Indian Foreign Minister says New Delhi does not share Ishiba vision for Asian Nato
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India has never been a treaty ally of another country and does not have that kind of strategic architecture in mind, said Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - India does not share the vision for an “Asian Nato” called for by Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Oct 1.
Mr Jaishakar told an event at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country.
“We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind,” he said, when asked about Mr Ishiba’s call.
India and Japan, along with the US and Australia, are part of the so-called Quad grouping of countries established as a counterbalance to China.
“We have... a different history and different way of approaching,” said Mr Jaishankar, who spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York last week and will meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell later on Oct 1.
Mr Ishiba on Oct 1 said he would seek deeper ties with friendly nations to counter the gravest security threats his country has faced since World War II.
He has called for the creation of an Asian Nato, the stationing of Japanese troops on US soil, and even for shared control of Washington’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Japan’s nuclear-armed neighbours China, Russia and North Korea.
He argues that the changes would deter China from using military force in Asia.
The US has brushed off the idea.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in 2023 that Washington was not looking to create a Nato in the Indo-Pacific, and Mr Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, recently said it was too early for such talk.
Mr Ishiba nevertheless doubled down on his idea on Sept 27, telling a press conference that “the relative decline of US might” make an Asian treaty organisation necessary.
On Sept 21, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined US President Joe Biden, Mr Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida and Australia’s Prime Minister for a Quad summit,
However, even though the Quad is increasingly addressing security matters, India has stressed that it is not intended as a military alliance. REUTERS
