of actually cooperative and collaborative thinking about how these two regions affect each other and how allies in each can help. And then really blossomed about the time you were at NATO. Tell us, how did that happen? What were the conditions? Who were some of the actors who really made it take root? >> Yeah, I mean, that's a a great question and and I don't want to make this into, you know, a dissertation-length answer and you know, oral history of how NATO has been cooperating with what I now refer to as the IP 4, kind of more informal grouping, but we know we are talking about Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. And actually, a lot of this cooperation hails back to late '90s, early 2000s and have has been actually part and parcel of something entirely different, which is what looks more like the other core tasks of NATO, not defense and deterrence, but rather crisis management and cooperative security, right? And a lot of that was actually purposed towards things like even, you know, NATO intervention in Kosovo all the way to Afghanistan, Iraq, and then later on some of the other missions in the course of the 2000s and and early 2010s. So, there was this sort of basis on which NATO cooperated with the countries in what was then the Asia Pacific where we refer to the Indo-Pacific these days, but then really where we start seeing a lot more change in terms of how NATO starts seeing partnerships is, let's say, over the past decade. And really Russia's first sort of invasion or support for the Russian insurgents and Russian rebels in the east of Ukraine that happened in 2014 and that sort of first phase of the Russian war against Ukraine has basically started making NATO look at partners in a different way. And Australia is actually a very interesting part of that story because Wales Summit, which is known, you know, as the 2% pledge summit in 2014 was actually the summit where this program of the enhanced opportunity partnerships is launched and Australia along with four other countries and those are Finland and Sweden, which would become, of course, member states of NATO along with Georgia and Jordan joined NATO in this initiative of furthering ties and cooperation and aspiring to greater interoperability. So, from that point we see actually that partnerships are starting to become re-purposed not just for purposes of these like crisis management and cooperative security tasks, but really towards NATO's own defense and deterrence, which is the core of Article 5. And then fast forward, I would say there are a couple of really pivotal points, at least in my mind, which is the fact that NATO increasingly starts recognizing China as a challenge. So, for NATO, you know, there are only two threats out there. One is Russia, the other one is transnational terrorism, but China, from 2019 London Declaration, this was the Trump era, right? First Trump becomes a challenge that basically has implications way broader than just the sort of Asian horizon. And then in 2022, as you mentioned, basically codifies this Indo-Strategic concept and in the declaration that comes out of Madrid, actually even the year before it was more of a virtual summit, the Brussels summit. China is mentioned, Indo-Pacific partners are mentioned. So this cooperation starts rolling out and this was also part of then the Biden administration initiative to essentially bridge allies which of course pretty sure I don't need to introduce your listeners. But the way that I followed this was really I mean in real time that the kind of speed of some of these developments in terms of how the Indo-Pacific four are seen. They were referred to first as the Asia-Pacific four and they were kind of rolled out of what was a very sort of let's say [clears throat] eclectic grouping which was called partners across the globe where you had these four but you also had Iraq, Afghanistan prior to the fall, Mongolia, Colombia. So it was a kind of hodgepodge of different countries that couldn't quite fit into the existing models of partnership that NATO had such as the Partnership for Peace or say Mediterranean Dialogue or these simple cooperation initiative but rather were these sort of partners from everywhere that we did things with but didn't quite know what to do about. And then of course comes 2022, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine the war that ensues and this is where the IP4 now not so of course one part is the China puzzle but of course what Russia has been doing in concert with China and then of course with DPRK it becomes very much front and center of the discussions and of the response of the kind of cooperation between the two sides. >> And the first Trump administration in the National Security Strategy in 2017 sort of set politeness aside and said explicitly that the major challenges to national security are Russia and China. Every national security strategy from basically George Herbert Walker Bush, all the post-Cold War national security strategies held out some hope that Russia, China, great powers would cooperate on climate change, terrorism, whatever the flavor du jour was in Washington. 