China’s concern that the U.S. is seeking to build an "Indo-Pacific version of NATO” has one major problem: A previous effort failed in the 1970s, and most Asian countries haven’t been interested in trying again.
China Foreign Minister Wang Yi raised eyebrows on Monday when he accused the U.S. of looking to form a NATO-style military alliance "to maintain the U.S.-led system of hegemony.” The charge echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine, raising questions about whether Beijing may one day take similar preemptive military action in the region.
But as European nations become increasingly open to joining the U.S.-led military alliance, Asian governments that don’t already have mutual defense treaties with America have been reluctant to get too close. Many are economically dependent on China, whose economy is 10 times larger than Russia’s, and have resisted picking sides in the broader geopolitical struggle between the world’s biggest economies.