A New Age of Minilateralism: Potential Solutions for the South China Sea Conundrum

Over 70 years after its founding, the “San Francisco System” of American bilateral alliances (named after the city where its original components were founded when the Japan peace treaty was signed there in September 1951) remains intact. This outcome departs from prevailing international relations theory about power balancing - which anticipates that once the original threat that initiated an alliance network weakens or changes, alliance dissolution becomes more probable. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and with China's adoption of liberal market reforms, the Cold War receded into history. Key U.S. regional security allies feared that the expected “peace dividend” that U.S. policymakers coveted through reductions in Cold War defense spending levels would translate into a substantial American disengagement from its regional deterrence and defense commitments, leaving them strategically abandoned in a transformed international security environment. Indeed, visions of a multilateral collective security framework in the Asia-Pacific took hold during the early 1990s as a more promising model for regional order-building. However, both apprehensions about alliance dissolution and hopes for multilateral collective security institutions have proved to be misplaced. The postwar alliance system that Washington cultivated initially with its Asia-Pacific allies, however, has changed into a more complex structure of security relationships in response to the region's increasingly complicated security environment. U.S. security alliances and evolving security “partnerships” are viewed both by Washington and regional friends as instruments of order-building, not just as defensive arrangements based on threat-centric assessments. Contemporary security challenges mandate ever greater flexibility in U.S. alliance rationalization and management. International terrorism, pandemics, large-scale natural disasters (arguably attributable to global warming), and other nontraditional security challenges that routinely transcend sovereign boundaries now co-exist with traditional national security and geopolitical threats. Such multiple contingencies require more enlightened and nimble security policy collaboration. The Barack Obama administration's “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia squarely places alliances at what then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described as the “fulcrum for our strategic turn to the Asia Pacific.” Accordingly, Washington wants the San Francisco System to remain viable in an increasingly complex regional security environment. Such an objective can be realized by adopting what Clinton identified as three core principles for American management of its Asia-Pacific alliance system: (i) maintaining political consensus within an alliance over what it is about and what it wishes to achieve; (ii) ensuring that each alliance is “nimble and adaptive” so that it can successfully address new challenges and seize new opportunities; and (iii) assuring that the defense capabilities and communications infrastructure of each alliance are operationally and materially capable of deterring provocation from the full spectrum of state and nonstate actors. Simultaneously the United States seeks to reassure its Asia-Pacific security partners that they will not be abandoned in the face of rising Chinese power and assertiveness. Further, the United States will sustain its commitments to defend its formal allies and strengthen its collaboration with other key Asian states that are instrumental for maintaining what the United States views as a favorable regional balance of power. However, the United States has posited that it expects that allies and partners will reciprocate by contributing meaningfully to collective defense and extended deterrence as well as support American-led efforts at regional order and institution-building. Ashley Tellis has aptly described this American policy position: “Because the cost of U.S. contributions toward such collective goods may become more burdensome over time, accepting increased contributions by friends and allies remains an attractive solution … So long as their political aims fundamentally cohere with Washington's, anything they do to augment the supply of global public goods serves the U.S., their own, and other common interests." It remains to be determined, however, if the security interests of American allies and potential U.S. security partners “fundamentally cohere” with those of the United States or, even more tellingly with each other's, in the emerging Asia-Pacific security environment. Recent efforts by Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to accelerate his country's role as a “more normal” national security actor are generally welcomed in the United States, but the handling of Japan's historical grievances with its neighbors generates concern in Washington. So too do the powerful political nationalistic forces that at times have prompted South Korea to aspire to and pursue avenues for reunification with a still highly bellicose and nuclear-armed North Korea, to explore longer-term economic and geopolitical ties with China, and to rail against Japan over still unresolved historical issues and territorial disputes. At least some policymakers in Seoul may view South Korea's security alliance with the United States as much as a hedging instrument toward a changing Asian power balance that encompasses Japan's “normalization” as an instrument of deterrence against