Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating released a statement July 9 titled “NATO’s Provocative Lurch Eastward,” usefully raising his voice against the push to expand NATO into Asia. Keating, already an outspoken critic of the AUKUS submarine deal with the U.S. and U.K., says that “President Macron of France is right to warn NATO away from any expansion into Asia.” This is in reference to comments made by a spokesman of Macron’s who said recently that France is opposed to NATO’s expansion in Asia, since it is by definition confined to the North Atlantic.
Keating says in the statement that “Europeans have been fighting each other for the better part of three hundred years,” and that any move to bring NATO into the Indo-Pacific would be akin to “Asia welcoming the plague upon itself.” He goes on to say that Asia, which is finally growing and developing out of poverty, should be allowed to do so free of this “militarism.” “With all of Asia’s recent development amid its long and latent poverty, that promise would be compromised by having anything to do with the militarism of Europe.”
