As concerns President Macron’s mentioning that he would oppose the opening of a NATO office in Tokyo, he again pretends to put himself in General de Gaulle’s shoes but fails to understand the differences between the current situation and the one in 1967 as well as the consequences of the statement.
First of all, one has to remind that NATO was not intended to be a permanent institution but only a provisional one, starting in 1949, while Europe was not yet in a position to ensure its own integrated defense system. When the «CED program» (Communauté européenne de la défense, a prefiguration of what European Union could have been) failed, De Gaulle started building France’s own defense system and got the nuclear status. In 1967, France rejected not only that it belonged to the «integrated command system» but also requested Europe’s headquarters for NATO be transferred from Paris to Brussels.
Such developments contributed to establishing France’s status and «strategic autonomy» for a long time, helping build a military procurement industry with efficient and sophisticated supply chains, strengthening overall France’s status as a top industrial nation with the ability to build high speed trains, supersonic jetliners (Concorde) and top class aircrafts (Airbus and Rafale), and a space industry (Ariane) together with European partners, which basically are led by France.
In other words, rejecting France’s active participation in NATO was not a move to weaken NATO but just a «return to the basics» on which NATO had been established but had been forgotten when CED failed.
So, by pretending to be an «Asian-NATO opponent», Macron mistakes the historical situations:
- If placed in the same perspective as NATO in 1949, a Tokyo-based NATO could be the prefiguration for an emancipation of Asia as a coherent group of nations building their independent, yet US-friendly, military industry. This of course cannot yet be taken for granted, but there is no reason for the moment to question such a potential evolution.
- by pretending NATO was only designed at «protecting Europe» and should have no further development, he also forgets that there used to be a similar organization in Asia, named Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) supposed to protect these countries against communist presence in the region. So a NATO office would not be such an innovation, just a return to a situation seen earlier.
- finally, the project of a NATO office in Tokyo is only mulled by the US allies and not yet a tangible idea. So why stating so loudly an opposition to something only in the making at this juncture?
Also, Macron takes the risk of triggering unwished consequences:
- for China, there is no better situation as a divided West and this can only strengthen China’s assertiveness in the region.
- cooperation between France military operations and Asian allies of the US could be hurt, while it remains very important to maintain pressure against any real or pretended will by China to expand and shake the current balance of powers in the region.
- Macrons’s words will please China beyond what was said about Taiwan upon Macron’s flight back to France late April
- the understanding of France’s approach to the « Indo-Pacific » concept ends up more and more blurred
Obviously, one can understand France’s frustration with the unability to participate in military procurement in Asia, which remains a protected market for the US military industry. Also NATO’s presence in Japan could further strengthen the rejection of any other significant player in the region, just like QUAD and AUKUS already did, to France’s dismay. However, as France is still part of NATO, Macron’s statement rather contributes to diminish France’s role: indeed nothing would prevent the Tokyo NATO office to be led by a French personality, and under such a scenario, negotiating visibility for France in the structure would yield many more benefits than just opposing bluntly and systematically. China’s rise remains a risk even to France, starting with the South Pacific.
Chairman Asia Centre Paris Jean-Francois Di Meglio