 Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden are said to have an online summit by the end of the year. Now, this could be a historic summit. There are a lot of issues these two countries need to address, technology, trade, climate change. Over the past few months, there's been a lot of attention paid to this region which is called the Indo-Pacific by some. There's, of course, a new alliance. It has come up, AUKUS. There's a lot of talk about Quad. But amid all this, what about the old alliances? What about NATO? What about the EU, which is a close ally of the United States? We'll be talking about all this in this episode of Mapping Fault Lines. We're joined by Prabir Burkastan. Prabir, so, like we said, the key issue here, of course, is what about old friends, when new friends are being formed at such a quick pace? So the first question may be really about NATO in the context of, of course, AUKUS, Quad, but also in the context of Afghanistan. So in today's world, what exactly is NATO's position? Well, that's a very interesting question that you're raising because NATO, including France, who's currently very unhappy with the AUKUS, whatever we want to call it, alignment or alliance, was willing to also be a part of the Indo-Pacific containment of China, offering its ex-colonies, current colonies also because it has a lot of colonies still there. It's called non-self-governing territories in UN language. But with two things, I think there's been a sharp change. One is NATO got downgraded when the US decided to withdraw on Afghanistan and didn't think it necessary to talk about NATO, which it did when it invaded Afghanistan. So NATO was very much a part of the invasion. Doesn't seem to be a part of the withdrawal because anyway most of them had withdrawn earlier itself. But nevertheless, NATO leaders felt slighted that they had after all given that cover to the United States and they were not in the picture of whatever new alignments that the United States was thinking of. The second, of course, as you have said, the AUKUS itself, that there is this segue to the Indo-Pacific region. If you see NATO, NATO is a North Atlantic alliance and therefore two sides of the Atlantic, one side the United States, the other side you have the European countries who were earlier a part of the containment of Soviet Union policies. Now there are two things that are happening there. One is of course trade itself reconfiguring the world and what is a China-US competition there that we can discuss later. But in military terms, Soviet Union, post-Soviet Union, Russia now, still is the largest military power that the United States faces. Particularly when you take the missiles, the counter-missile, what would be called the basic defense network that they have, which is anti-missile missiles, which could be anti-missile missiles and also of course tracking of missiles. All this, the Russians are of course on par with the United States. Some of their defenses like S-400 are supposed to be superior to what the United States can offer and of course they have an equal number of nuclear warheads and they also have, as they have shown in Syria, the ability to deploy their troops in a ground situation in support of their allies. So Russia still is a major, if not the major competition to the United States. It is not what Obama had said. It's a regional power at best. It still remains a global power. But what happens to European Union is not simply an issue of military balancing of Earth, World, Soviet Union or Russia, but it is also an issue of the larger geopolitical axis that is shifting. It's clear that the U.S. role in Central Asia has reduced. Its role in West Asia is limited at best. What is its role in Europe? That's a big question. And that's a trade question between the United States and the EU and China and also Russia. Now Russia sends, as you know, energy, not see gas comes to European Union. So what is the economic relation between Russia and the United States? And we have talked about the kind of sanctions regime the U.S. has introduced, which European Union is not that happy with. So these are the tensions over there. But military terms, the U.S. seems to be now focused not so much on the old allies, which they seem to take for granted. That's the France's reaction of being taken for granted. And Germany not being too enthusiastic about the military part of it, because they're not militarily a major, at least, flag-waving nation. They're also not a nuclear nation, nuclear armed nation. We find in new countries, which originally were a part of the Warsaw Pact, they have become the front line of either containment of Russia or even missile bases being put over there. They're calling it anti-missile batteries. But now they've accepted those anti-ballistic missile batteries can be converted to ballistic missile batteries very easily. It's just a software change. With all of this, you will see that the containment of Russia becomes much more clear. And also NATO forces have done a number of military, what would be called, practice exercises over there. And they object very vigorously. When Russia does exercises on its side of the border, say, that's very aggressive. But we, doing thousands of miles away from the United States, participating in such border military exercises on this side of the border is perfectly okay. So that part