WASHINGTON -- Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave a speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore titled "The New Convergence in the Indo-Pacific." The U.S. and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific are "breaking down" national barriers and better integrating defense industries, he said.
Now barriers between the Indo-Pacific and NATO are set to be broken down as well. When leaders of NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners -- Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- meet in Washington on Thursday, one of the topics to be discussed is defense industrial cooperation, a senior U.S. official told reporters Monday.
As multiple NATO members provide weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to fight Russia, warehouses in the Euro-Atlantic region are seeing their stockpiles shrink.
The idea is to tap the defense industrial bases of South Korea, Australia and Japan to quickly expand production capacity.
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