India rejects Japan’s call for ‘Asian Nato’, despite growing tensions with China

Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country

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Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister, speaks during the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Saturday. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 12:00am, 2 Oct 2024Updated: 11:48am, 2 Oct 2024

India does not share the vision for an “Asian Nato” called for by Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday.

Jaishakar told an event at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that unlike Japan, India had never been a treaty ally of another country.

“We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind,” he said when asked about Ishiba’s call. India and Japan, along with the United States and Australia, are part of the so-called Quad grouping of countries established as a counterbalance to China.

“We have … a different history and different way of approaching” said Jaishankar, who spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York last week and will meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell later on Tuesday.

Ishiba on Tuesday said he would seek deeper ties with friendly nations to counter the gravest security threats his country has faced since World War II.

He has called for the creation of an Asian Nato, the stationing of Japanese troops on US soil and even for shared control of Washington’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Japan’s nuclear-armed neighbours, China, Russia and North Korea.