The New Coalition of the Willing

For decades before and after the Cold War a collective defense pact in Asia between the U.S. was neither possible or necessary. Yet, given the developing global political situation, in the face of a growing threat from China, it is both a viable and essential prerogative. After all, American allies in the region are already investing in their own defenses and forging closer military ties with among themselves. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Indo-Pacific region will face instability and potential conflict without some kind of collective defense commitment.

The main reason for this is clear: Beijing’s geopolitical aspirations are obvious. Chinese grand strategy is to seize Taiwan by any means necessary, control the South China Sea, weaken U.S. alliances, and ultimately dominate the region. The stakes are high: if it succeeds, the result would be a China-led order that relegates the United States to the rank of a diminished continental power: less prosperous, less secure, and unable to fully access or lead the world’s most important markets and technologies.

After decades of pouring resources into its armed forces, China could soon have the military strength to make that vision a reality. President Xi Jinping in 2023 instructed his military “to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan.” But it’s important to also note that China’s leaders are not entirely sure if that could be accomplished (at least without incurring considerable numbers of casualties). Feeding those doubts—concerning Taiwan but also other potential targets in the region—should be a top priority of U.S. foreign policy. That requires convincing Beijing that any attack anywhere would come at an unacceptable cost.

One can see movement on the chessboard. The U.S. has invested in advanced military capabilities and has been developing new operational concepts to enhance its warfighting reach. It has moved more mobile military forces to strategic locations across Asia and crucially, it has embarked on overhauling its security partnerships in the region. Whilst in past decades, Washington’s preferential focus was to forge close bilateral ties, more recently the U.S. has pursued a more networked approach designed to give its allies greater responsibilities and encourages closer ties not just with Washington but among the allies themselves. These changes are creating new military and geopolitical challenges for Beijing, thereby reinforcing China’s doubts about the potential success of aggressive acts.

This more multilateral approach marks a critical step toward stronger deterrence, but the defense initiatives it has produced still remain too informal and rudimentary. In the face of continued Chinese military modernization, true deterrence requires the will and capability that only a collective defense arrangement can deliver. Such an alliance—let’s call it the Pacific Rim Treaty Organization for now—would bind those countries that are currently most aligned and prepared to take on the China challenge together, a new “coalition of the willing” (to borrow Keir Starmer’s version of George W. Bush’s originating moniker): Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the U.S. This initial core of nations does not preclude other nations joining as circumstances warrant.

Under current geopolitical circumstances it can be argued that such an arrangement is unlikely with a Trump administration that appears to disavow the importance of American alliances on an almost daily basis. But the reality is that under the surface Sturm und Drang of Trump’s performance art, bluster-laden leadership, planners in Washington and allied capitals are still working to deepen military cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. In fact, where defense matters are concerned, there has been far more continuity than disruption. Provided the administration avoids debilitating economic measures targeting U.S. allies (here’s where that bluster comes in), the trends pointing the way toward collective defense in the region are likely to endure, perhaps even accelerate as China grows more rambunctious. And if this administration ultimately lacks the vision and ambition to grasp this moment, defense establishments can and should still lay the foundations for future leaders. J.D. Vance, as a former military man himself, is more than likely to see the opportunities if Trump doesn’t. And, this far out from the 2028 presidential election, the former Ohio senators is the putative frontrunner.

The Times...

We’ve been here before. After World War II, the US crafted an alliance network in the region, hoping to keep the USSR from expanding its influence (and prevent the ‘Domino Effect’), entrench its own military presence—particularly in East Asia—and curb internecine tensions among its partners. This network, made up of separate security arrangements with Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, managed to insulate large stretches of the Indo-Pacific from the great-power conflict, setting the conditions for decades of remarkable economic growth. It has also proved to be a resilient construct, weathering the Korean and Vietnam wars, successive waves of decolonization and democratization, even the very end of the Cold War itself.

Despite all that, the network never evolved beyond a set of disparate and almost exclusively bilateral alliances. While in Europe, U.S. officials embraced the doctrine of collective defense: an attack on one ally would be treated as an attack on all. (as seen in Article 5 the NATO Charter), whereas such aspirations in Asia fell on fallow ground.

Many Asian leaders preferred bilateral relationships with the United States over closer links with former adversaries, historical rivals or even neighbors. Some worried that a collective defense arrangement would draw them into the firing line of a hot war between Washington and Moscow. Others doubted that any such agglomeration could overcome the legacies of conflict and mutual distrust among their neighbors and bring together members that were far apart both geographically and in terms of security concerns. SEATO (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), the only exception, proved to be a motley alliance among Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, dissolving in 1977.

