This policy makes sense:
In practice, this means that the U.S. will help the countries of the Indo-Pacific balance against a rising China that is increasingly trying to narrow the range of choices available to them through the use of political influence campaigns, economic pressures and geopolitical coercion. Beijing’s efforts to weaken U.S. alliances, its financing of pro-China politicians in countries throughout the region, its creeping expansion of naval influence in the South China Sea, its ongoing military buildup, and its use of loans and investments — as well as economic punishments such as selective embargoes — are all part of this project.
For Washington, maintaining the balance will require individualized relationships with a diverse set of partners: Democratic treaty allies such as Japan and Australia, emerging democratic partners such as India, and authoritarian regimes — Vietnam, Singapore — that do not share America’s preference for liberal politics at home but do want to preserve their freedom of action in a crowded region.
In the Cold War NATO was mostly a club of democracies and had the focal point of West Germany where most member states could focus their defense planning efforts in order to hold that key terrain between the Elbe River and Rhine River.
Asia has a variety of countries and no focal point for defense. So an Asian NATO makes no sense from a purely military point of view.
Instead, America can weave the diverse countries with different defense challenges into a pseudo-alliance through bilateral defense ties with each country that opposes China:
The idea that the neighbors of China will band together to oppose China is the wrong issue because without America they cannot really resist China with interior lines that can pick off one member of that hypothetical coalition without much of the rest being able to intervene. India and Japan have significant power. But their ability to project that power much beyond their own backyard is limited. Banding together isn't that important, practically speaking. ...
America's military power and geographic reach are the factor that can weave the separate power capabilities of nations around the perimeter of China into an effective proto-alliance.
Our absence from the region will allow China to divide and conquer.
The author in the first link notes that the policy I think makes sense on a military basis rests on traditional American policies of denying important concentrations of power to any single foe, self-determination by other countries, and tolerance for divergence from our ideals within the "alliance" in support of the bigger objective.
We have a new label for a policy that has always made sense. Let's see if we can implement it.