2017 stripped all that away and said, "Nope, the organizing principle for our foreign policy and national security strategy will be that China and Russia are revisionist powers seeking to undermine the system and we need to counter that." And there was not a lot of pushback from Europe, actually, was there? I mean, there was a sort of I It seems to me it was part of this growing momentum that then, you know, the Biden administration really picked up on to strengthen the transatlantic and Indo-Pacific connections of alliances. I argue this because there were ups and downs, but there was a consensus more or less in Washington that is now much more problematic. And you now have, because of the second Trump administration's approach, as we know, on Greenland, on tariffs, on civilizational What's the noun? Criticism of Europe, the cultural ideological You now have surveys in Europe that show that even America's closest allies in NATO, countries like Denmark, see the US as a bigger threat than China. I guess, if we unpack what happened, how bad is it? How bad is this transatlantic relationship right now? >> Well, that's that's the sort of point in the podcast where I have to decide do we trade in euphemisms, Mike, or do we go out in the open in terms of assessing, you know, how the various sort of reactions and sort of the processing of emotions, the waves that I at least have been going on across Europe. >> How much of it is emotion? How much of it is real strategy? How much of that strategy is realistic? You know, how deep does this go in terms of strategic choices in European capitals? >> And it's exactly the right question and and one that I think it depends on which sort of point in time we we decide to point to and what are the sort of specific kind of events or or kind of policy actions that we've observed that have taken place that we factor into analysis our analysis. What I would definitely say is there is this whole school of transatlanticism that basically says the history of the relations is all history of crisis, right? The famous Saint Saint Leger Cowen. I often quote this one because we often tend to forget that there was never this sort of golden age, right? There were always periods of ups and downs and we need to be sober about it. People like it needs to to like dysfunctional marriages and things like that but partners decide to stay together for whatever reasons, etc. So there there are things that are part and parcel also of the structural imbalances that are part of this relationship that we need to take into account. However, there is something that feels these days a lot different. say qualitatively and it's definitely more acute, which is what I would call a change in the the kind of paradigm where you mentioned already, you know, the kind of story about the pivot or the pivot before the pivot, right? That United States has for so long tried to prioritize different theaters and specifically to focus then more towards the east, towards Asia Pacific, Indo-Pacific, whatever you want to call it, but this in Europe always produced this sense of kind of existential angst, right? Like of what are we going to do and it is a bit again part of this path dependent dynamics where Europeans have essentially internalized the role of being a junior partner and waiting for the United States always to step in, right? So like and there are plenty of famous quotes about like Americans finally doing the right thing and so on and always waiting for them and so on. But this time around, like so basically that paradigm just briefly was always about how do we live without the United States, right? And there is a bit of that here at the moment. But, what is more acute these days is what I would say a kind of turn that has been much sharper with the second Trump administration. And it's not just how do we live without the United States, but how could we actually possibly now negotiate this relationship sometimes against the United States or when the US feels like it's pitted against us, right? And I think that here the usual story is Greenland is a sort of wake-up episode. It was really dire back in the northern winter, so end of last year, beginning of this year. And then, of course, a lot more of this flirtation with Putin that Trump has at this sort of personal level, whether you want to point to the Anchorage summit or actually some of the strategic documents that you pointed to that seek strategic stability with Russia at a time, of course, when Europe finds itself at this point where it can't look away from what Russia is doing and how it impacts not just, of course, what's happening on the eastern flank, but we have to remember that the past couple of years have seen unprecedented rise of this great zone activities across the board, across Europe. It's not just isolated in the east. And here, it seems then that United States is not necessarily always on the side of Europeans. And some of the impressions are that actually Europeans have to do it themselves. >> The debate or the confronting The debate's not the right word. The threats to Greenland, the strategic sort of tolerance, if not admiration for Vladimir Putin, the lacklustre, if close to non-existent support for Ukraine. Those are all pretty serious problems for European security, no doubt about it. But a lot of them are unique to Donald Trump. There's no precedent in American history. There's no polling. If anything, the polling shows that very large numbers of Americans, like 90%, do not think the US should just forcibly take Greenland. Our strategists able to sort of say, "Hold on, there's structure and there's agency." And yes, Donald Trump says this and yes, he's the president, but there's nothing in American history the uncertainty, the commitment, yes, but the Greenland, the civilizational stuff, that's very much Donald Trump. Do people successfully sort out what is structural and what is President Trump's own particular leitmotiv? >> There is a bit of that and I think that there is a lot of that that is connected to some of the discussions that are more forward-looking and that still believe that in, you know, 2029, we might have a whole different administration and again, precisely what you said, that a whole different kind of set of players, maybe even from a Republican administration would be maybe not, I wouldn't say like super benevolent, right? Some of these things might say, but at least that this rhetoric would sort of tone down and that maybe some of the issues might be taken