| Summary/Abstract |
NATO has promised to address China as “an alliance” but struggles to define underpinning principles. This article explores NATO's policy options and prospects. It traces the evolution of NATO China policy from 2017 on; assesses NATO's ability to pull China under its resiliency policy regime; and evaluates NATO's capacity to address wider issues of global order. The article concludes that NATO is not able to develop a politico-military strategy in line with classical alliance policy. Instead, NATO has pursued an incremental alignment policy to nourish its internal consensus and stave off the dire prospect of leadership abdication. Pushed by China's implicit support for the war in Ukraine, NATO must now become more politically explicit about China, global order, and NATO's approach to it.
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