a threatening North Korea. The Philippines adheres to a constitution that forbids the permanent stationing or deployment of foreign troops on its soil, even while it negotiates closer military relations with the United States. Thai-American tensions intensified noticeably in the aftermath of Thailand's military coup and the supplanting of a democratically elected government in May 2014. America's most interoperable and close regional ally, Australia, confronts the policy nightmare of “choosing” between China—Australia's major trading partner—and the United States—that country's traditional “great and powerful friend”—in a future regional conflict that may see the two superpowers clash over Taiwan, Japanese control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, or even possibly in the South China Sea. While recently developing closer strategic ties with the United States, India still largely clings to its postwar heritage of nonalignment. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam conduct growing and significant military relations with the United States, but likewise adhere to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) pre-eminent norm of strategic balance between great powers. What remains unclear at this point in time is to what extent the “hub and spokes” of the San Francisco System are undergoing transformation into new and more nuanced forms of alignment required to accommodate or balance the region's rising powers and how any such transformation will sustain a meaningful U.S. security role in this area of the world. Addressing the characteristics, differences, and relative intensities of formal U.S. bilateral alliances, emerging U.S. security partnerships and the potential for trilateral or minilateral “hybrids” between alliance and partnership to contribute or detract from regional order-building may enhance our understanding of how such arrangements may either facilitate or impede such regional order-building and stability. Managing Alliances in a More Complicated World There is little controversy over what generally constitutes an alliance: “a formal or informal commitment for security cooperation between two or more states," claims Stephen M. Walt at the University of Chicago. The presence of a binding “commitment” implies that an alliance entails durability and incorporates multiple elements of collaboration between those parties allied to one another, as opposed to a security “partnership” that is more issue-specific. During the Cold War, the United States maintained an extensive network of alliances across Eurasia, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe, the Baghdad Pact which later morphed into the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in the Middle East and South Asia, and the San Francisco System in Asia which co-existed with the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The “credibility of commitment” underpinning the United States’ alliance commitments in Europe and Asia was sustained by formal treaty agreements—a multilateral collective defense treaty in NATO's case and bilateral mutual defense treaties that Washington honored with each of its formal Asian allies that constituted the San Francisco System. NATO and the U.S. bilateral alliances in the Asia-Pacific have remained operative even as political and strategic developments in the Middle East and Southeast Asia rendered the rationale and operational integrity of CENTO and SEATO moribund long ago. NATO arguably became more of an “alliance of choice” than an “alliance of necessity” following the Soviet Union's demise in December 1991. Russia's recent incursions into Ukraine and Russian leader Vladimir Putin's increasingly strident anti-Western posture has at least revitalized NATO's purpose and endeavors. But questions still loom over the extent to which NATO member-states share a unifying purpose in the way that the Soviet threat provided a rationale for alliance collaboration during the Cold War. The Asia-Pacific threat environment evolved in even more complex ways than contemporary Europe. China's politico-strategic identity and growing wealth came to be viewed by successive U.S. administrations as necessitating both cooperative and competitive dimensions in regional order-building. North Korea's military and nuclear capacity, while formidable, was still viewed as out of proportion to that country's prolonged economic doldrums, its long-term sociopolitical viability, and its inability to preserve what few friendships it had cultivated since its existence. In such an environment of strategic ambiguity, how and to what extent have the United States’ formal bilateral treaty alliances retained their significance? U.S. “grand strategy” in the Asia-Pacific is to prevent dominance by a hostile hegemon, cultivate an open regional trading regime, and promote political liberalization, human rights, and observance of international law, as noted by Michael J. Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The San Francisco System, since its inception, has played a central role in realizing this strategy by extending to the United States’ formal regional allies credible deterrence against external conventional and nuclear attacks, and maintaining a forward U.S. force presence in the region to underwrite such deterrence. It has sustained an acceptable regional balance of power, and given these allies more advanced intelligence and technologies to facilitate their own defense capabilities against potential military threats. Asymmetrical security relationships upheld by Washington with its formal Asia-Pacific allies have traditionally translated into a dominant American “hub” generating defense benefits for its smaller allies or “spokes,” to counter the power of Soviet or Chinese expansion in their region. Even as the Cold War was drawing to a close, U.S. officials perceived little reason for changing a system that had worked well for nearly four decades and rejected early post-Cold War proposals for developing multilateral security mechanisms proposed by Australia, Canada, and Japan. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Richard Solomon, observed at the time that European-style multilateralism would not work in a region still mired in threat-centric geopolitics given the rise of China, a still volatile Korean peninsula, and lingering tensions over history and contested territory: "The nature of the security challenges we anticipate in the years ahead—do not easily lend themselves to region-wide solutions. When we look at the key determinants of stability in Asia … it is difficult to see how a Helsinki-type institution would be an appropriate forum for enhancing security or promoting conflict resolution." So far, history has largely vindicated Solomon's view. As new security challenges have emerged in the Asia-Pacific after the Cold War and in response to the urgings of U.S. regional allies and partners, U.S. policymakers have gradually recognized that the San Francisco System would need to adapt in order to survive. New multilateral forums such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit have emerged to become important components in the region's security policy arena. Adjustments in America's bilateral alliance system were required and the development of, and U.S. participation in, regional multilateralism goes some way in meeting these requirements. These included the United States signing on to multilateralism as a way of reassuring allies that a U.S. security presence would still be continued even as new order-building initiatives were pursued, “institutionalizing” America's presence in regional order-building, and facilitating new networked partnerships through the usage of regional institutions. Emerging regional security issues have become more diverse. They include the spill-over of domestic instabilities into regional and global security arenas, to the intensification of terrorism, resource politics, environmental crises, pandemics, human security contingencies, and other factors shaping the “global commons.” Such a “regional–global nexus” is not confined to nontraditional security elements. Geopolitical rivalries have also intensified in the region as the Asia-Pacific's strategic environment transforms into an increasingly multipolar balance of power and as nationalism intensifies throughout much of the region. How can the United States achieve a judicious policy equilibrium between fulfilling its historical but still critical role of maintaining regional stability through military strength and its traditional alliances, while integrating those alliances with newer and dynamic forms of minilateral and multilateral security politics? Positioning its postwar bilateral alliances to complement the Asia-Pacific's evolving multilateral security framework, and simultaneously networking its alliances and partnerships, will constitute major challenges to Washington's policymakers. It was hardly coincidental that President Obama's 2015 National Security Strategy document reflected on this challenge: "We are modernizing our alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines and enhancing the interactions among them to ensure they are fully capable of responding to regional and global challenges. We are committed to strengthening regional institutions such as ASEAN, the East Asia Summit, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation to reinforce shared rules and norms, forge collective responses to shared challenges, and help ensure peaceful resolution of disputes." It may appear to some that this statement suggests that there is a choice between alliances and partnerships on the one hand and multilateral institutions on the other. Actually, America's policy approach to Asia-Pacific architecture is an adjunct to the centrality of the alliance in the development of new partnerships, and the networking of alliances and partnerships. This is evident in a range of trilateral efforts such as the U.S.-Japan-South Korea, the U.S.-Japan-Australia, and the U.S.-Japan-India, as well as efforts to support closer relations among various groupings of Southeast Asian states. Perhaps the most salient policy challenge for U.S. alliance politics is the need to encourage its allies to collaborate more systematically and effectively beyond the traditional bilateral alliance network. The United States has insisted it will maintain a significant force presence in the region, actually increasing its military capacity there by 2020. It is deploying to the region 60% of its naval fleet (including a majority of its aircraft carriers), 60% of its overseas based forces, larger contingents of U.S. Marine rotational forces in Australia, and a more extensive or upgraded presence in bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and the Philippines. It thus proposes to ensure freedom of passage through the region's critical sea lines of communication (SLOC) and to play a continuing balancing role in the Asia-Pacific. American defense officials are simultaneously encouraging America's allies to engage in strategic collaboration and military capacity-building measures beyond Washington's orbit of formal regional