off the agenda. I also think that there is the awareness across Europe that of course United States is not a singular entity and and even the president can't enact everything he wants, right? So, operating with this kind of pluralistic system that of course there are people on the hill, within the administration itself, right? Within the executive branch that might be more sympathetic towards some of the European concerns and then I would underscore another point and you mentioned already Donald Rumsfeld and the the the new and old Europe divide. I would say in transatlantic relations, this is a point that I I really make every time I speak about some of the issues in the relationship. It's not a singular relationship, right? It's a collection of different bilaterals and even minilaterals within that. And you know, United States has had better relations with some countries than maybe others for different historical or current political reasons. And we also have to be aware of that. And then of course, the leaders in Europe are aware of that. And then some take on these roles of being the Trump whisperers and so on. And there are different schools of thought how successful they are at that. And some who actually make a cause for their own kind of celebrity, if you wish, by actually pitting themselves against President Trump. So, there is this dynamic as well that can then exacerbate some of the issues. And we have to be aware of that, of course. But again, there is a sense that we are in a qualitatively different phase in these, again, often problematic transatlantic relations. But that there is still, given the structural imbalances, an effort from the Europeans not to completely get the United States out of the picture because yes, strategic enabler story, right? Like the economic exchange still, despite the trade wars, despite tariffs, everything is still quite significant. And you can't just sever decades of what has been a really deep connection over the course of a year and a half now. >> Yeah, it's a very important point you make that there is there is wide variance in how European capitals look at the US and wide variance in the US as well. A cynic might say that the leaders in Europe or NATO who are furthest from the guns are the ones who are most playing against the US and Donald Trump publicly. Macron, the Spanish Prime Minister, Carney. I say this a lot on this podcast, but Asian allies are having a different experience and live in a different neighborhood. And so, support for the US-Japan alliance is the highest ever, 93% in the government polling. Support for the US-Korea alliance in the Asan polling in March, highest ever, 97%. In Australia, it's dropped a bit from 80 to 75%, but that's historically high in Australia. So, why? I mean, a large part of the reason is that the Trump administration has a much more benign view of Asia. There's a civilizational cultural friction with Europe that goes way back for the conservative wing of the Republican Party. It goes back to the 19th century, and Don Rumsfeld sort of represented this, and now it's happening on steroids. Europe used to be Europe was old, monarchical, the West and Asia was the future, and now it's Europe. It's not It's not that Europe's old and monarchical, it's open borders, woke, civilizational decline. But there's been Europe has been an object of ideological targeting from the right of American politics for a long time, and then of course the geopolitics. There is not a plausible scenario. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's a plausible scenario where Vladimir Putin's Russia becomes the hegemonic force of power of all of Europe. But there is in Asia with China. So, the Asian allies have less room and less ability to fight with America, and of course they have no NATO. So, the collective security. So, there are a lot of reasons why Europe's in a much harder position, and you could also argue the Europeans make it worse because there's a lot more domestic support for beating up the Americans. I was in the Bush administration. It wasn't as bad, but we felt like we were a bit unfairly beaten up a lot of times, too. So, there are all those differences that I think matter, but I think listeners to this podcast are mostly focused on Asia, and I think we want to know, and I want to know, so you talked about the NATO strategic concept, the growing awareness of the China challenge, the kind of what has happened to all that in debates in NATO, in your center, in Berlin and London and Paris and Madrid? What is happening to this focus on the security threat from Asia? Is it just gone? Are you a lone voice, or is it still quite prominent, just not public? What Where is this seed that you planted among others to get the NATO strategic thinkers looking on the other side of the world? >> Well, thank you for the very generous interpretation of my agency in in all of all of this. I would maybe push back against it. I don't have sort of delusions of grandeur in that sense, but certainly, you know, part of what we could call an epistemic community of not a lot of us, but there are some louder voices across the old continent who still advocate why it is important to engage with Indo-Pacific. There are a couple of ways we could assess where we are at this particular moment in terms of the let's say broader Euro-Atlantic Indo-Pacific cooperation, or if we want to leave out the Atlantic, but if we do that, then we risk leaving out Canada. So, let's for the purposes of our conversation keep it at that. The most obvious change has been really the one that came out of the White House and the Pentagon, for that matter, starting from early 2025. So, I'm pretty sure that it's sort of the rigor that Elbridge Colby gets a shout-out every time you're recording this podcast. >> Yeah, probably in terms of