But times they are a changin’. The conditions that once prevented Asian multilateral alignment are giving way to fresh calls for collective defense against an increasingly overly assertive Middle Kingdom. It is no longer beyond imagination – and political reality – that such a collective defense pact could be within reach. Three trends buttress this conclusion: a new strategic alignment centered on an advancing threat from China, a new convergence of security cooperation among U.S. allies, and the demand for a new reciprocity that gives the United States’ partners a larger role in keeping the peace as America pulls inward.

The Enemy of My Enemy...

It’s a truism that nothing unites peoples and nations like distrust of a common rival. China seems willing to play this part. It’s assertiveness throughout the Indo-Pacific is spreading a sense of unease, insecurity, particularly as leaders in Beijing lean increasingly on military saber-rattling as a central instrument in their stratagems. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s increasingly provocative and threatening activities, combined with its compounding strike capabilities, have prompted leaders across the region to adopt new defense stances. New military investments and activities have followed suit.

Nowhere is this strategic reorientation more apparent than in Tokyo. Despite deep economic interdependence between China and Japan, ties between the two countries have been fraught of late, strained by a combination of historical animus, trade tensions, and unresolved territorial disputes. Relations have only worsened in recent years, as Beijing has leveraged its budding economic and military power to ramp up pressure on its neighbor. In the years since a 2021 law was passed allowing the Chinese coast guard to fire upon vessels sailing in what Beijing considers as its sovereign waters, incursions into the areas surrounding what Japan refers to as the Senkaku Islands (administered by Japan but also claimed by China), which refers to them as the Diaoyu Islands—have become more frequent, with greater numbers of larger and more heavily armed vessels. March 2025 saw Chinese coast guard ships enter the islands’ territorial waters and linger for nearly 100 hours—the longest episode to date in a string of incidents.

Former Japanese prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe foresaw the need to loosen Tokyo’s long-standing political and legal constraints on its armed forces. As early as 2013, the country’s first-ever publicly released national security strategy warned of China’s “rapidly expanded and intensified” activities around Japanese territories. Not long after, the Japanese government reinterpreted the country’s pacifist constitution, allowing its armed forces to work more closely with partner militaries. In recent years, Japan has started building up its not inconsiderable armed forces, pledging to double military spending to roughly two percent of its considerable GDP. The Japanese have also moved beyond its previous defensive stance and now aims to acquire and deploy hundreds of long-range Tomahawk missiles, clearly constituting a counterstrike capability. Because of Japan’s technological and economical position these changes are establishing Tokyo as nothing less than a crucial net exporter of security in the Indo-Pacific and a formidable counterweight to Beijing, albeit with ambivalent historical resonance. In its relentless pursuit of advancement and hegemony, China has created a Frankensteinian Japanese equivalent, and one more than willing to act as America’s proxy.

Under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines is undergoing a similar transformation. For decades, the Philippine armed forces battled insurgents in the southern reaches of the archipelago, thus military investments and operations reflected that domestic focus. Today, the insurgency has been considerably weakened, but steady Chinese encroachment on Philippine maritime rights and sovereignty, primarily in the South China Sea looms.

In the 2010s, Beijing pursued an unprecedented campaign of land reclamation and built military bases atop reefs and islets that are also claimed by the Philippines and other Southeast Asian states. China has cordoned off one of these atolls, Scarborough Shoal, denying access to Philippine fishing vessels. At another reef, Second Thomas Shoal, violent attacks by Chinese vessels have disrupted efforts to resupply Philippine military personnel. Chinese coast guard ships have even harassed vessels conducting energy exploration inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

None of these acts can be avoided by Manila. Beginning under President Rodrigo Duterte in the late 2010s and accelerating under Marcos Jr., the Philippine military has been undertaking an ambitious modernization effort. The government adopted a watershed defense strategy in 2024 to secure the country’s periphery with investments in additional combat aircraft, tougher cyberdefenses, and more unmanned assets for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

A few thousand miles to the south in Canberra the rise of China was once considered a benign phenomenon and beneficial to Australian interests as Chinese investments in the land Down Under helped propel its economy. A series of diplomatic and military incidents in the past decade, however, have convinced many that the opposite is true. Revelations of malign Chinese Communist Party influence in Australian elections and policymaking ignited a political firestorm. And after Australia’s government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, China unleashed a barrage of tariffs and other restrictions on Australian exports, hardly the act of a benevolent and self-assured power, much less one aspiring to hegemonic status.

