US permanent representative to the North Atlantic military alliance, Julianne Smith has stated that NATO’s door is open for further engagement with India. She also mentioned the two nations had an informal exchange of thoughts on the sidelines of the Raisina dialogue in early March this year.

She also clarified that India will not be invited to the NATO ministerial in Brussels in the coming week. They expressed that the alliance would first like to know if India is interested in engaging with the alliance more.

India building relations with NATO

India is in conversation with NATO as the nation wishes to communicate with global stakeholders on different issues that relate to the entire world.  The meeting in March this year was most probably the first one on the native soil of India that happened during Russia Ukraine war.

India will not be building any kind of alliance with NATO but there is the possibility of working together with the alliance without any kind of military intervention. NATO has recently acknowledged China as a systemic challenge and for that, it has started considering Indo-Pacific nations in its strategic documents

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NATO is not considering membership for India

Smith has very well placed a point that NATO is not willing to expand itself. They rather wish to keep it Euro-Atlantic military alliance and there is no further plan to expand it. Smith has however thanked India for helping Ukraine. It has also called for an immediate end to the war in Ukraine. She added that India and the US were in constant touch about what the 2 countries could do more to hold Russia Accountable.

There is also a recent growing concern about the strengthening of relations between China and Russia that needs to be countered. India’s relations getting better with NATO can serve the purpose.