of the containment of Russia program still goes on. Sanctions goes on. The only problem that the European Union now has, what is its role? Does it play a role of engaging with Eurasia? Does it continue to play a military role of containment of Russia? Maybe a containment of China, but it's still far away from it. But certainly containment of Russia, providing military backup to what the United States wants to happen. And also what happens to its long-term economic issues? Which way will they go? Do they go to Eurasia? Do they go to the Atlantic Ocean? And we have argued earlier also, oceans don't have people. They do not produce goods. So it's really the two sides of the ocean we are going to look at. And if the European Union has to integrate with Eurasia, then the directions of policy would change. What does the implication military wise, I think the European Union itself doesn't know. And we can think of Biden as new policies. But as we have seen, the new policies don't miss, doesn't seem to be significantly different from the old policies. When it comes to Russia and China, it's two foremost contenders, it thinks at least one Russia militarily and China partially militarily, but largely economically. Ravi, that's a good note to talk about a second point, which is really the economic dimension of these issues. Because like you said, there is a lot of trade at stake. In recent times, China of course, with its Belt Road initiative, really expanding its trade footprint, so to speak, to Africa, but also to parts of Europe. We talked about the Nord Stream aspect as well. So could you maybe talk about how the realignment you mentioned in terms of the used thinking? How it might actually play out or what might be the advantage it gets? Well, used thinking is something which itself is rather confused. Because EU is not one country which coordinates all its constituent units. So to say, it's really the Brussels headquarters that might be is a set of bureaucrats. They are more in tune maybe with other economic policies of the United States rather than their own member states. And maybe they are too influenced by what are two countries, France and Germany possibly. So it doesn't really work as a coordinating mechanism. But if you look at the individual countries, the two foremost ones now are really France and Germany. France, the slighted partner, got a huge rebuff in the Pacific, and Germany, which has seen that it needs energy from Russia. But the Belt Road initiative, Hamburg is one of the termination points of the Belt Road initiative. And therefore, German trade by rail with China has increased significantly in the last 10-12 years. Given this, Germany has a stake both in United States and in Eurasia, both in terms of energy from Russia and in terms of other goods from China. So Germany is going to decide what is the way European Union will go. And European Union is caught up in the sanctions war as well. As you can see, sanctions have affected both Russia and China. Now, reluctantly or otherwise, European Union states are getting dragged into sanctions against China. We have the recently the Dutch case where ASML equipment could not be delivered. They delivered not the top end of their machines, but just the next tier they could deliver to China. Top tier machines, the cutting edge technology could not be delivered. So they are also getting dragged into the sanctions war. A larger part of the geo-strategic control that US exercises to its control over the dollar economy. So all of this, if we take it into account, I think we have a fluid situation here where European Union is now trying to weigh up where it should go and whether it should engage as well as put pressure on China and Russia, engage with the United States as an ally, talking about how they are one common set of countries with this, what is it called? It is a rule-based international order, which is really ex-colonial and settler-colonial states coming together. So what they should do is something which I think, again, is in a state of flux. Important question here is Germany has asserted at least partial independence on the gas issue, North Stream issue. They have rejected American sanctions and they have finally gone along with what their economic interests are. So will their economic interests trump what could be the American pressure? Question mark. Will they also think about trying to do what France claims it has done, that it creates an independent military force? I don't think so because I don't think other countries are willing to follow in France's footsteps. France still has a colonial empire or the remnants of one in Africa. Therefore, there is a military issue over there. And of course, as we know in the Pacific as well. But I don't think other countries have that. So given that, I think again, we are going to see slow integration of the Eurasian market. We'll see production market, all of it happen. And if that happens, I think the military doctrines will also echo or reflect that even if NATO is there, I think it's going to be less and less important. Just as according to the United States, the Atlantic Pond has become less important than the Pacific Lake. Thank you so much for being. That's all we have time for this week. We'll be back next week with more news from geopolitical issues across the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.