Election 2022: UK push for ‘a new global NATO’

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has called for a new ‘global NATO’, arguing the US and European defence alliance needs to extend its reach to counter China.

British Foreign Secretay Liz Truss in London on Thursday (AEST). Picture: Getty Images

Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, has called for a new “global NATO”, arguing the US and European defence alliance needs to extend its reach to boost Indo-Pacific security in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness.

Amid growing Australian and US concerns over China’s new security agreement with Solomon Islands, Ms Truss said NATO needed to “pre-empt threats in the Indo-Pacific”, and flagged “working with allies like Japan and Australia to ensure that the Pacific is protected”.

“I mean that NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats,” she said, arguing the bloc should also side with Taiwan against Chinese aggression. “We must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”

Ms Truss said Britain rejected the false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security, declaring: “In the modern world we need both.”

She also urged Western allies to supply Ukraine with warplanes, declaring the country’s war against Russia was “our war”, and Ukraine’s victory a “strategic imperative for all of us”.

“Heavy weapons, tanks, aeroplanes – digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this,” Ms Truss told London’s Mansion House.

Her comments came as Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne declared China’s security pact with Solomon Islands was “not the result of some deficiency in Australia’s development program”. “It reflects the geostrategic reality of the time we are now in,” Senator Payne told the United States Studies Centre.

She said Australia and Pacific nations were best placed to support the Solomons’ security needs, and “no document signed and kept away from public view is going to change that”.

Senator Payne said Australia noted Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s commitment that the agreement “does not enable the development of a Chinese military base”.

But she said Australia was “deeply concerned” at its signing and “continued to seek assurances” on the matter. “Australia has a track record as one of the countries that has been clearest and most consistent in response to the changing circumstances, particularly China‘s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. We have led on this,” she said.

As regional security continued to dominate the election campaign, Labor home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally pointed to comments by Australia’s Office of National Intelligence director-general, Andrew Shearer, declaring there was no failure of intelligence agencies to anticipate the Solomons-China agreement.

“That means it was a government failure. It was a failure by Mr Morrison not to seek to speak to Prime Minister Sogavare,” Senator Keneally said.

“It was a failure by Mr Morrison not to send his Foreign Minister to the Solomon Islands. Mr Morrison dropped the ball here in what has been the most significant national security failure since World War II, and as a result Australia is less safe.”

The winner of the May 21 election will have to make a rapid appearance on the international stage at a face-to-face Quad leader’s meeting in Tokyo, unless the result is delayed by a hung parliament. The May 24 Quad meeting will inevitably focus on the China-Solomon Islands security agreement and growing Chinese influence in the Pacific.