US not trying to establish NATO in Indo-Pacific, says Defence Secretary Austin

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has asserted that the United States is not attempting to build the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the Indo-Pacific area. He also stated that the US will continue to cooperate with other like-minded nations to guarantee that the region is free and open.

While answering a media query over the Chinese defence minister’s statement, Austin said at a press conference, “We are absolutely not trying to establish a NATO in the Indo-Pacific. We continue to work with like-minded countries to ensure that the region remains free and open so that commerce can prosper and ideas can continue to be exchanged.”

“We will continue that work. Certainly, India and us share the same vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he added.

This statement by US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin came in reaction to China’s statement regarding NATO, this was said. According to a report by Channel News Asia, the Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu had warned against NATO-style military alliances in the Asia-Pacific, saying they would send the area into a “whirlpool” of violence.

Addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, he said, “In essence, attempts to push for NATO-like (alliances) in the Asia-Pacific is a way of kidnapping regional countries and exaggerating conflicts and confrontations, which will only plunge the Asia-Pacific into a whirlpool of disputes and conflicts.”

Austin, who is presently on a tour to four countries, landed in India on Sunday. India is the third destination after Singapore and Japan.

Meanwhile, on the probability of the misadventures that can take place in the India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC), Austin said, “In terms of what could happen along the LAC, I won’t get into any kind of speculation, but a number of things can always happen.. but want to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure that things don’t happen. And part of that is being able to communicate with great powers, and with each other to prevent things from incidents escalating out of control. So I won’t… to speculate as to whether or not there’ll be additional misadventure, but I certainly hope not.”

Austin and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a bilateral meeting and delegation-level discussions earlier today where they came to an agreement on a roadmap for defence industrial cooperation. This roadmap will identify opportunities for the co-development of new technologies and the co-production of existing and new systems as well as enable increased cooperation between the two countries’ defence start-up ecosystems.

(With agency inputs)

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