In the South China Sea, Australian armed forces have suffered harassment by Chinese jets and warships as the PLA operates closer than ever to Australia’s shores. Earlier this year, Chinese naval vessels circumnavigated Australia and disrupted commercial air traffic with live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. And amid intense efforts by China to make relational inroads with Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and other Pacific Island countries, the simple reality is that there is a state of permanent contest in this hitherto quiescent region. Even New Zealand has been compelled to consider joining AUKUS in some form or another as its leaders realize that distance is no longer sufficient insurance against great power conflict. The public has expressed increasing apprehension: according to various think tanks the share of Australians who believed China would become a military threat to their country nearly doubled from 2012 to 2022. It now stands at above 70%.

Mutual Goals

Japan, the Philippines, and Australia have not only come to recognize China as their primary and common threat; they also increasingly acknowledge that their fates are intertwined with the broader region. This is true even on issues as sensitive as Taiwan, once a verboten subject in the region. It would be whistling past the graveyard for ASEAN nations to think that if something happens to Taiwan they would not be affected.

The probability that Chinese aggression would have massive consequences for countries throughout the Indo-Pacific has resulted in an unprecedented deepening of security partnerships among Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and other regional powers. Analysts have described defense cooperation between Australia and Japan in particular as very much resembling alliance characteristics without actually calling them so. For example, a new reciprocal access agreement allows the Australian and Japanese militaries to operate in each other’s countries. The first-ever visit by Japanese F-35 fighter jets to northern Australia happened in August 2023, followed only days later by the inaugural deployment of Australian F-35s for military exercises in Japan.

Japan is finalizing a similar access agreement with the Philippines. In February, defense leaders from both countries announced a spate of measures for closer security cooperation. In what could be read only as a thinly veiled reference to China, the Philippine secretary of defense explained that Manila and Tokyo’s “common cause” was to resist “any unilateral attempt to reshape the global order.”

The AUKUS partnership brought together Canberra, London, and Washington to help Australia build conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines. As members of the Indo-Pacific Quad, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States joined efforts to provide maritime domain awareness throughout the region. American officials also stepped-up trilateral security cooperation with Japan and South Korea.

A Foundation

The new convergence in the Indo-Pacific represents nothing less than a profound development in the security architecture of the region. But it is best viewed as an evolution in progress—an important period of transition rather than an optimal end state for the shortcomings are significant. There are currently no mutual defense obligations between U.S. allies, only with the U.S. on an individual country-by-country basis. There is no central headquarters from which multilateral operations can be planned or conducted. And the unofficial nature of these groupings means that there is no regular planning cadence running among political and military staffs. Coordination is occurring, but only sporadically. As a result, it rarely receives the necessary urgency, attention, and resources.

A collective defense agreement would deliver where the current mechanisms fall short. Getting there would not require a pan regional security organization such as NATO, which grew from 12 original members to over 30. Instead, the logical starting point for Washington is to form a pact with the three partners that are most strategically aligned and have the fastest-growing and most robust combined military cooperation: Australia, Japan, and the Philippines.

Additional members could join later, circumstances permitting. As a technologically advanced and stalwart ally in East Asia, South Korea would be an obvious candidate, and its contributions could be significant. But Seoul would have to decide whether it was willing to focus its defense forces more on China, partner more closely with Japan, all the while supporting a broader regional orientation for its own military and the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula. New Zealand would be another prospective partner, especially since it is already part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group alongside Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. But although the Kiwis have shown greater willingness to challenge China and align more closely with the Americans (as befitting the expansive policy outlook of prime minister Christopher Luxon), it might not yet be prepared to enter a formal collective defense pact.

Critical U.S. partners such as India and Singapore would not be expected to join at the outset but could still participate in certain activities as observers or in some other non-member capacity, as is common in regional groupings. The inclusion of Taiwan would not be possible or advisable under current U.S. policy, nor would it be acceptable to the other members of the pact for the Chinese backlash that could be incurred. As for the U. S’s European allies, they are neither politically nor militarily ready to play larger roles in the region right now, but it’s not impossible for them to do so in the future. Already, Trump’s loud prognostications about NATO countries paying their own ways and ambivalence towards defending the western powers has led to a new reality where larger defense budgets in Europe could produce militaries with more global reach, provided the continent itself is secure and at peace.