alliances but in ways clearly meriting American support. Under the Abe government, Japan appears to be spearheading this “spoke-to-spoke” process. Australian-Japanese bilateral defense ties are perhaps the clearest example of how this trend has developed, with the formalization of intelligence sharing, logistical arrangements, and defense technology exchanges reaching increasingly significant proportions. Japan-Philippines defense ties are likewise maturing in substantial ways with the acceleration of military exercises near the South China Sea, Japan's transfer of patrol boats and contemplated sales of maritime surveillance systems to the Philippines, and the intensification of Japan-Philippines defense dialogues. Japanese-South Korean defense relations remain impeded by issues of history and territorial sovereignty, and long-standing South Korean feelings that the United States assigns greater priority to the U.S.-Japan alliance than to its alliance with Seoul. Overall, however, U.S. officials can only be pleased that its regional allies are taking the initiative to supplement their historical security ties with the American “hub” with more intensive “spoke-to spoke” defense ties with each other. Partnerships Outside the formal U.S. alliance framework, other Asia-Pacific states seeking partnership with the United States in niche areas of security cooperation, where their own interests may coincide with Washington's, will be required to weigh the comparative risks and benefits of associating with the United States against the need to sustain their independent status in their own judgment and in the eyes of those who would otherwise view such collaboration as subordinating their own strategic interests (i.e., China). A fundamental issue is how such modernization of alliances can address the abandonment and entrapment feared by both the United States and its allies and partners, and concerns that modernizing alliances might upset a rising China. This dilemma affects decisions about what degree of alignment regional security actors may wish to pursue with the United States. “Alignment” is a relationship between two or more states that involves mutual expectations of some degree of policy coordination on security issues under certain conditions in the future. “Alliance” is a relatively formal and exacting kind of alignment that involves military interaction between states and is usually directed toward a mutually perceived threat, whereas alignment could involve military, political, economic, diplomatic, or cultural spheres of activity. The use of the term was somewhat broadened (critics would say “diluted”) by the George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations in nominating 16 “major non-NATO allies” (including Taiwan) to help the United States check Iraqi ambitions in the Middle East, facilitate defense and technology systems’ collaborative research and development, and to assist in the United States’ “war on terror” following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Obama administration has continued this practice by nominating Afghanistan (2012) and Tunisia (2015) as major non-NATO allies. In December 2014, the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama signed the U.S.-Israel Major Strategic Partnership Act that would establish a new category of formal alignment one level above major non-NATO allies status. Increasingly, “partnership” is the label of choice for describing contemporary defense and security relations between two states. A security “partnership” is a more fluid association in which obligations are voluntarily assumed but not contractually defined, binding, or specified. Partnerships can be reviewed and modified on a case by case or temporal basis, whereas alliances commit the parties to treaty-strength obligations that require a major diplomatic rupture for them to be abrogated. Apart from their looser form of alignment compared to alliances, security partnerships have at least two other outstanding characteristics: structures of interaction which are usually embedded in the joint statements which identify areas of cooperation; and underlying motives for cooperation based on “address[ing] common challenges and … seiz[ing] opportunities in several areas” rather than countering a particular country or group in a threat-centric context. In the Asia-Pacific, a third characteristic, in particular, has emerged as a critical precondition of U.S. partnership-building with selected regional states—”identifying common security interests with the countries in question and shared thinking on how to realize those interests," says William Tow in his article "Rebalancing and order building: Strategy or illusion?" Structures are shaped and motives are sharpened through partner capacity-building to generate greater material power for achieving common interests, and through pursuing economic, diplomatic, and military cooperation to promote “rules-based” Asia-Pacific security, democratization, and regional stability U.S. policymakers have moved to infuse some formality into America's Asia-Pacific bilateral partnerships, carefully ensuring that the language used to underwrite these diverse arrangements remains sufficiently pliable to avoid the levels of commitment found in the more formal treaties that underwrite America's formal bilateral alliances. This is hardly a coincidence given that the U.S. Congress would most likely veto any executive effort to impose even a general level of principled commitment relating to extended deterrence found in the United States’ early postwar security treaties that constitute the San Francisco System. The terms “strategic partnership” or “comprehensive partnership” “are sometimes applied to describe the importance or gravitas of a particular alignment,” claims Ellen Laipson in World Politics Review. The obvious relevance of Washington's bilateral alliances in an era of a rising China, a nuclear North Korea, and still outstanding regional flashpoints reinforce the meaning and relevance of formal U.S. alliance politics in the Asia-Pacific region. Indonesia/Malaysia Washington has worked in an understated but steadfast way to solidify its security ties with the Malay world. The U.S.