someone who is ruthlessly advocating for prioritization and for United States to really rebalance its focus and shift away from being concerned with all things European theater, but I would say he's probably not too happy with the involvement in the Middle East, either, given that his whole idea and and sort of initiatives coming from the Marathon Initiative and and so on, right, to the policy planning in the Pentagon have been focused on the Indo-Pacific and more specifically kind of concentrated around what China has been doing projecting its influence for style and chain and all of that. And so with that we have a really a huge change to what we had under the four years of Biden, which was essentially a story of let's connect allies across theaters, right? That there are no Indo-Pacific allies and your Atlantic allies, that it's all allies and that there should be a greater effort to actually get them together in of course Indo-Pacific. This is also meant promoting a greater spoke to spoke cooperation precisely because of what you said, there is no Asian NATO. I don't think there's going to be one, but what we've seen and from my time in Australia, what has been going on is much greater coordination and cooperation among US allies in the region and I think that's a good thing. But then also their coordination with Europeans and again, not just because of feeling good and charitable reasons, but because of practical reasons. Ukraine escalation of course when when Russia invaded in '22 was seen through the prism at least from some of the counterparts in Tokyo, who I talked to, you know, people in the think tank world or Seoul, Canberra as well, Wellington, was seen as Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow, right? That this is a sort of blueprint that you need to be acutely aware of of course the deepening of Russia-China cooperation with the no limits partnership that was announced just prior to the war and so on not to rehash that history, but then also the fact that you have DPRK sending soldiers onto Russia's western front. So basically shooting into Ukraine, right? And getting what in exchange? Greater missile capabilities, like support for their nuclear program, which has direct impact, right? So this war that's happening in Europe has direct impact on the stability of the Korean Peninsula made it very obvious as to why the two theaters are connected and why the like-minded partners, right, whose strategic assessments have started converging, right, need to cooperate more. And I think that there is this sort of still realization is there, right? We don't need to go into diagnosing things, but we now are in this phase of how do we actually operationalize this cooperation? And these days where I would say we are is not in a place of hey, let's do this very loudly. Let's try to institutionalize it because basically one of the key sort of locomotives behind the initiative that was the US administration is these days telling allies in both regions, stay in your lane, right? These were actually the words last year when the Brits were sending a fleet to South China Sea, right? It was basically, what are you doing there? Just kind of mind your business. And what we see a lot more and what we've seen actually from some of the recent kind of summitry, if you want, NATO Ankara summit, are these meetings that are taking place really on the sort of fringes of the summits or that cooperation is very much taking place on a bilateral level, which is, you know, again, evident in things like South Korea and Poland these days claiming that they are strategic partners, right? Who would this coming maybe just half a decade ago, but these days it's sort of part and parcel of this new sort of web of security and in the kind of architecture that is being built because of the changes coming out of the White House. >> This idea that senior US policy makers would tell Europe and Asia to stay in their lane is just too clever by half. It's a sort of a Mearsheimer reductionist simplification of complex strategic settings. It's often premised on the idea, and it's not a majority view in Washington at all, as you know. It's just the flavor du jour in parts of the current administration. But, it's all premised on this idea, well, what is NATO going to do to help us defend Taiwan? And I talked to Arzan Tarapore, and the I said, "What is India going to do? Is India going to escalate in the Himalayas to help us if there's a Taiwan?" They're they're not any good. And what it fails to realize is that in India's case, the security of the Indian Ocean led by India is incredibly important. In Europe's case, the geopolitical weight, whether there's a NATO task force in the Western Pacific in a Taiwan contingency or not, is not the point. The geopolitical weight of Europe, economic, diplomatic, is massive. That's a major deterrent. And I think you know that, and I know that, but that sort of gets forgotten. People are sort of counting how many divisions and squadrons and carrier battle groups do we get? We don't get a lot from Europe. What's the point? Stay in your lane. It completely misses the deterrent effect, the shaping effect. And it also ignores completely that that's what China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are doing. Cuz they're not stupid. So, anyway, there's no question there for you, Granat. You can nod Well, people can hear you. You can say yes if you agree. >> I am Yeah, I'm vehemently nodding. I am just going to probably, you know, dislocate my neck here. But, what I wanted to say, absolutely. And I think that this whole idea that, you know, one should expect massive European naval presence has always been something that's unrealistic. But, I'm glad that you brought this up. And we haven't mentioned necessarily the European Union for different reasons