Unintended Consequences of US Alliances in Asia ( Copy Right @ The Diplomat, original article by Robert E. Kelly)
The conventional wisdom on U.S. alliances in Asia, at least in the West, Japan, and Taiwan (but not necessarily in South Korea), is that they are broadly a good thing. One hears this pretty regularly from U.S. officials and the vast network of U.S. think tanks and foundations, such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the American Enterprise Institute, and their many doubles in Asia. U.S. alliances, we are told, provide stability. They keep China from dominating the region . They hem in North Korea and defend the powerfully symbolic South Korean experiment in liberal democracy and capitalism. They prevent the nuclearization of South Korea and Japan and a spiraling regional arms race. In short, they re-assure. The Chinese would almost certainly disagree with these attributions. I have argued in The Diplomat before that Chinese hegemony is less likely than U.S. and especially Japanese alarmism would have one think. Nor is it really clear that China i