Last week, participants from nearly 50 countries assembled for their eighth Ramstein summit to discuss support for Ukraine in its defence against the Russian invasion. With the recent Russian mobilisation of troops, the appointment of the country’s most senior soldier, General Gerasimov, as overall commander, and the step-up in missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, the need for military assistance is acute. The Russians will be launching more offensives in Ukraine. It is only matter of time and geography.

Europe and the United States have now evolved their strategy for Ukraine. They have shifted from a strategy focused on defending Ukraine, to one encompassing the defence of Ukraine and the defeat of Russia. The quality and quantity of military aid being provided ensures Ukraine has the capacity and confidence to conduct offensives in 2023 to reclaim its territory.

Importantly, this summit, like those before, has breathed new life into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. An alliance established at the beginning of the Cold War to provide for the collective defence of Western Europe, it had been an institution in search of a cause until February 24 last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The existence of NATO, while often used by Putin to justify his invasion, has checked Russian aggression beyond Ukraine and has co-ordinated essential military intelligence and other support to Ukraine.

It is an alliance that has no parallel in the western Pacific.

This significantly complicates the task of defence planners in our region. Despite the presence of the US, and its many security partnerships in the region, there is no common set of values or formal treaties that provide a foundation for collective defence in the event of Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or People’s Liberation Army aggression against other nations.

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Should there be a military contingency in our region, similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is no NATO to provide rapid assistance. There will be no legal framework for the transhipment of weapons and support through region nations. There will be no political framework, with interlinked military systems, like there is with NATO. There will be no common systems for ammunition calibres, fuels and other weapon systems.

Chinese military strategy relies on this. Their concept of Systems Destruction Warfare has been designed to ensure a military alliance can never develop in Asia. It uses economic and political coercion to ensure that, in peace, such an alliance is unthinkable to many nations in our region. In war, it will use all of its military, informational and other aspects of power to prevent the assembly of any regional coalition to assist Taiwan or any other target of the Chinese military.

This is not to suggest all is rosy with the NATO alliance. Its second largest and richest member, Germany, has been a laggard in defence spending and its provision of rapid military assistance to Ukraine. As Ulrike Franke, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, described on January 14, “Germany continues to move at the speed of shame, dragged by others.” It has dragged out approval of sending its own, or others, Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. There is little prospect of other nations trusting German defence industry for procurement of lethal weapons in the near future.