This dissertation studies historically and theoretically why the United States developed mainly bilateral alliances in Asia-Pacific while it constructed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a multilateral alliance, in Europe in the early Cold War period. The question is puzzling in theories of international relations, because the United States, a major architect of both the alliance systems, behaved inconsistently in the two regions, a bilateralist in the Asian-Pacific and a multilateralist in the Atlantic, at least on the surface. This dissertation examines two cases of alliance formation in Asia-Pacific from 1950 to 1951 and from 1952 to 1954 and the case of the development and transformation of NATO (1948-1954). This study offers three major findings. First, the development of a collective defense alliance was closely linked to threatening international events, like the Korean War crisis in late 1950 and early 1951, the Dien Bien Phu in the first half of 1954, and the EDC crisis in the middle of 1954. Second, the study finds that the lack of Japanese contribution was crucial to the development of a collective defense alliance, such as the Pacific Pact, which was proposed by Dulles and Allison in 1951, and the Western Pacific pact, which was explored by the Eisenhower administration in 1954.
On the other hand, all the relevant major Atlantic powers--France, the FRG, the United Kingdom, and the United States--made substantial contributions to the Western European defense. These contributions accelerated joint military planning and the development of an integrated command structure, particularly after the basic agreement on German and American contributions was reached in 1950. Third, the study also suggests that these contributions of the major powers to balancing against external threats alone were insufficient for the development of a collective defense alliance. Historical evidence shows that safeguards for intra-alliance security were indeed important in addition to major powers' contributions to the counterbalancing of external threats. In this sense, the 1954 historic British defense commitment and the strengthening of NATO were the keys for preventing any member--particularly West Germany--from abusing its national forces in the future.