-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership was signed in 2010, and a joint commission meeting convenes annually (jointly chaired by the Indonesian Foreign Minister and the U.S. Secretary of State). It sponsors a series of working groups to review a wide range of cooperative ventures in the security, economic, cultural, education, and science sectors. Perhaps most significantly from a strategic perspective, a defense planning dialogue operates under the joint commission's auspices to address how Indonesia can procure those defense weapons and technologies required for it to be a meaningful participant in the overall regional partner capacity-building. President Obama's visit to Malaysia in April 2014 resulted in a similar U.S.-Malaysia comprehensive partnership and, by extension, a renewed emphasis on already existing bilateral arrangements such as the senior officials’ dialogue, the Malaysia-U.S. strategic talks, and the Bilateral Training and Consultative Group. Special emphasis was placed on collaboration in the politics of nuclear nonproliferation with Malaysia joining the Proliferation Security Initiative. U.S. naval support was extended to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 after that aircraft went missing in March 2014. The increased tempo of such bilateral military exercises as Keris Strike and Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training reinforced the idea of a partnership “approaching a more equal footing," said Elina Noor in the Asia Pacific Bulletin. Moreover, there are more visible signs of U.S.-Malaysia military cooperation such as the operation of U.S. surveillance flights from facilities in Malaysia and public notice about U.S.-Malaysia bilateral military exercises that in the past had either not taken place or received little public acknowledgment. Singapore The U.S.-Singapore partnership has been much assessed elsewhere in recent years and for good reason. Some observers might reasonably argue that this security dyad has essentially supplanted the formal U.S.-Thailand alliance and even the U.S.-Philippines alliance as Washington's “lynchpin” security relationship in Southeast Asia. This, these observers may posit, is the case notwithstanding Singapore's need to remain sensitive to its Islamic neighbors’ historical preferences for ASEAN members to prefer nonalignment over alliance politics and, as a city-state where the vast majority of its citizens are ethnic Chinese, to avoid alienating Beijing to the extent that it would ever be forced to choose between China and the United States in any future conflict. Outweighing such cautious geopolitical instincts, however, is the fundamental Singaporean interest in keeping U.S. military power present and engaged throughout Southeast Asia and the greater Asia-Pacific littorals. In that vein, it signed a 15-year memorandum of understanding in 1990 to accord the U.S. Navy extensive use of its naval and air logistical facilities and, following the American withdrawal from its bases in the Philippines the following year, to transfer its Commander, Logistics Group, Western Pacific headquarters to Singapore to support U.S. Seventh Fleet activities. Over the ensuing years, U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines regularly transited through the Changi Naval Base, U.S. military equipment has become the weapons systems of choice for Singaporean defense forces, and U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships are now operating from Singapore. Even in the face of such momentum, U.S. policy elites understand that Singapore believes it is most secure entertaining a diversity of security relationships with its ASEAN neighbors and great powers alike. During his July 2013 visit to the Lion City, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden acknowledged that “Singapore is friends with America, also with India, Japan and China and the other major powers." To best ensure the type of regional power equilibrium where it can relate to Washington as a partner of choice rather than as an arguably constrained ally, Singapore will reserve the right to calibrate its defense relations with Washington on the basis of association via a convergence of strategic interests. Thailand The U.S.-Thailand alliance has been complicated by the May 2014 coup, although the 2012 Joint Vision Statement sought to reframe the post-Cold War, post-9/11 U.S.-Thai relationship. The ability of the U.S. and Thai militaries to cooperate more robustly, when political conditions allow, remains. China has clearly emerged as a much more significant consideration for Bangkok over the years; however, for this very reason, Thai officials continue to see avenues of cooperation with the United States as critical in part to hedge on their possible over-reliance on China in the future. The Philippines The Philippines' relationship with the United States has undergone significant changes over the past several years as Manila faces China's assertiveness in the South China Sea. The consideration of an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) including rotational and other access for the U.S. military is ongoing, the initiation of a new 2 + 2 dialogue between the two capitals, and plans for the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ defense modernization including provision of “credible minimum defense” are part of evolving U.S.