New Delhi: Union external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Tuesday said that India didn’t share the vision for an ‘Asian NATO’ proposed by Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Jaishankar was speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, when he said that unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country.
When asked about Japan’s call for NATO-like grouping of Asian countries, Jaishankar said, “We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind.” India, Japan, Australia and the US are a part of the Quad, deemed as a counterbalance to China.
“We have … a different history and different way of approaching…,” Jaishankar added.
The Japanese prime minister had said he would seek deeper ties with allies to counter the gravest security threat that the country is facing since the Second World War.
Arguing that such a group would deter China from using military force in Asia, Ishiba called for the stationing of Japanese troops on US soil and shared control of Washington’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent against China, Russia and North Korea. The US has not offered support to Ishiba’s proposal.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan had brushed off the idea of a NATO in the Indo-Pacific while US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Daniel Kritenbrink in September said that it was “too early for such talk”.
Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya downplayed the proposal after India expressed its skepticism over Ishiba’s idea.
“It’s difficult to immediately set up a mechanism that would impose mutual defence obligations in Asia, so it’s more of a vision for the future,” Iwaya said.
