News Analysis: NATO looks to India, China to build security ties to counter globalized threats
by Paul Ames
BRUSSELS, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen caught some people by surprise at the weekend with his call for the North Atlantic alliance to turn itself into a global security forum with increased ties with China, India and other rising world powers.
But his speech at the Munich Security Conference put into the public domain what many at NATO headquarters have been saying privately for some time: that faced with increasingly globalized threats, the alliance has to develop new relationships way beyond its traditional heartlands in Europe and North America.
NATO has been offering outreach programs with varying degrees of engagement to nations in several parts of the world since its role as Europe's Cold War guardian slipped with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989.
They include the "partnership for peace" schemes which offer structured political and military ties with nations in the former Soviet bloc; links with neighboring nations in North Africa and the Middle East; and much looser, informal arrangements which NATO has sought to build with so-called "contract countries" such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, with whom the alliance has worked in Afghanistan.
Rasmussen's speech on Sunday goes beyond that, saying the time has come to "turn NATO into a forum for consultation on worldwide security issues." He specifically mentioned the need to work with the major Asian powers. "This network of consultation and cooperation would be even stronger if countries such as China and India were to take part rolex fake as well," he told the conference.
His words are first and foremost a recognition of the growing international influence of China and India, not just in the regional context but worldwide. Besides their growing economic and diplomatic clout, the two Asian powers are major troop contributors to UN peacekeeping operations, and by sending naval vessels to tackle Somali pirates off the coast of East Africa, their militaries are now working alongside NATO maritime forces.
As Rasmussen pointed out, both India and China also have a stake in ensuring the stability of Afghanistan where NATO is currently expanding its troop presence to over 120,000.
Many at NATO headquarters believe that it makes sense for the Western alliance to start serious talks on security cooperation with the Asian powers given the global nature of 21st Pandora Beads Wholesale century threats such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, organized crime, cyber threats, piracy and climate change which affect them all.
Rasmussen said the idea of wider global consultations should be reflected in the new Strategic Concept which NATO leaders are scheduled to adopt at a summit to be held in Lisbon late this year.
Rasmussen's proposals drew support at the Munich conference from former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is leading an experts' panel drawing up preparatory proposals for the Strategic Concept, and from Canadian and German ministers.
"Partnerships are integral to NATO's ability to meet security challenges at a distance," said Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay.
There are those who have doubts. Some of NATO's newer members in Eastern Europe are wary of any moves that might dilute the alliance's core role as a mutual d
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