-Philippine ties. Manila has even expressed interest in eventually joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. However, much remains uncertain. Recent press reports indicate that there are financial and political challenges to implementing defense modernization, the Philippine Supreme Court has yet to rule on the constitutionality of EDCA and the Philippine Senate has indicated that it also wishes to review the agreement. Upcoming elections in 2016 make the recent progress in bilateral alliance relations uncertain and tentative. However, there is clearly a positive change in trend and direction of the U.S.-Philippine alliance since the early 1990s. India India has emerged as one of the United States’ most significant Asia-Pacific security partners over the past decade. Previously spearheading a nonaligned movement between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, India has moved closer to the United States as the two countries’ key security interests have converged. Balancing growing Chinese power, countering the rise of jihadist movements in South and Central Asia, collaborating on advanced information technologies, developing bilateral civilian nuclear/space cooperation, and cultivating each other's markets are all illustrative. A 10-year defense agreement was signed in 2005, followed with the signing of a Defense Technology and Trade Initiative in 2012. U.S. defense sales to India grew from nearly zero in 2009 to around US$9 billion by the time that agreement came into force (including C-17 and C-130 transport aircraft and maritime patrol aircraft). India now conducts more military exercises with the United States than with any other country. President Obama's January 2015 visit to India resulted in the release of a U.S.–India joint strategic vision statement that emphasized the safeguarding of regional maritime security, and the resolution of territorial disputes via the application of international law, counterterrorism, and strengthening multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific. Washington also demonstrated an increased interest in encouraging India's third-party defense relationships with such countries as Japan and Singapore. It remains to be seen, however, if India will be willing to enter into any form of alignment resembling a “pan-regional axis” with the United States or its other allies. By rejecting formal affiliation in the “quadrilateral,” “minilateral,” or “hybrid” alignment initiatives advanced during the period 2007–2008, India has demonstrated its reluctance to formalize any strategic involvement with the San Francisco System due to its concerns that such a move could be linked to an Asian version of containment (“PM: India,” 2008). It is more likely that trilateral or quadrilateral forums could be used for more “functional” security cooperation in a wide swathe of nontraditional security areas such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, energy politics, climate change, forced peoples’ movements, and pandemic control. For similar reasons, it seems unlikely that India would weigh in directly on Washington's side in any future East Asian contingency involving the defense of such flashpoints as the Senkaku/Diaoyu or Spratly Islands or even South Korea were the Korean peninsula to explode into renewed warfare. Nor would the United States wish to become involved militarily in backing India's border claims against China. Despite the frequency of their military exercises, Indian and American military services do not even have force interoperability as an objective. At present, developing a positive security partnership appears to be the best option for both Indian defense planners and their American policy counterparts. Vietnam No one observing the intensity of conflict between the United States and Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s could have anticipated the level of security relations that has recently developed between these two former combatants. Shared concerns about the rise of China and its impact on the Asia-Pacific's key SLOCs have increasingly bound Hanoi and Washington together as partners in a quest to neutralize Chinese assertiveness and to seek ways to underwrite the development of a burgeoning Vietnamese economy. Differences over human rights, as well as residual concerns by Vietnamese Communist Party leaders about excessive liberal American influence in Vietnam's domestic social and political processes, act as a brake on overly rapid Vietnamese-American rapprochement. However, the visit of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong of the Vietnam Communist Party to Washington in July 2015, including an Oval Office visit, demonstrated both sides’ efforts to overcome first-order differences over regime types. At present, the value of an independent and economically viable Vietnam balancing Chinese influence and expansionism in the South China Sea trumps Vietnamese-American historical and normative differences. Vietnam's endorsement of, and vigorous participation in, ASEAN enhances the rationale for Washington to extend qualified but genuine strategic support to Hanoi. Taiwan/New Zealand Two U.S. partnerships in the Asia-Pacific have not been assessed in detail so far; those with Taiwan and New Zealand. Richard Nixon's administration adhered to the “one China principle” in 1972 as part of the United States’ normalization process with China (Sino-U.S. relations were normalized in 1980). It is highly likely that the United States would, under the auspices of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), respond forcefully to an unprovoked and outright Chinese military attack against Taiwan. Given that the TRA is domestic U.S. legislation, the U.S.