But another country has also been pulled into the spotlight in those meetings: China. And Beijing is not happy about it.
But the developments this week, which show China to be higher on these bodies’ agendas than ever before, signal an increasing alignment between the US and its partners.
They also mark a significant setback for Beijing, which has tried to drive a wedge between the American and European stances on China, observers say.
“The combination of the kind of language used by the G7 and (China’s formal inclusion) in NATO strategic documents is indeed a blow for (China), and something that they would have hoped and wished to be able to prevent,” said Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow in the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“It’s an exceptionally strong period in terms of transatlantic cooperation and that translates for China in ways that they’re very concerned about,” he said.
On the agenda
China’s concerns have been clear this week, as its Foreign Ministry pushed back on the possibility of being named a “systemic challenge” in NATO’s new strategic vision, expected to be approved during the bloc’s summit, which began Tuesday.
“China pursues an independent foreign policy of peace. It does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or export ideology, still less engage in long-arm jurisdiction, economic coercion or unilateral sanctions. How could China be labeled a ‘systemic challenge’?” ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday.
“We solemnly urge NATO to immediately stop spreading false and provocative statements against China,” he said, adding that NATO should “stop seeking to disrupt Asia and the whole world after it has disrupted Europe.”
But that rhetoric — blaming NATO for “disruption” in Europe — is part of what is driving a shift in European perspectives, analysts say, as Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including the killing of civilians, while actively blaming the US and NATO for provoking Moscow.
China “very quickly and very clearly lined itself up — at least in words, not so much in deeds — with Russia,” while transatlantic partners came together against Russia and in support of Ukraine in the wake of the invasion, said Pepijn Bergsen, a research fellow in the Europe Program at the Chatham House think tank in London.
The contrast between the two has helped drive an emerging “democracies versus autocracies” narrative in Europe, he said, adding that internal politics also play a role.
“In Eastern and Central Europe, where Russia is regarded as by far the number one security threat, relations (with China) had already been starting to fray, but the fact that China so clearly lined up with Russia has accelerated a shift,” Bergsen said.
China, for its part, appears to have underestimated the extent to which its stance would reverberate through its relationship with Europe, one that was already on shaky ground following European concerns over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong and China’s economic targeting of Lithuania over the Baltic nation’s relations with Taiwan.
That miscalculation was on show in a terse summit between China and European Union leaders in April, where China focused on talking points around deepening their relations and economic cooperation, while EU officials were bent on pushing China to work with it toward brokering peace in Ukraine. China has claimed neutrality and that it supports peace, but has made no concrete steps in that direction.
Rising concerns about China from the G7 — made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US — were reflected in the bloc’s joint communique, released Tuesday after a summit in German Bavaria.
The document, which mentioned China around a dozen times — versus four references in the G7 leaders’ statement a year earlier — touched on areas of cooperation, but focused on calling on China to improve its human rights record and abide by international rules.
And in a mark of how Russia has shaped the bloc’s view on China, the group called on Beijing to “press” Moscow to comply with United Nations resolutions and stop its military aggression. The statement followed what Washington called the “formal launch” on Sunday of a $600 billion G7 infrastructure investment initiative, first announced last year.
The drive, which the EU said would “demonstrate the power of development finance when it reflects democratic values,” was an apparent bid to counter China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, which critics say Beijing has used to build its global influence.
‘Challenges posed’
But that’s not to say that views within Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic are aligned on China. This may be most clearly on display at NATO, where how exactly the 30-country bloc should treat China has been a key area of debate.
NATO’s new strategy document is expected to make clear that the allies consider Russia the “most significant and direct threat to NATO’s security,” while addressing China and “the challenges that Beijing poses toward our security, interests and values” for the first time, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said ahead of the summit.
In recent years, as NATO statements began to reference China, some members and observers raised concerns that taking too firm a stance risked turning China into an enemy.
Others have seen China as outside the region’s key security interests.
Following a NATO meeting last June, in which leaders characterized China as a security challenge, French President Emmanuel Macron downplayed the move with a quip that “China is not in the North Atlantic.”
Some of those concerns still exist, even amid an emerging “authoritarians versus democracies” narrative being promoted by the US, according to Pierre Haroche, a research fellow in European security at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, Paris).
“Do you want to solidify the ‘dragon-bear monster’ to show that there is a clear ideological ‘Cold War’ between democracies and autocracies, because that’s convenient in terms of the narrative? Or is it (a better) strategy to say that the two (China and Russia) are very different actors … who might even, in the future, oppose one another?” said Haroche, summarizing the debate.
But even as differences in view may exist between member states, it’s clear that NATO is thinking bigger at this year’s summit, with the historic inclusion of leaders from New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.
The move was met with ire in China, where officials have long argued that NATO was seeking to expand its presence into the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing views as its own neighborhood.
“The sewage of the Cold War cannot be allowed to flow into the Pacific Ocean – this should be the general consensus in the Asia-Pacific region,” a Tuesday editorial from the Communist Party-affiliated nationalist tabloid Global Times said.
But observers have characterized this not so much as an expansion of NATO into the Indo-Pacific, but rather a bid to strengthen relations between, in the NATO secretariat’s words, “like-minded countries.”
Those democracies across the Pacific, like their counterparts in Europe, may now be seeing the threats they face as more connected, according to The German Marshall Fund’s Small.
“There is much more of a sense emerging from all of this, conditioned by the China challenge, by the Russia challenge, that the democratic allies have to be more effectively coordinated,” he said.
