Visit to the Pacific Highlights Key Challenges of Deterrence in Today’s Complex Security Environment

Members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Defence and Security Committee (DSC) visited key U.S. military facilities in the Pacific from 25-29 August. Their findings underscored the significant challenge of maintaining a capable modern deterrence posture against a complex range of growing cross-regional threats to Allied and global security. Drawing the DSC delegation to the region is the increasing realisation among NATO Allies that Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are increasingly connected – China and North Korea are critical enablers of Russia’s war on Ukraine today. North Korean soldiers’ entry into the fight behind Russian forces fighting in the Kursk region underscore this reality, as do the flow of North Korean missiles and artillery ammunition – equalling as much as 40% of Moscow’s weapon stocks – and the range of Chinese technologies enabling Russia’s defence industrial production.  

Allied cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners is a principal item on the 2025 DSC agenda. Understanding the significant and shared security costs of any security crisis around Taiwan or on the Korean peninsula, NATO Allies are increasingly seeking new avenues for stronger cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners to mitigate cross-regional challenges and cooperate on shared security interests. As U.S. officials made clear over the course of the visit, any potential security contingency in the Indo-Pacific can escalate into a global order disruption quickly, and NATO Allies and partners need to be ready. 

Lord Mark Lancaster (United Kingdom), DSC Chairman, led the delegation of 35 parliamentarians from 19 NATO member states. Over the course of the visit, the delegation visited U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Navy and Air Force facilities in Honolulu, Hawaii and San Diego, California, a range of defence industrial actors as well as the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. The visit provided essential insights into the growing challenges and opportunities across the Indo-Pacific, the United States’s evolving regional defence priorities and expanding areas of Allied and partner regional cooperation, as well as new cross-domain defence industrial innovations. 

The Indo-Pacific Landscape – Key Actors, Interests, and Threats 

The Indo-Pacific region encompasses approximately 260 million square kilometres. The balance of global trade moves across its waters. The countries at its core in the Asia-Pacific alone account for approximately 70% of global gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the decade to 2025. The region hosts 7 of the world’s 10 largest militaries, 3 of which are non-Allied nuclear powers seeking rapid and significant nuclear arsenal modernisation and expansion.  

The Axis of Upheaval in the Pacific – A Growing and Complex Threat  

Alongside the degradation of the Euro-Atlantic security environment, the Indo-Pacific has seen mounting threats since 2022 as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine emboldened revisionist powers across the globe to push harder on their disruptive regional agenda.  

In the Indo-Pacific, China has intensified efforts to bring Taiwan under its control, potentially by force, while accelerating military modernisation designed for regional hegemony and global power reach. North Korea, meanwhile, is hardening its posture, as it is using military technology cooperation with Moscow to rapidly advance its armed forces modernisation and expansion, particularly its nuclear and missile programmes. The result of these developments is raising significant concern across Allied capitals of a very costly regional contingency with outsized global economic and security implications: as officials and experts stressed, if Beijing decided to use military force to implement its Taiwan policy, or if Pyongyang attempted to challenge the Korean Peninsula status quo, the impact on global trade would be devastating; with experts predicting up to a 10 or 4 trillion dollar reduction in global GDP respectively. 

While China’s increasingly aggressive policies had certainly brought it onto NATO’s and the Assembly’s agenda prior to 2022, its “no limits” partnership with Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the dynamic significantly. As Moscow and Beijing moved quickly to align strategic rhetoric, tighten economic cooperation, and significantly strengthen military-technical exchanges, NATO Allies at their 2024 Washington Summit called Beijing out as a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine” and warned that it “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation.”  

Only a few months later, in November 2024, NATO Allies issued a strong condemnation of North Korea’s decision to escalate Russia’s war on Ukraine by deploying forces to support Russia’s directly. The statement also called out the growing illegal military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang as deeply impacting Euro-Atlantic security.  

U.S. Views on the Indo-Pacific Security Environment 

U.S. military officials outlined the state and non-state challenges rising across the Indo-Pacific rather succinctly – China, North Korea, Russia, violent extremism, in descending order of importance, but all drawing significant attention. Briefers pointed out that in exchange for North Korea’s stocks of artillery ammunition and missiles, Russian cash has allowed Pyongyang to invest significantly in armed forced. The result has been rapid advances in its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes, a realignment and reinforcement of forces along the dimilitarised zone (DMZ), and likely in train significant advances to its submarine forces.  

Officials also outlined the challenges related to Russia’s continued military modernisation and its push to maintain the full spectrum of capabilities in the Pacific, despite its heavy focus on Ukraine. For Moscow, briefers noted, demonstrating capable global military reach is essential to its view of today’s great power competition. In addition to modernising its Pacific naval, air, and strategic forces, Russia has increased its joint exercising and naval “touring” with China.  

