Details

The 5th NATO -Asia/Pacific Dialogue saw an evolvement from the previous four events as it was lifted to track 1.5. Besides senior researchers, government advisors from Afghanistan, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia and Pakistan attended the event.

All participants, experts and delegates of NATO and Asian countries agreed on the necessity of building robust partnerships to face the upcoming security challenges of an interdependent world. NATO stressed its will to assist any country that wants to cooperate. However, the Alliance does not aim to be a global one, but to engage with its expertise in multilateral networks all over the world. Common consensus was made on the importance of longtime investments in trust-building measures and in political dialogue. The latter is essential for the definition of common goals, needed for any mission to be successful. The conference participants confirmed the necessity of a comprehensive and not exclusively military approach, so as to enhance crisis prevention and the readiness of all partners. Given the deterioration of security situations in both Europe and Asia, the construction of a transparent architecture for mutual assurance and cooperation has to be considered a matter of great urgency. The Dialogue offered participants the possibility to get inside views on each other’s concerns. Information sharing, defense capacity improvement and trust-building are crucial concepts to ensure crisis prevention and enable interoperability. On the first day, briefings and consultations took place at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. On the second day,

the delegation attended the European Defence Summit organized by the Munich Security Conference and on the

last day, a semi-public conference on NATO ’s future engagement with its Asian partners was organized. Topics of high interest during the consultations were hybrid warfare, cyber security, maritime security, the Ukraine crisis and its message sent to Asian countries, crisis management and interoperability.