SEATO with teeth, or other effective NATOs?

Well, it looks like the Strategos' Risk curse might have struck again, because General Finley's Cold War timeline is not updating. In the meantime, his thread considered an East Asian equivalent to NATO in place, though that's partly because he has South China out of communist hands.

Nevertheless, could a larger SEATO exist? It would also include Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. Instead of being a knitting club like it or the Baghdad Pact were in history, it would actually have military teeth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia_Treaty_Organization
 
SEATO with teeth?

SEATO suffered from having a rather haphazard and ad hoc political basis.

IMO it had several stumbling blocks:
  • NATO had the USSR and the Warsaw Pact as a visible existential threat
  • SEATO had the Communist Chinese who seemed to be more of a threat to themselves than anyone else in the 1960's.
  • You had such a vast gulf between the US, UK, and France's resources and agendas and those of newly independent SE Asian nations that NOBODY in the US took them nearly as seriously as they took those of Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Canada.
  • YMMV how well the Marshall Plan revived the Western European economies after WW2, but the Asian nations never got that level of help or attempted that level of economic and political coordination. The last attempt was the Japanese East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere with all the baggage attendant.

So reverse that trend. Make SEATO an economic as well as political and military alliance where Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Thais, Pakistanis, Malays, Indonesians, Aussies, New Zealanders, Americans, Canadians, and so forth effect a customs union, free trade zone, and guarantee of stable borders, shared resources.

Shared military exercises and deployments allow all SEATO members to feel part of a bigger whole than just tagging along with the Americans.
 
Well regarding other effective NATOs, South America is rather interesting. Unlike Europe or Asia, with the exception of Castro deciding to invade a neighboring nation, the primary communist threat was domestic rather than foreign.

This lead to a sort of 'shadow NATO' headed by Argentina (and encouraged by the States) where the primary focus was on cooperation in intelligence operations rather than military defense. Although it was never actually called SATO or anything like that, on account of the fact intelligence operations are suppose to be secret.
 
Yeah, the creation of an effective either one would include economic and political cooperation, and a Marshall Plan type massive aid package to the regions concerned.
 
Theres always a more successful Commonwealth,though I dont know what POD would deliver that
 
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