An Option to Build an International Security System in the Asia-Pacific: Experience from a Pacific Pact Initiative in the Early Cold War Period
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概要
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This paper studies historically and theoretically why the United States developed mainly bilateral alliances (a so-called "hub-and spoke system") in Asia-Pacific while it constructed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a multilateral alliance, in Europe during the early Cold War period. The question is puzzling, because the United States behaved inconsistently in the two regions, a bilateralist in the Asian-Pacific and a multilateralist in the Atlantic. The paper examines the case of developing a Pacific Pact from 1950 to 1951 to learn insights and lessons for building a future security system in the Asia-Pacific region. Defining a collective defense alliance, the paper specifically investigates under what conditions a collective defense alliance develops, although the paper cannot discuss all the conditions for forming such an alliance.When military situations in Korea aggravated to such an extent that U.S. military forces might be forced to withdraw from the Korean Peninsula at the end of 1950, the U.S. State Department, particularly John Foster Dulles and John M. Allison, drafted a Pacific Pact in order to promote a peace treaty with Japan. The Pacific Pact is regarded as a collective defense alliance, because the pact proposed "defense by Japan" in addition to the "defense" of Japan and "defense against Japan."However, the Pact did not materialize partially because the United Kingdom opposed to the formation of the Pacific Pact, partially because Japan was reluctant to contribute to the defense of the Far East, and partially because Australia was unwilling to form an alliance with Japan.In particular, Japanese military contribution was considered particularly important for forming a collective defense alliance such as the Pacific Pact, since the contribution would have provided a strong incentive to the United States for sharing military responsibilities with Japan and other allies in the region. The process tracing of the development on the Pacific Pact also indicates that the U.S. government suspended the formation of the Pacific Pact not because it was forced to do so by the opposition of the United Kingdom. Rather, the U.S. government deliberately switched from forming a Pacific Pact to constructing a "hub-and-spoke system" after: 1) learning Australia and Japan's unwillingness to contribute to the security of the region as a whole and; 2) carefully calculating costs and benefits of the two defense systems.A lesson from the failed initiatives on the Pacific Pacts suggests that Japanese military contribution would be necessary or even crucial if a collective defense alliance is to be developed in the Asia-Pacific in the future.