NATO summit will be battle for U.S. attention

NATO summit will be battle for U.S. attention

TOKYO -- When the delegations of nearly 40 countries descend in Vilnius next week for the annual NATO Summit, it will be the biggest international conference in the history of Lithuania.
 
Flights of civil planes over its airspace will be restricted during the summit. Lithuania will also temporarily suspend the implementation of the Schengen Area, which guarantees border-free movement in the EU. Instead, all people going in and out of the country will be screened.
 
One major topic of the summit will be deepening engagement with NATO's Indo-Pacific partners -- Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. By creating a "bookend" on both sides of Eurasia, NATO and the IP4 hope to contain the challenges that Eurasian heavyweights Russia and China pose, the thinking goes.
 
But there may be more to why NATO wants to engage with the IP4. A top Japanese defense official said: "This is really about keeping America engaged in Europe. The European members of NATO don't want the U.S. to fully pivot to Asia. If the Indo-Pacific partners are strong, then the U.S. can continue to watch out for Europe as well."
 
The U.S. Navy now has 60% of its ships in the Pacific region. NATO does not want that figure to reach 70%, the official said.