US-led Alliances and Contemporary International Security Disorder: Comparative Responses of the Transatlantic and Asia-Pacific Alliance Systems

Abstract

US-led security architectures in the Asia-Pacific and Europe are experiencing pressure due to ongoing geostrategic transformation in these regions, most notably the rapid expansion of China’s power, North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship and Russia’s renewed aggressive adventurism. These readjustments have often been examined through the prism of changing balance of power between the US-led liberal international forces and revisionist powers aiming to alter the international order. Going beyond this analysis in the literature, this article sheds lights on the ways in which the USA has attempted and is attempting to reshape US-led alliances in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. The article finds that the US-led alliance systems and security partnerships will continue to evolve divergently due both to their different path-dependent identities and the different types of challenges they face regionally.