Seato

[Farnan]

As you have seen in my platform thread, I am for a revival of SEATO in order to maintain regional stability in the region. The main threat to possible stability is the conflict between China and Taiwan. My idea is that such an organisation will mean that China, who is gaining military capacity and even greater advantage over Taiwan, will know that attacking Taiwan would lead to them having to fight a large coalition, just like NATO helped make sure the USSR did not invade West Germany.

Edit: I don't believe China would attack Taiwan anytime within the next decade or two, but such a risk is not worth playing around with or ignoring.

[Kanaric]

China is on a 50 year plan, and in about their 25th year. They are meddling in South America with the elected leftist leaders trying to get energy deals and to increase their influnce, they are also doing the same in Sudan with oil. They are trying to establish their influence and resources for their nation. I dont see why we aren't doing the same.

We could certainly use a group of pacific allies, they could be useful in many respects, even humanitarian aid or helping countries that have trouble and stabilizing the region. We need to increase our influence and how we are viewed in the region, i see no better way of doing it then forming alliances with nations their. In the future this kind of influence and allies will mean everything once again. Especially if we are going to win any kind of "war on terror". Not to mention if Nations view the US as their friends in the form of allies people in the country will come to see the same way as well.

[Lee1026]

Once more, I will state that any action to egg on the Taipei warhawks is probably a very bad idea. We are talking on a tight rope here. The current path seems to be working pretty well, so why take a chance of actually tiggering a war by egging on the warhawks? Also, organizing this thing and get all the C&C together will cost lots of money.

[Caelius]

Such a revival was started more awhile ago fyi, the US has since tightened it's relations with several of the other major pacific powers ranging from Japan, India, S. Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, and several nations that were former protectorates like the Phillipines and Guam. In fact the US has conducted more joint military exercises with these nations in the past 3 years than it has with any other formerly allied nation.

I suspect that the next phase of the US plan to build up allies to contain China will be in consolidating political support with it's traditional SEATO allies in addition to the ones i've mentioned, and calling for the need and creation of a new organization to take SEATO's place with a strategic emphasis equal to if not greater than NATO's.