Given preexisting alliances, a first-order task is to establish mutual obligations among Australia, Japan, and the Philippines themselves. This will demand skillful leadership and intense negotiations, but the benefits of stronger deterrence and greater security should outweigh the risks of closer alignment. Besides, for Australia and Japan in particular, the practical differences between today’s defense partnership and one of mutual defense are relatively small and shrinking by the day.

From an operational perspective, collective defense could build on existing cooperative projects, including in the areas of intelligence sharing, maritime domain awareness, combined training and exercises, and command and control. An example would be the Bilateral Intelligence Analysis Cell, a new U.S.-Japanese effort at Yokota Air Base monitoring Chinese activity in the East China Sea. Japan and the U.S. could share the cell’s intelligence with Australia and the Philippines, in turn these tow nations could contribute personnel at the air base and provide data from their own unmanned surface and aerial platforms. Likewise, the recently inaugurated U.S.-Philippine Combined Coordination Center near Manila could include Australia and Japan, providing similar functions in the South China Sea.

The U.S. military has major operating bases in Japan, access to locations in the Philippines, and regular rotations of U.S. troops throughout Australia. With sufficient legal underpinning—including reciprocal access agreements among the three Asian allies— each of these arrangements could be expanded to include forces from the other members. In fact, there are already plans to integrate Japanese forces into U.S. initiatives in Australia.

The four members could also invest in shared military facilities. Together, they could ensure that weapons could be prepositioned so as to ensure sufficient stockpiles in the event of conflict, further strengthening deterrence. Establishing a headquarters for the Pacific Defense Pact and mechanisms for command and control will be essential. Japan, with its vast electronics foundation, could serve as one potential location. In fact, July 2024 saw the U.S. announce its intent to upgrade the U.S. its military command in Japan so that more missions throughout the region could be jointly mounted. As new facilities and communications links are established to support this effort, U.S. and Japanese officials should ensure that it will be possible to include military commanders and personnel from Australia and the Philippines. Alternative locations for the headquarters could be considered in Australia or at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii.

A series of working groups to negotiate the full range of policy and legal issues associated with more integrated planning and operations could be established. Military and civilian staff from defense and foreign ministries could work together to develop proposals for governance and decision-making processes, including personnel structures and consultation mechanisms that form the engine rooms of day-to-day alliance management. This breadth of tasks only underscores the need to start consultations as soon as possible.

Rebels vs the Empire

In addition to deepening their collective cooperation with one another, U.S. allies will also need to rebalance their bilateral security partnerships with Washington. In their current form, those partnerships reflect the asymmetries of a different era, when American military primacy appeared uncontested and immutable. Bilateral treaties in the region were restricted in scope to specific local geographies, and the contributions of allied militaries were limited by design. In essence, the United States promised protection in exchange for military access and political-economic comity in Asia but without demanding fully reciprocal protection for itself.

This framework was sustainable—both strategically and politically—as long as the U.S. military retained its dominance in the region, the threat from China was confined, and the potential contributions of U.S. allies were limited to their own self-defense. None of these conditions holds true today. The PLA now poses serious challenges to the U.S. military and the American homeland. And U.S. allies in Asia are now among the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the world, capable of playing a significant role in both deterrence and warfighting. To adapt to this new reality, U.S. alliances need to build on a foundation not of asymmetry but of reciprocity.

Domestic politics in the United States also makes greater reciprocity necessary. Although most Americans support military ties in principle, increasing numbers would like to see U.S. allies step up and contribute more in practice. Donald Trump has focused in particular on the notion that allies need to pay their “fair share,” casting doubts on whether the United States would defend NATO members that failed to meet certain levels of military spending. U.S. allies do need to spend more on defense—but reciprocity should extend far beyond bigger military budgets.

U.S. allies will also need to commit to greater degrees of mutual obligation with the Americans. Washington’s security treaty with Tokyo, for instance, is bound only to “the territories under the administration of Japan.” The resulting imbalance is on display at every major bilateral summit, where U.S. leaders reaffirm their commitment to defend Japan and Japanese leaders stay silent on whether their forces would assist the U.S. military elsewhere. Instead, U.S. allies should commit to supporting the United States both in crises throughout the region and in defending the U.S. homeland.