-Taiwan security “partnership” falls outside the category we chose to assess here. Given China's implementation of an increasingly challenging anti-access/area denial strategy, however, Taiwan may represent a new kind of evolving partnership that will require separate and more in-depth analysis. The Obama administration has moved decisively to repair the previous breach in U.S.-New Zealand security relations emanating from the two countries’ dispute over nuclear deterrence in the mid-1980s. The Wellington Declaration (November 2010) and the Washington Declaration (June 2012) went far to restore bilateral ties (including security relations) in the increasingly complex post-Cold War international security environment. It remains unclear, however, to what extent New Zealand's very limited defense capabilities, and the policy constraints imposed by its natural emphasis on trading relations with its dominant Chinese market, will allow this small Pacific state to engage with the United States as a truly Asia-Pacific, as opposed to a primarily South Pacific, partner. Minilateralism as a Hybrid Form of Alignment Washington's bilateral alliance politics in Asia has been traditionally characterized by asymmetry. The “junior ally” in U.S. security relationships has often deferred to U.S. policymakers in alliance deliberations dealing with short-term issues in return for extracting relatively greater returns in alliance benefits over time. Examples of the latter include obtaining U.S. extended deterrence commitments and access to U.S. defense intelligence and technologies in return for disproportionately low levels of burden-sharing and small risks of becoming entrapped in U.S. regional or international conflicts against their will. Washington has recognized this collective action problem in alliance management for decades. It has often found itself in the awkward position of demanding alliance loyalty and allied resources as a price for continuing to proffer continued guarantees to allies. Partnerships tend to circumvent the collective action problem by limiting alignment only to those parties with commensurate interests on a given security issue, restricting the instincts of such like-minded parties to command adherence to formal rules or institutions rather than acting together in more informal or “ad hoc” ways and only within a given time frame. This provides opportunities for the relevant parties to develop habits of consultation and greater degrees of trust. But it falls short of commanding the degree of enduring institutional commitment and norm adherence commanded by multilateral institutions such as NATO or even ASEAN. Minilateral alignments have recently developed as a form of partnership designed to overcome the constraints of bilateralism while avoiding the institutional lethargy commonly exhibited by Asia-Pacific multilateral security institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum. Minilateralism can be viewed as a “hybrid” form of security alignment, bringing to a given crisis more like-minded players and material resources than those normally generated by a bilateral alliance, but offering more flexibility or spontaneity than less nimble multilateral groupings that must identify continued rationales for their existence once that particular crisis is defused or modified. As Moises Naim has observed, minilateralism can be “a smarter, more targeted approach … bring[ing] to the table the smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on a particular problem.” This approach tempers the alliance burden-sharing problem often impeding or distorting bilateral security cooperation because the parties engaging in a minilateral security action have an equally strong interest in resolving the challenge being addressed. It also overcomes the values-diversity problem often found in large and unwieldy multilateral associations; the actions undertaken in a minilateral context are either predominantly interest-based rather than normatively driven. Alternatively, the parties involved tend to share similar values when addressing both traditional and nontraditional security crises. Minilateral alignments operating in the Asia-Pacific, largely over the past decade, have posted a somewhat mixed track record. Those directed toward resolving nontraditional or human security crises, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and some forms of maritime security (i.e., counter-piracy) have been relatively effective. The Trilateral Strategic Dialogue between Australia, Japan, and the United States exemplifies a grouping that has deliberately pursued a functionalist agenda focused on assisting developing states in the region to strengthen their security capacities. Those targeting more “traditional” aspects of security politics, such as nuclear nonproliferation (e.g., the Six Party Talks negotiating the Korean peninsula's denuclearization or its predecessor, the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group) have been less successful. Contending geopolitical interests have often overcome collaborative efforts of great powers and their allies to curb regional flashpoints or restrain territorial disputes. As Michael Green has observed, there is growing debate about whether multilaterals contribute to a stable regional order-building process or risk morphing into competing blocs that would exacerbate regional security dilemmas. Their usage is still such a sufficiently recent trend that judgment about their stabilizing or disruptive features is probably best held in reserve. Their existence, however, provides concrete evidence that Asia-Pacific policymakers are searching for possible alternative models to bilateralism and multilateralism for managing their security interests in an increasingly complex, multipolar, regional security environment.  