Australia is set to deepen and strengthen its partnership with Nato, as the political and military alliance plans to open an office in Japan.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed Australia will transition to a new Individually Tailored Partnership Programme (ITPP) with Nato when the current partnership expires, but did not confirm when.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is set to travel to a Nato summit in Lithuania in July. All four of Nato’s Asia-Pacific partners (AP4) – Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan – have been invited.
Nato’s membership is comprised of European and North American countries, but it works in various ways with non-member countries including the AP4.
In May, China criticised Nato’s move to open the Japan office as an attempt to “destroy regional peace and stability”.
“Asia is an anchor for peace and stability and a promising land for cooperation and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said.
“Nato’s continued eastward foray into the Asia-Pacific and interference in regional affairs will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability and stoke camp confrontation [sic]. This calls for high vigilance among regional countries.”
Gorana Grgic, a senior lecturer at the United States Studies Centre, said Russia “certainly wouldn’t be thrilled” either.
“Both Russia and China, when they see these efforts of coordination across the two theatres, are very worried about what it means, especially down the line, when you talk about the effectiveness of sanctions, about aid provision, we see these multiplier effects when the two theatres join,” she said.
The relationship between Nato and the AP4 dated back for years, Grgic said, while Australia’s cooperation intensified with its presence in Afghanistan.
She said the rise of China as a challenge as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had seen a shift towards more coordination between Europe and the Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.
“The Sino-Russian cooperation extends to coordination in other domains. This is something that obviously worries countries that are liberal democracies,” she said.
Nikkei Asia has reported the Australian and New Zealand ITPPs “will address crosscutting security issues of global concern – including maritime security, new technologies, cyberspace, the impact of climate change on security and resilience – through tailored political and military consultations, joint training and exercises, and cooperation in Nato-led operations and missions”.
Grgic said there was a regional trend among US allies to form more flexible associations between themselves (“spoke to spoke”) rather than going through more traditional, US-led alliances (“hub to spoke”).
The ITPPs, she said, would be “much more ambitious … maybe more detailed in terms of holding Nato and the partners to account in terms of timelines and goals to achieve”.
But she also emphasised that the planned office in Japan was a liaison office, not any kind of military setup, and that the partnerships were also about factors beyond the China issue.
Nato’s assistant secretary general for public diplomacy, Baiba Braze, visited Canberra in April and met with officials from Dfat and with the chief of the Australian Defence Force, Gen Angus Campbell.
“Did you know that Nato has more than 40 partner countries around the world? Those include the four Asia Pacific partners: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
“Each partnership is different, agreed within the ITPP.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia would “have further updates on its partnership arrangements in due course”.
“All Nato partners are transitioning to the new [ITPP] process once their existing partnership arrangements are due for renewal,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
