Australia and New Zealand join NATO

According to wikipedia's Nato article Australia and New Zealand didn't join Nato because of geographical reasons. But what if they had joined the alliance, making it not a European-american alliance. What would have happened except Nato needing a new name (Australia and New Zealand aren't northern nor close to the atlantic)? What other countries would have joined (my first guess would have been Japan, maybe South Korea)? What would have been the effects for the cold war?
 
They were already joined to the US and UK - and a number of other Commonwealth nations, such as Singapore and Malaysia, - via several regional defence treaties: ANZUS, ANZUK, etc.
 

CalBear

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Well, first off they'd have to change the name.:p North Atlantic Treaty Organization simply won't fit if you have the Anzac's (wrong Ocean, Hemisphere, side of the Dateline).
 
Well, the Americans formed regional defense unions, including NATO, SEATO, and CENTO. If the U.S. had instead formed a single, global anti-communist alliance, something like Draka world's Alliance for Democracy instead, Australia and NZ would naturally be members. It wouldn't make any sense though to have either in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
 
Well, first off they'd have to change the name.:p North Atlantic Treaty Organization simply won't fit if you have the Anzac's (wrong Ocean, Hemisphere, side of the Dateline).

Well, they could do what the East Coast Hockey League did a few years ago when they absorbed the lower-level West Coast Hockey League and change their official name to the ECHL. The initials no longer stand for anything, even though historically they did. NATO can be the same thing.
 

Cook

Banned
They were already joined to the US and UK - and a number of other Commonwealth nations, such as Singapore and Malaysia, - via several regional defence treaties: ANZUS, ANZUK, etc.

You are referring to the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) which has Great Britain, Australia, New Zeeland, Malaysia and Singapore as signatories. It was established at the time of Malaysia and Singapore’s independence primarily to defend them from Indonesia
 
Well, first off they'd have to change the name.:p North Atlantic Treaty Organization simply won't fit if you have the Anzac's (wrong Ocean, Hemisphere, side of the Dateline).
Well, to keep it simple, we could call it the Notoriously Anzac Treaty Organization. :D
 
NATO's geographic area was carefully drawn up to not include colonial territories (although it did include French Algeria). It wasn't too much of a problem in Europe to use straight lines as there weren't too many European colonial territories.

If it also includes a Pacific/Indian Ocean zone, it would need some amazing geographic juggling to include Australia + NZ (and probably Singapore which was the main British base in the region), but probably not various British + French Pacific islands, definitely not the Dutch East Indies, nor Portuguese Timor.

If NATO does include DEI or Timor, why should Italy or Turkey commit to fighting for these places?

If NATO does not include DEI or Timor, why should Netherlands or Portugal commit to fighting for British/French/Australia/NZ Pacific/Indian-Ocean territories, when they're not getting the same promise in return?

It also raises the question of why Australia and NZ would want to pre-commit (remember attack on one is attack on all) to defending say European Turkey, or vice-versa? They might commit, if and when the situation arises, but they will want to leave their option open, not make a commitment set in stone. Let's not forget a similar sort of question already came up in the 1920s - Chanak Crisis - and the answer was that Australia + NZ weren't prepared to fight for Turkish borders.

And P.S. The Draka world AFD analogy doesn't apply (even without the names), since in the Draka world, there is only 1 worldwide enemy (the Draka), not several potential regional enemies.
 
The anglophone world would obviously come to the aid of Australia and New Zealand; however, the all-for-one one-for-all nature of NATO would require all European nations to go to war shoulder to shoulder with a couple of Britain's ex-colonies. I can't see that happening, as Britain would be loathed to go to war for other European countries ex-colonies.
 
What SHOULD happen is for NATO to be disbanded since it is a relic of the Cold War that is now over and for a new organization to take its place adn does for the most part what it does now.

I suppose one could call it APIDO(Atlantic Pacific Indian Defence Organization) or something like that.
 

Raymann

Banned
What SHOULD happen is for NATO to be disbanded since it is a relic of the Cold War that is now over and for a new organization to take its place adn does for the most part what it does now.

So you want to scrape NATO and replace it with another organization that does much the same thing? :)

Oookaaayyy...so why just not make some reforms to get what you want?
 

Raymann

Banned
I'm not worried about the names. In the end you just have to justify to nations like Albania why they should have a mutual defense treaty with Australia.

Something else I just realized, New Zealand can't join...they won't allow nukes or US military ships into their ports anyway.
 
I'm not worried about the names. In the end you just have to justify to nations like Albania why they should have a mutual defense treaty with Australia.

Something else I just realized, New Zealand can't join...they won't allow nukes or US military ships into their ports anyway.

Actually, there has been talk about redoing ANZAC to allow New Zealand to not allow nukes into their ports and still be a part of the alliance...also, the POD for this would be in the 50s, and New Zealand didn't become anti-nuclear until the 80s.
 
Something else I just realized, New Zealand can't join...they won't allow nukes or US military ships into their ports anyway.
Well, they were in ANZUS, and are still bound to defend the other nations... but the US won't defend them, a policy which was still maintained as late as the Clinton Administration (See Madeline Albright's visit to NZ and Lucy Lawless's commentary...after Albright and a reporter invoked Xena, it should be noted.)
 
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