September 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the forgotten and oft-maligned Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). But its legacy actually offers valuable insights into Asia's emerging multilateral alliances such as the “Quad,” “Quad Plus,” and the much-touted but still hypothetical “Asian NATO.” Despite criticism of its ineffectiveness and disunity, understanding how SEATO came into being and the internal divisions that led to its demise is crucial for navigating today's complex geopolitical landscape.
SEATO, also known as the Manila Pact, is an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia, designed to counter the spread of communism in the region. Founded on September 8, 1954, SEATO was born into a strategic interregnum at the intersection of post-colonial independence movements, the emergence of the United States as a superpower, and the new priority of preventing the global spread of communism.
In 1949, Washington had just formed NATO to counter the Soviet threat in Europe and was considering withdrawing from Asia after the Communist occupation of China. Fearing that the threat of Japan and Communist China would rise again, countries such as the Philippines, South Korea, and the Republic of China initially proposed an Asian version of NATO, a “Pacific Pact” (the precursor to SEATO), while Australia and New Zealand sought a regional security pact against Japan and the Soviet Union.
Wary of suspicions of regional imperialism, the US wanted an “advisory council” under the umbrella of the “Association of Free Nations in the Asia-Pacific Region” to address concerns about Japan and promote anti-Communism. However, disagreements arose over including Japan, Britain and France at an inopportune time, with the Korean War raging in the 1950s. The urgent need to resolve the Japanese problem led the US and its future allies to agree, at a minimum, to separate mutual defense treaties. This was what former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the architect of SEATO, described as a “spokes of the wheel” approach, better known today as the “hub and spoke” system.
Neither party considered the system to be adequate or final, but rather a prelude to a “more comprehensive regional security system in the Pacific.”
The idea of a multilateral alliance resurfaced in March 1953 after Dulles urged Asian nations to “united action” in Indochina to counter the looming threat of “Red Asia.” Dulles envisioned a coalition made up of the United States, Britain, France, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the Allied Powers (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) to defend Southeast Asia against Communist aggression. However, internal conflicts soon erupted as potential allies competed over their interests and membership status. It was clear that no country would accept the proposal unless the United States committed troops to Indochina and assumed long-term commitments in Thailand and Malaya.
Growing concerns over the defeat of French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu soon prompted Washington to take concrete action on Dulles' proposals, leading to closed-door meetings to negotiate the creation of SEATO during the Geneva Conference in 1954. During these formative months before its inauguration, major divisions arose, especially between the United States, Britain and France. The United States was frustrated that France and Britain were reluctant to “balance Indochina” and “blocked everything” they wanted to do. Britain seemed to be treading water, vainly trying to expand SEATO to include the Colombo states (Burma, Indonesia, Ceylon, India and Pakistan). All but Pakistan were rejected due to suspicions of imperialism. Britain also opposed France's imperialistic ambitions to include Cambodia and Laos. All countries except the United States and Thailand avoided specifying “Communist aggression” as a threat, as this would seem overly provocative to Beijing.
By August 20, 1954, U.S. concerns about declining prestige in Asia, likely due to its failure to lead the fight against Communism, forced the United States to enter into at least some form of security arrangement. Dulles insisted that “we can't go home without a treaty.” The result was a compromise treaty that reflected the competing interests of its member states. Reluctance to reach agreement on the nature of the Communist threat made the goal of addressing the common danger of Communist “aggression by armed attack” tenuous and unrealistic, an invasion that never materialized. Ultimately, Washington's reluctance to send ground troops to Indochina made SEATO a symbol of anti-Communist unity that served to preserve U.S. prestige rather than promote effective military intervention.
SEATO's organizational structure created obstacles to collective action in the decades that followed. As the civil wars in Laos and Vietnam intensified in the 1960s, internal divisions became apparent. SEATO member states prioritized unity over action and avoided steps that might threaten the alliance. As former Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman put it, the member states sought to “save SEATO from impotence.”
Following the separation of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan withdrew from SEATO in 1973. The organization was formally dissolved in 1977.
The history of SEATO holds lessons for today's multilateral alliances like the Quad: both were born out of divisive geopolitical contexts that raised serious doubts about their desirability (whose interests would it serve?) and practicality (whether it could serve its intended purpose as a combat alliance, given the destructive nature of modern great power conflicts).
Today, the Quad is free of the suspicions of Western imperialism that dogged the existence of SEATO. However, fears of becoming embroiled in great power conflicts have sparked new debates about non-alignment, a Cold War relic. In fact, most Asian countries do not share the same perception as the United States about the regional threat to China and do not want the Quad to develop into a counter-alliance.
If China were to pursue territorial expansion beyond Taiwan, such proposals for multilateral alliances might become cohesive and credible. But this scenario seems distant. China’s current challenge to the Indo-Pacific order is of a fundamentally different nature, and risk mitigation requires a hybrid approach. Given that SEATO had never faced armed attack from the Chinese Communist Party, even at the height of the Cold War, contemporary policymakers must reconsider whether such alliances are truly useful or merely a means to mask anxieties about the declining ability of the United States to maintain regional order.
SEATO's history also teaches us how problems can emerge in multilateral alliances in Asia. Allies often expect more than the alliance's objectives require, and test each other on less important issues to gauge their reliability in more difficult times. During the Cold War, the SEATO allies' inflated expectations forced the alliance to provide security against threats it was not meant to defend against, such as Communist subversion, and its failure to do so led to deep disillusionment. Some criticized SEATO as a “paper tiger” that appeared powerful but was ineffective against Communist China. Others called SEATO a “deterrence diplomacy,” using diplomacy to mask defense inadequacies.
But SEATO is not to blame. The threat of Communist subversion loomed large during its first decade, and SEATO needed to act or risk undermining regional confidence in the U.S. security architecture in Asia. SEATO's experience illustrates that. Countries seeking to join an Asian multilateral alliance must prepare for inflated expectations from its members, especially in the face of Chinese gray-zone operations, or risk being criticized for being little more than a forum for discussion.
SEATO's history has been full of twists and turns, and even 70 years after it was founded and nearly 50 years after it was dissolved, it remains relevant.
