An Asian NATO?

 An Asian NATO?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/an-asian-nato/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-10-08&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

Excerpt: Pompeo, unsurprisingly, was blunt during the talks in Tokyo. During a speech in which he assailed the Chinese regime’s cover up of the coronavirus and its authoritarianism, he said, “As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion.” But the secretary of state’s counterparts declined to join him in explicitly naming the chief threat to the values that they share. But while the others preferred to focus on their commitments to the freedom and inclusivity of the Indo-Pacific, that did not obscure the actions that their governments have taken of late to push back against CCP misconduct: India, which has seen a flare up in its Himalayan border dispute with China, recently banned dozens of Chinese apps that it claimed were vectors of influence for the Chinese party-state. Australia has in recent years rooted out foreign interference on its soil — and it provoked Beijing’s ire when it called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. And Japan’s Abe, of course, championed the very concept of the “free and open Indo-Pacific” before it became a staple of American policy planning documents. Although these U.S. partners remain reluctant to make the Quad primarily and exclusively about combating Chinese influence, the four countries nonetheless seem poised to push forward on these talks with more regularity. But if the Quad is unwilling to cement this partnership in a more institutionalized way, and if the group champions shared principles but not an explicitly anti-CCP message, what good can it actually do? Quite a bit, actually. [Well, now. Wouldn’t this be an interesting development? The biggest single issue I see is the closeness Biden and the Democrats seem to have with the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Even if it’s a much less formal relationship than Europe’s NATO, it might still give the CCP reason to be more cautious, perhaps even more cooperative. Of course, if it looks like it might work, no doubt the Democrats will immediately pull us out of any prior agreement, should one be made in the next few weeks. They’ll play it like they did with Iran. Ron P.]