U.S. officials focused significant attention to the size and scope of the China challenge. A clear takeaway from the briefings and discussions was that, while China’s global interests continue to expand, its pace of the military modernisation signals disruptive global intentions. Briefers stressed that focus on China must move up Allies’ agenda accordingly as well.  

In broad strokes, officials and experts noted the alarming trajectory of China’s increasing weight in international affairs and institutions, its rapid military modernisation and force expansion (including a likely trebling of its strategic nuclear forces in the near-to-medium term), its increasingly aggressive military posturing and actions in the South China Sea and beyond as well as the scope and troubling nature of its strategic acquisitions and investments via the Belt and Road Initiative. 

While China is certainly a global economic and political power, briefers noted, it still needs to further develop its military to achieve a truly joint-force capable of global reach. But, as briefers noted, the trajectory of China achieving this level of full-spectrum capability is likely near-term, almost certainly by 2030. Key questions and lingering hurdles facing China, analysts noted, are the ability to define and secure what Beijing terms its core sovereign territories and sustain the ability to develop military preponderance in the Asia-Pacific: the end goal being regional hegemony and sufficient weight to rewrite the global order in its favour. 

To achieve these goals, briefers noted, Chinese forces are practicing for Taiwan contingencies, training against U.S. capabilities and deploying significant economic, political and rhetorical pressure on U.S. allies and partners in the region, from NATO to the so-called IP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea). Despite all these significant and growing challenges to U.S., Allied and their partners’ interests, however, U.S. officials and expert analysts across the board noted that the United States working with its allies and partners can meet the challenge. 

U.S. Defence Policies in the Indo-Pacific – Modern Dispersed Capabilities and Strong Cooperation with Allies and Partners 

U.S. officials told visiting DSC delegates that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) is responsible for everything from “Hollywood to Bollywood, polar bears to penguins”. It is a useful slogan to understand the vast remit of the U.S.’s largest combatant command. Considering the range of interests and threats to those regional interests and beyond, U.S. defence officials made it clear that safeguarding U.S. and partner interests across the Indo-Pacific is the first order U.S. defence priority today. Key to this defence posture is the ability to maintain significant modern capabilities backed up by the resolute will to deter and defend U.S. interests.  

Managing deterrence and defence across the Indo-Pacific, officials noted, depends on the correct dispersion of air, land, and sea assets across U.S. bases and facilities from the coast of California to Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The balance of U.S. capabilities anchor in Hawaii, with three major commands working near one another in Honolulu (INDOPACOM, as well as the U.S. Pacific Fleet and Air Force), but significant capabilities are also in San Diego and Washington State as well as in the U.S. territory of Guam. In addition, the U.S. maintains significant facilities in Japan and South Korea and partners closely with the Philippines and Australia.  

Allied Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific 

The Indo-Pacific now hosts the world’s most significant cooperative security effort, with the United States providing unmatched convening power, as demonstrated by the number of Allies and partners participating in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) and Talisman Sabre bi-annual exercises. With the imperative on ensuring dispersed modern, integrated all-domain advanced capabilities to defend and deter against any threat, senior U.S. defence officials stressed that allies and partners’ contributions are critical to the broader defensive strategy.  

The United States works across many levels to engage and strengthen security cooperation with Allies and partners across the region through increased joint exercises, patrolling, integrated air and missile defence cooperation as well as longer-term joint industrial cooperation. The Australia-UK-U.S. (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership exemplifies these efforts, enabling Australia to acquire new nuclear-powered submarines and permit the rotational basing of U.S. and UK submarines in Australia. Beyond submarines cooperation, however, AUKUS will also work to jointly develop and share advanced technology cooperation – in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), quantum and advanced cyber – to help promote new defence technology innovation and advance force interoperability. Similarly, coproduction of missile systems with Japan and Australia is another means of ensuring supply readiness across Allied and partner forces.  

During a visit to Naval Base San Diego and Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, delegates learned of efforts to modernise and expand capabilities to ensure continued all-domain deterrence via upgraded legacy ships and dispersed missile defences as well as through incorporated networked uncrewed drones and other cutting-edge systems. Key to developing these new capabilities is a well-funded and resourced defence industrial base at home. 

U.S. Defence Innovation and the Future of Warfare 

To get a view into the U.S. defence industrial base’s efforts to address new challenges, the delegation visited Firestorm Labs, Liquid Robotics, and Northrop Gruman, each offering dynamic new defence solutions informed by key lessons learned recent and ongoing conflicts, such as in Ukraine and across the Middle East. These systems are designed not only to field cutting-edge capabilities but also to integrate with legacy equipment – enhancing deterrence and defence by ensuring that both new and proven assets can operate together in a resilient, layered architecture. 

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is institutionally separate from NATO but serves as an essential link between NATO and the parliaments of the NATO nations. It provides greater transparency of NATO policies and fosters better understanding of the Alliance’s objectives and missions among legislators and citizens of the Alliance.  

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