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New Atlanticist by John R. Deni
Good news: NATO’s Concept for the Deterrence and Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) may soon have the blessing of NATO-member leaders at this month’s summit in Brussels. But there’s bad news too: It is already time to update the DDA to address China.
In May 2019, the NATO Military Committee, made up of the allies’ defense chiefs, signed a new military strategy—the first such document written by NATO since the late 1960s. The Military Committee later introduced two subordinate documents that map how to implement the Alliance’s strategy, the first being the DDA.
The DDA outlines how the Alliance will use its military power to address the primary threats confronting allied interests in Europe. It calls for employing the Alliance’s military power to deter and defend against its two major threats—Russia and international terrorism—across Europe and beyond in all domains. The second document, the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept (NWCC), outlines a twenty-year vision for the Alliance’s warfare capabilities and characteristics.
The DDA focuses on short-run threats, while the NWCC looks at the longer term. Together, these concepts should help NATO better align its existing tools, processes, and activities to ensure there’s greater coherence in how the Alliance secures and stabilizes the Euro-Atlantic region.
However, in not emphasizing threats from China along with Russia and international terrorism in the DDA, the Alliance comes up short. Some in Europe object to casting China more clearly as a threat. They argue China isn’t a military threat in Europe or that the threat isn’t manifest today, so NATO shouldn’t or doesn’t need to do much about it at the moment. Neither of these perspectives is grounded in reality. The evidence indicates China isn’t some challenge of tomorrow or threat that has yet to fully form; even today, it is a clear and present threat to allied security in Europe and beyond.
Some Chinese threats to European security are merely insidious. For example, China undermines Europe’s military capabilities by stealing defense-related intellectual property and sharing it with its own military and defense industry as China develops new weapons and capabilities. Similarly, Chinese investment in European infrastructure—especially shipping terminals, utilities, and telecommunications networks—provides an excellent platform for intelligence-gathering on NATO military operations. In a worst-case scenario, China could weaponize its ownership or operation of infrastructure in Europe to frustrate, limit, or prevent US or allied use.
In other cases, the Chinese threat to Europe manifests in the form of outright attacks. Chinese cyberattacks on European government, industry, military, academic, and civil institutions—including, reportedly, on hospitals during the pandemic—are relentless and massive. In 2014, NATO declared that cyberattacks could trigger the invocation of Article 5, the Alliance’s mutual-defense clause. Learn More/...
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