here. But, the European Union is actually a key coordinating mechanism here, not NATO, right? And and kind of beating up NATO for not being able to kind of coordinate things that have a lot more to do with the geo-economic response to some of these, right? Or acting as a deterrent. Because I think a lot of these discussions now, where actually Europeans, if you want, by and large have been more assertive and been able to actually do things that were again a decade ago quite unimaginable have been taking place because of some of the regulatory innovations that have taken place because China has been growingly assertive and then antagonistic towards Europeans. And you know, if we want to talk about things like the anti-coercion instrument that so-called trade bazooka that these days, you know, was also being kind of swung as a potential instrument against Washington as well. So we, you know, like there are some uncomfortable conversations, but these things were actually all imagined and kind of developed and are there now in the arsenal that Brussels possesses as a result of what Beijing was doing hot Washington. And so there has been a lot more these days on that front. And again, if there is a lot more conversation about potential crisis prevention, but then also crisis management, these things actually include a lot more of talks of sanctions, of economic response, of diplomatic, political responses and so on. Not necessarily about deploying the quite limited naval assets anyway that that Europe possesses to go there. But again, if we turn it on the other side, it's not like we are seeing the Japanese or Koreans or Australians Kivis deploy their troops to Ukraine. It's not the point, right? There has been support for training and and so on. And of course huge financial contributions that are meant to go towards Ukraine and its defense. But again, if our sort of benchmark and let's say main criterion for the success of this cooperation is whether Europeans are going to be there on the first island chain, I think then we can all pack up, you know, and and go. I don't I don't think that's the point, right? >> And also a lot of mutual learning. The Japanese now are preparing their new five-year defense plan, and the defense minister Kishi Nobuo, who worked at CSIS with me years ago, is doing very public-facing roundtables and seminars on strategy and the lessons of Ukraine. So, defense strategies are being shaped in Asia by the the lessons in Ukraine and now Iran. So, there's a lot of that happening, but more could happen. You mentioned earlier spoke to spoke, so of course that's drawing on the famous argument during the George H.W. Bush administration that American alliances in Asia work because it's hub and spokes. America's the hub and then you have these bilateral spokes going to Japan and Australia and so forth. What do you think is going on with the spokes? You know, defense industry in Korea, the Hanwha and Korean defense industries are extremely interested in NATO. Hanwha's building plants in Poland. European defense industries are incredibly interested in Asia, big market, so there's that. But a lot of it's commercial. The Japanese, I think probably more than any Asian ally, are keen to have this Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific connection, in part because they're in the G7 and in part because they are right there dealing with China and Russia both, so they they have experience that's unique. But you know, the the Korean government's a bit on-again, off-again. We hosted a really interesting IP4 conference here in New Sydney and the Korean government was very much behind it and it kind of fizzled. The Australians and the Kiwis, you know, they have enough problems in the Pacific. It seems like there's some difficulty concentrating spoke to spoke. You have European foreign ministers coming here, by the way. I won't say which countries, but you can guess, telling the Japanese and Australians and Koreans they need to help counterbalance the US, which is not what those Asian allies are going to do. They're not. They can't. They China problem's too big. So, it seems like there's a lot of disconnects, but also things happening. Can we put some hope in that the spoke to spoke, the ties between Europe and Asia keep some momentum going, keep some cooperation and mutual learning and technology and capability building going, or or is it really kind of fractured? >> Well, th- this is the sort of story that again I I would say transcends NATO because NATO is not the kind of key again coordinating mechanism for some of these things. It is a platform for discussion, there's no doubt about that. If anything again uh what we've seen in Ankara with the defense industrial forum being kind of part and parcel of discussions is the fact that this is something that brings first of all the NATO allies together a lot more, right? Given what's been happening in Europe, but then also that brings in the Indo-Pacific partners. You're absolutely right to point out that we basically see these relationships mainly on a bilateral level, and here I would underline how important these days again European Union is in all of these conversations because it is assuming this new role of a geopolitical entity in fact, and where increasingly it matters that to formalize these relationships with European Union first before you can actually enter some of these programs. So, European Union has launched what are called the SDP, so security and defense partnerships, which are a precondition that you can actually access the funding that EU has allocated towards joint procurement, co-production, and all of that. Without that, it's going to be very hard to negotiate bilateral deals because there are very stringent rules now in terms of how much the third parties can actually be part of