AHC: Have SEATO last up to modern day.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization is an organization similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, except it was based in Southeast Asia instead of Western Europe. They were both formed around the same time, but the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization dissolved in 1977.

Challenge: Have the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization last up to the present day 2013.
 
Buy in from states actually located in Southeast Asia would help a lot as well. NATO has the occasional member geographically separated, but SEATO was very much an organization by and for outside powers INTERESTED in the region.
 
I mean, if you have something like the Spratly Islands issue going hot early on, that's pretty much the only really distinct thing that can unite an otherwise fractious, self-interested, and entirely divided region. Seriously, Buddhist Thailand and the Catholic Philippines (as an example) have plenty of problems of their own without needing to look after being the guardians of regional security, but nothing offers a more disturbing potential boogeyman than an aggressive China.

What would motivate China to do this is another question. Mao and co. while delusionally fanatical, were also not stupid enough to fight the West on exactly the kind of terms the West liked to fight on.
 
Like Taiwan, South Vietnam, Japan, etc?

The big elephant in the room is Indonesia.

The fact that Indonesia had no interest in joining even after the '68 coup really says a lot about how appealing SEATO was to nations that were actually in Southeast Asia.

In short, if the fourth most populous nation in the world (and I believe Indonesia was that way at that time too) sitting over the most strategic shipping lanes in the entire world wasn't interested in an organization that was committed to defending the region, that organization probably isn't viable.
 
Indonesia was too busy fighting SEATO (Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the former British colonies of Malaya and Borneo) to think about joining it.
 
Indonesia was too busy fighting SEATO (Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the former British colonies of Malaya and Borneo) to think about joining it.

Indeed. Wasn't SEATO as much about containment of Indonesia as anything else?

Maybe get Malaysia/Singapore to join properly, to anchor it better as an actual regional bloc?
 
Indonesia was too busy fighting SEATO (Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the former British colonies of Malaya and Borneo) to think about joining it.

Hence why I mentioned it still wasn't interested even after the '68 coup (which pretty much meant the end of the Konfrontasi as the Suharto government had no interest in continuing it).

Indeed. Wasn't SEATO as much about containment of Indonesia as anything else?

Maybe get Malaysia/Singapore to join properly, to anchor it better as an actual regional bloc?

Definitely a start with those two.
 

Robert

Banned
Security Guard Frank Wills never finds the taped opened door, and Watergate never takes place. President Nixon stays in office, and the U.S. keeps it's treaty obligations. When Mao dies the hardline communist take over, and SEATO is expanded with Cambodia joining by the end of Nixon's term in 1977.

Nixon's Vice President, John Connelly, is elected in 1976 over Edmund Muskie, and continues Nixon's efforts in Detente, and lesses tensions with the Soviet Union. The Hardline regime in China becomes anti-American and Anti-Soviet, and threatens India and Japan, both of which Join SEATO in 1978.
 
No Sino-Soviet Split, allowing for a massive, united communist threat, and Britain and France stay out, reserving SEATO for only nations actually in Southeast Asia(and the USA, of course) and not making it look so imperialistic. And of course, victory in Vietnam. That should keep it around a bit longer. Having it survive to the modern day, I don't know about, though.
 
No Sino-Soviet Split, allowing for a massive, united communist threat, and Britain and France stay out, reserving SEATO for only nations actually in Southeast Asia(and the USA, of course) and not making it look so imperialistic. And of course, victory in Vietnam. That should keep it around a bit longer. Having it survive to the modern day, I don't know about, though.

Or the US could support Ho Chih Minh from the start.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html

The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence.

Yes that is its name, and no the first part isn't just a coincidence.
 
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