This new reciprocity would further enable collective defense. The upshot of more mutual obligation would be that U.S. allies could take on new roles and missions in crises and conflicts, especially when combined with recent investments in their own militaries. This would, in turn, open new pathways for cooperation that do not yet exist in sufficient form: members of the pact could draft combined military plans, more effectively target their defense spending toward specialized and complementary capabilities and rehearse and improve together through tailored military exercises and operations. These measures would fortify the collective power and deterrence of the U. S’s alliances far beyond what is possible under today’s informal mechanisms.

Greater reciprocity should also entail greater clarity on what military strategists refer to as “access, basing, and overflight”—that is, the ability of the U.S. military to operate in and around allied territory. Given the vast distances involved, forward-deployed U.S. forces are essential to ensuring rapid response times and sustaining the military during a contingency. More certainty surrounding U.S. military access would strengthen deterrence in the western Pacific by ensuring that the United States would have the right forces and capabilities ready to fight in the right places. More assured access would also lead to greater infrastructure investments and the deployment of more advanced capabilities, which further enhance the potential utility of various locations. While U.S. allies should not be expected to give the U.S. military a blank check, a robust Pacific Defense Pact will require more flexible and assured access for U.S. forces.

The Fantastic Four

Collective defense arrangements are by their very nature complex creations, touching on matters of sovereignty and treaty obligations, deeply political issues that require intense negotiation and deft diplomacy. This will be all the more challenging if the Trump administration moves forward with punishing tariffs or other measures that strain Washington’s alliances in the region. But even amid tense diplomatic situations (which are almost always temporary), defense and military establishments can continue laying the foundations for collective defense through liaising and dialogue. Short of a severe rupture in ties, the four partners should work as best they can to silo security cooperation vis a vis economic and diplomatic disagreements. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. It is also worth underscoring that the demand for more reciprocal relationships has become a political and strategic imperative that spans the partisan divide in Washington. Democrats and Republicans are largely in agreement over the need to counterbalance China.

The evidence to date is that the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies are managing to deepen defense cooperation despite political and economic headwinds. This is largely owing to the mounting threat from China, the continued demand for a U.S. military presence in the region, and the growing trend of intra-Asian security cooperation. To be sure, the Trump administration may be too divided, distracted, or confrontational to play the strong hand it has been dealt. In that case, many of the building blocks can still be put in place for a future administration. Given the sheer number of tasks ahead, a pact might not be finalized until the next U.S. administration anyway.

For their part, leaders in Canberra, Manila, and Tokyo will need to win the support of their respective publics, though this should not be too challenging given the propensity for the Chinese to rile up other countries’ populations. Beyond strategic arguments about deterrence and national security, there are potential benefits to these domestic constituencies, including technology sharing, infrastructure investments, and improved collective disaster response. For the American domestic audience, skeptics can be assured that a defense pact in the Pacific would entail no obligations for the U.S. military beyond what is already in place—but that it has the ultimate benefit of buttressing national security beyond U.S. borders.

Given the historic significance of such an arrangement, Washington should also be prepared to manage reactions and concerns from others in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. officials can underscore that a Pacific Defense Pact would be but one of several components of its approach to the region. In both rhetoric and practice, Washington should remain committed to a network of overlapping and complementary institutions, including the Indo-Pacific Quad, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea. The publicly stated objective of the pact should be the pursuit of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a goal shared by nearly every country in the region.

Moreover, the pact should remain focused on defense rather than subsuming or taking on the economic and diplomatic roles of other important institutions. Indeed, the pact will be most successful if complemented by a robust regional trade agenda, active diplomatic efforts, and effective foreign assistance programs.

China’s reaction would be predictable. Beijing has long accused the United States of “Cold War thinking” and “bloc politics.” These criticisms will feature prominently in China’s reaction precisely because a stronger coalition could slow or even check Beijing’s revisionist ambitions. To push back and make potential members think twice about a new pact, Beijing will default to its traditional playbook of electoral meddling, disinformation and economic coercion. With that in mind, the U.S. should gird to help its allies prepare for the Middle Kingdom’s efforts to scuttle anything resembling an Asian collective defense arrangement.

None of this will be easy. Then again who ever said strategic thinking is? Nevertheless, the great progress that Washington’s allies have already made in acknowledging the China threat as well as taking unprecedented steps to invest in their own militaries, build ties with their neighbors, and double down on their arrangements with the U.S. As a matter of fact, in recent years, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines have already made moves on defense and security matters that were hitherto deemed implausible. The conditions are now set for strong leadership to transform a collective defense pact in Asia from something once unimaginable into a defining feature of the region’s future peace and prosperity.