Competition, Cooperation, and the China Factor Shadowing any discussion of the evolving nature of U.S. alliances, partnerships, networks, and regional institutions is the issue of a rising China, U.S.-China relations, and China-Asia relations. This article addressed this issue by considering how China's rising power in the Asia-Pacific will affect the San Franscisco System's alliance adaptability. Inevitably, there are a range of assessments about the impact of the “China factor” on U.S. alliances, partnerships, and emerging networks. But several observations about the “state-of-play” seem to emerge at the present juncture. First, over the past few years of the U.S. “rebalance” or “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific, managing U.S.-China relations has become increasingly challenging. Some have characterized this as growing “strategic mistrust.” Indeed, the United States and China do not appear to have as yet arrived at a suitable framework which could help manage their relationship, notwithstanding numerous proposals such as “responsible stakeholder,” “strategic reassurance,” or as proposed by Beijing, a “new model of great power/country relations.” Essentially, these frameworks are limited because the fundamental differences in interests and values that characterize the relationship cannot be reconciled. Just as U.S.-China relations have faced increasing tensions, China's relations with Asia, while developing significant economic and political ties, have also faced difficulties not least due to disputes in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, even South Korea reacted strongly to the declaration by China of an air defense identification zone. And India has expressed concern about China's actions both on its land borders and activities around the Indian Ocean. The net effect of both increasingly difficult United States-China and China-Asia relations has been to create greater complexity in the context of U.S. alliance adjustments and partnership building. These complexities are visible in the articles in this collection. In the case of Japan, worry has been expressed about U.S. commitment to Japan's security in the context of Chinese provocations in the East China Sea, even as the United States and Japan have managed to issue revised guidelines aimed at moving well beyond a narrow “defense of Japan” posture. The U.S.-South Korea alliance continues to transform even as Seoul and Washington consider whether or not Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) capabilities are necessary given China's hostile reactions to the possibility of their deployment. India continues to seek closer security and military relations with the United States even as it is cautious about moving too far forward with the United States or in the context of trilateral networks such as the U.S.-Japan-India arrangement. And across Southeast Asia, both allies and partners have (as discussed above) moved steadily to enhance security and defense relations with the United States even as they carefully managed economic and diplomatic relations with China. Hence, nearly every U.S. ally and partner except Japan has signed on to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), even as these same countries sought closer security ties with the United States and expressed alarm about China's behavior in the maritime domains across the Asia-Pacific littoral. To suggest there is a “dichotomy” between the “United States for security” and “China for commerce” would be to push the point too far. Several Asia-Pacific countries, for example, are negotiating with the United States for a TPP agreement. Other countries have expressed interest in joining this partnership in the future, although many Asian countries continue to resist more formal alliance arrangements with the United States. Even U.S. allies have considerable apprehension and limits about how far they are willing to go in terms of existing alliance arrangements. The Philippine Supreme Court, for example, continues to weigh the constitutionality of a new EDCA signed by the United States and the Philippines in 2014. Japanese Prime Minister Abe is confronting intensified opposition to his collective defense legislation by a Japanese public, with polling indicating that up to 80% of the Japanese public remains unconvinced about the need and the constitutionality of such legislation. The outcome of debates about THAAD deployment by South Korea, in the face of China's opposition, remains far from certain. While the China “shadow” is cast over U.S. alliances and partnerships, the net effect of closer alliance cooperation may not be nearly as clear as alliance advocates would hope might be the case.   About the Author: Akshan de Alwis is Diplomatic Courier’s United Nations Correspondent.