some of the European projects. And these days a lot more is being done on this project of consolidation, right? Because what Europeans have long had a problem with is the fragmentation of the defense industrial market, right? And so, this is where I think all of the Indo-Pac partners really need to tread carefully and be mindful of, but I would say they are already aware of these things given that Japan, Korea, and Australia in that very order have all signed these SCPs. New Zealand is the only standout out of the IP4, but I don't think it's going to be a long time before they join as well. So, that's one part of the the story there. And then, um what I would say again, the second part of the story is how great of expectations do we have, right? And again, some of the projects have already taken off without some of the changes that we've been talking about. So, there is a lot of evidence actually of cooperation already out there. So, GCAP is always pointed to being one of those proofs of concept, so Global Combat Air Program, UK, Italy, Japan. So, Japan very much part of that. Korea, of course, a huge power in in terms of its defense industrial base and and the ability to actually impact what's going on in some of these conversations in Europe. And again, the story of cooperation with Poland is part and parcel of that. I would say for Australia, probably the more the things are revolving around AUKUS, right? The less space that it leaves there for maybe greater European cooperation, but the UK, of course, being part of this and very important part of that whole story is something that we can put under that umbrella. But overall, I think that we should look at the cooperation that takes place in terms of defense industrial ties is a story of being able to standardize, to co-produce, to become more interoperable in kind of medium to long run because now what we've seen are the dire shortages in terms of the ammunition, in terms of artillery, right? And we don't want to see a situation where, you know, you have a contingency in the Indo-Pac and then again, there are such disruptions that can then affect both theaters. There's the story of whether this happens under conditions of strategic simultaneity, right? Whether there's still a war going on in Ukraine when something could happen over in the Indo-Pacific. So, there are a lot of different things there, but again, I think that there are a lot of great expectations as to what NATO IP core can do in and of themselves, but I think that we need to here at least broaden the story a little bit and take into context what is actually feasible for NATO to do because again, it is not necessarily the primary sort of mechanism for some of these decisions because there are a lot of fiscal strings attached and decisions that are taking place not just at the national level, but then also at the supranational level of those countries that are in the EU as well. >> The common denominator of the two main examples you gave, AUKUS and GCAP, the Japanese fighter program, the common denominator is Britain, is the UK. And I personally think there's a reason and the reason is the UK does not go to Japan or Australia or Korea and market their kit as an alternative to the American alliance system. They market it as interoperable with. So, I'd say you're right, but there are also some limits on how far Europe will get if the approach is to actually offer autonomy from the United States, which is often how the French government approach this is. Let me wrap up with a kind of a trick question. I'll apologize in advance, but we have midterm elections in the US in November. I think most analysts, the betting markets, expect that the Democrats will take at least the house, have some control of budget and so forth. So, there's there's going to be some empowered voices for alliances. And frankly, if you follow US politics, uh significant part of the Republican Party is going to be with them on emphasizing NATO. Then, of course, we have our presidential election in 2028. What do you think the new Congress or new administration need to do? What are a couple things that would repair the NATO alliance in ways that give us more purchase on the China problem? Or is this really so broken it's going to be a very long-term project repairing it? And I'm mainly asking, yeah, in the context of the two theaters coming together, but obviously you have to get both theaters right on their own first. >> Yeah, I I think what allies in both theaters are craving is just a little bit more certainty and a little bit less volatility when it comes to even day-to-day things, right? Because at least, again, from the vantage point of Europe, and we haven't necessarily talked too much about US-China relationship, but this is a roof that covers all of these discussions, that there is this sort of sense of uncertainty over where the Trump administration might go. And I think that this translates also into the Indo-Pacific theater. And what I mean by this is some of the conversations around Chinese proposal of this kind of strategic stability seeking and so on. What does this actually mean, right? Because to have the constructive strategic stability for Europeans, where some of the capitals is it definitely gives them the leeway to then pursue a policy that is a lot more, let's say, viable to Chinese interests and revert back on some of the developments and advancements, I would say, in terms of being more clear-eyed strategically and possessing more strategic agency. I I don't like the term self-autonomy and so on, but at least being able to assert itself. So, there is this question of certainty and kind of greater policy predictability that's there, but particularly in terms of the question of strategic competition. And then, I think this is not necessarily something that the Congress