China is acting belligerent, are as its allies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea is (likely) threatening another missile launch with their “Christmas present”, China is interfering in democracies across the world, copying Russia’s playbook and threatening the establishment of US allies in Taiwan, and the US-China trade war is continuing to heat up as China applies “reciprocal restrictions” on US diplomats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps most interestingly, however, is how Australia and other Oceanic\/ East Asian allies of the US are asking to join NATO, the North Atlantic<\/em> Treaty Organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The US has expanded NATO before, specifically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which the US tried to pressure Russia while they were down, threatening their security, and causing Russia to act even more belligerent and aggressive in response. In the process, they relish in the US “overextending” themselves via Collective Defense, pushing and prodding for weaknesses among other nearby allied (but not NATO members)<\/p>\n\n\n\n While many Western aligned nations, including Japan, Australia, and South Korea already have alliances with the US, NATO membership would help to form bonds between a “western security” alliance, and help increase US dominance and alliance over regions in Western Europe and East Asia, even though both region’s economies are being increasingly dominated by the Chinese rather than the Americans. In order to counter this trend, Western nations may need to strengthen their bonds, both militarily and economically in order to counter China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this also has the chance to destabilize the current world order. Already, we can see how the rise of China is quickly creating a bipolar world, and how China (and Russia) continues to try to threaten US allies. It’s possible that because China already feels surrounded by US allies in the region, they may continue to act even more belligerent with the expansion of NATO, further threatening democracies in the region, continuing unfair trade and internal monetary policy changes, and even further ramping up the vast amount of intellectual property theft they already engage in. By expanding NATO, the US would be essentially committing to counter China militarily, potentially sparking an arms race in the process, or an acceleration of cyber warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NATO may be on its death knell. The Soviet Union is gone, Europe isn’t threatened, and the process of mutually assured destruction and general stability of US allies seem to increasingly make NATO appear less important, with Trump pursuing an America First strategy, claiming the other members don’t pay the amount they need to. Perhaps this weakening of NATO could also embolden both Russia and China, encouraging them to push their power into the realms the US has started to back out of, and if the US wants to hold onto its allies in the region, it needs to make a more serious commitment to NATO or even expand it in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China is acting belligerent, are as its allies. North Korea is (likely) threatening another missile launch with their “Christmas present”, China is interfering in democracies across the world, copying Russia’s playbook and threatening the establishment of US allies in Taiwan, and the US-China trade war is continuing to heat up as China applies “reciprocal restrictions” on US diplomats. Perhaps most… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3802,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}