can do, especially if it's going to be a divided legislature, right? If we do have them take over the house, but fail to take over the Senate, I think that this will have a lot more implications, of course, on everything that has to do with budgets that are still like even at the time of unified government, it's quite hard to get things through and so on. You know the whole story. I'm not going to go into that too much, but they're going to have a lot more implications, of course, domestically, and of course, then spilling over into the ability for the US to project its influence, to actually do things on the foreign policy front because of defense budgets and so on. So, appropriations is going to be a big part of that, but then I think with the administration change, if we do see that in '29, reassurance of allies, and then I think a lot more work that is going to be much harder than '21 to '25 that Biden had to do in convincing allies about this whole America is back, right? That was the signature policy back then, but I think that even if Democrats, whoever it is from that side, if they do end up winning the '28 elections, are going to find the world that hasn't necessarily, I mean, figured out the firm architecture or has a great plan of what this sort of world looks like and how they organize relations, but is going to be much harder to, I think, this time around plug the United States back in in the same way that maybe a Biden administration had in 21 because it was only four years of Trump. And now there is this sort of sense at least for Europeans, we can maybe make a distinction here between the theaters because you said yourself, right? China, you can't solve necessarily as a problem by yourself without United States, but Russia maybe, you know, again, nominally all the latent power numbers are on European side. You see a lot more being done on that front, but then to have this sort of commitment and buying from the United States to signal that and to kind of really see that go back to some usual settings, I think it's going to be a much harder job. So, there is one thing about expectations, maybe, but then another one is to where we go. And I think in general we are trending more towards this sort of NATO that is going to be a lot more European, whatever that means, right? Like whether it's again the vision of NATO 3.0 or this sort of bi-pillar alliance or something along those lines, but that doesn't have to do again necessarily with the administration, but just with a sort of micro-structurals and where US grand strategic attention is. So, hopefully, like a very long answer, but offers some threads there as to your tricky kind of forecasting. >> And some glimmers of hope, I guess. You know, one thing we're not going back to a status quo ante in the transatlantic relationship, and it's not just in my view because of the wounded feelings and and alarm in parts of Europe about the current administration's approach. It's physics. It's math. It's the strategic problem of China is so huge that rhetoric about the pivot's not enough. There's going to have to be a recalibration of American military power. I think it's kind of going to be unavoidable. But you want that recalibration to be measured, and you want it to be calibrated with NATO and with allies in the Indo-Pacific working together and thinking about one theater. And now, of course, CENTCOM is part of it cuz this Iran thing is not going to get easier. So, we need coalitions. We need an intelligent design. We need commands and allies worrying about each other's theaters. But, I think the physics are going to say, A, the US is going to have to shift more military effort to Asia. And B, Europe's going to have to do more. And the US, as you I'm sure know, as a percentage of GDP spends more than almost every NATO country. There are some outstanding exceptions like Poland. And then on social welfare percentage of GDP, the US spends significantly less than most of Europe. And that's just a sort of imbalance that's been there for a long time, but it's going to become more acute. So, there will have to be this recalibration, but you need it to be building trust, coordination, intelligent design, and making sure that we're making the most of external balancing of coalitions across commands. And it's not going to be easy. So, in that sense, we are all very lucky that you're in Europe speaking truth to power and really appreciate it. People can follow Garanas work in the ETH Zurich Center on security. In multiple languages or what's the main language? >> Well, I mean, predominantly we do English, German, and French. So, two out of the four official languages of the Swiss Confederation. But, sometimes if needed, it's translated into Italian and Romansh. No, but mainly I converse I don't dare venture into German and French. They're my language proficiencies are rather basic. So, I stick to English mostly, but you can follow me over there and some other places as well. >> Also, the Transatlantic Initiative at the Atlantic Council. And of course, you're a a non-resident fellow with us. So, periodically doing things at the US Studies Center. So, you have many hats. >> I'm the embodiment of the theaters being connected truly from Washington to Zurich to Sydney. There is a lot of me in terms of, you know, my spiritual divides, but physically mostly in Zurich. >> Well, the the luckier we all are for it. Thank you, Garana. Really really good strategic description and projection about the landscape that we face together in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific. Thank you very much. >> Thank you for having me. >> For more on strategy and the Asia programs work, visit the CSIS website at csis.org and click on the Asia program page. And for more on the US Studies Centre in Sydney, please visit ussc.edu.au.