When former Biden administration official Ely Ratner last year proposed a binding, NATO-style “Pacific Defense Pact ” with an integrated command structure among the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, he delivered an accidental indictment of a central weakness in Washington’s Asia strategy. Whether Ratner’s proposal is politically feasible or not is beside the point. The fact that a former senior Pentagon official involved in shaping Pacific policy felt compelled to propose it is telling.
The question then arises: if the region’s existing minilateral arrangements are already sufficient to deter aggression, why is a more formal defense pact necessary?
In the South China Sea, the Philippines has accused Chinese coast guard vessels of using water cannons against Philippine boats and, on some occasions, ramming them in disputed waters. Japan, meanwhile, has also observed an increase in Chinese patrols around the Senkaku Islands. In response, Washington and its Indo-Pacific partners have built an alphabetical soup of new security arrangements to deter China—like the QUAD, the emerging U.S.-Japan-Australia-Philippines “Squad,” and, as of this summer, a fresh ministerial forum linking Japan, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Each launch comes with a familiar pitch—that a wider network of partnerships can enhance deterrence and contribute to a more stable regional order. But they don’t.
The Minilateral Alternative
Officials describe this expanding web of minilaterals as a nimble alternative to multilateral institutions too slow to keep pace with emerging security challenges. There is considerable truth in the first half of that argument. These groupings undoubtedly deliver tangible benefits on certain fronts, including intelligence-sharing, coordinated maritime patrols, and pooled investment in critical minerals and defense technology.
The problem begins when their practical usefulness is quietly rebranded as something else—deterrence. But raising the potential costs of conflict is not the same as making the outcome of a crisis predictable or preventing it altogether. The Indo-Pacific’s expanding network of minilateral partnerships is useful for the former. It remains less convincing on the latter.
That distinction is significant. Deterrence isn’t a matter of goodwill or shared statements. Instead, it depends on an adversary believing, with near certainty, that an act of aggression is likely to trigger a guaranteed collective response. That belief requires clarity about who is obligated to act, under what circumstances, and how far that obligation extends. Formal treaties provide that clarity through binding language. NATO’s Article 5 , for example, states that “an attack on one is an attack on all.” It doesn’t eliminate the fear of abandonment, but it substantially raises the political and reputational costs of walking away. Those costs are steep enough that the commitment is taken seriously by allies and adversaries alike.
But the structural flexibility of minilateral arrangements leaves the question of clarity open. The ambiguity is not necessarily a flaw. In fact, it is the whole point. Washington gains forward presence without binding itself to defend partners who could drag it into a conflict it never chose. Middle powers naturally have reasons to prefer a model that keeps the risk of entrapment low, particularly when their core interests don’t align with Washington’s. Flexible coalitions allow them to cooperate where interests overlap while preserving room for maneuver elsewhere. Hence, they participate in these “cafeteria coalitions” for advanced technology access and diplomatic clout without surrendering their freedom to sit out a war that does not serve their interests. Both sides draw benefits from the same architecture while their exits remain open.
In effect, what is emerging in the Indo-Pacific is mutual hedging, not mutual defense. Therefore, calling it “deterrence architecture” gives it credit it hasn’t quite earned.
The Value of Treaties
Manila has a 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States. That treaty hasn’t eliminated the grey-zone activity either, but it has done something the QUAD never has: drawn a clear red line. Washington has publicly affirmed that Article IV of the treaty covers armed attacks on Philippine forces, vessels, and aircraft in the South China Sea — a threshold China has so far chosen not to cross.
The same pattern is evident in the East China Sea, where there’s no comparable minilateral framework at all. Instead, deterrence rests on Washington’s consistent commitment, restated across three administrations, that Article V of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty covers the Senkaku Islands.
The contrast is revealing. The arrangements that provide the greatest clarity are not necessarily the most flexible or innovative ones. They are the ones that tell an adversary, in reasonably unambiguous terms, where a line exists and what happens if it is crossed. No ministerial consultation has produced anything close to that. The takeaway isn’t that minilaterals are failing at their job. It’s just that drawing hard red lines was never their job to begin with.
The real problem is a category error—treating a structure built for peacetime coordination as though it can bear the weight of wartime credibility. The more these groupings multiply, the easier it becomes to mistake institutional activity for strategic capability, leaving the region believing that it is better defended than it actually is. A growing number of ministerial meetings, joint statements, exercises, and working groups can create the appearance of an increasingly integrated security order without answering the fundamental question at the center of deterrence: what happens when deterrence fails?
What Ratner Is Proposing
Ratner’s proposal brings that question into focus. A binding defense pact with an integrated command structure would compromise some of the flexibility that makes current minilateral arrangements attractive in exchange for greater clarity about collective action. Whether Washington and its partners should actually make that trade is a legitimate debate. But the debate cannot begin if policymakers pretend that today’s arrangements already provide what such a pact would provide.
This is a call for candor, not for escalation. The goal isn’t more alliances or more troops; it’s a tacit acknowledgment of what current minilateral architecture, however active, can and cannot promise, so that policymakers, allies, and adversaries alike aren’t operating on a shared illusion.
None of this means Washington and its partners should dismantle minilateral cooperation. The practical gains are real and worth keeping, but policymakers need to stop treating ministerial meetings as a substitute for security guarantees. The proliferation of these non-binding consultation mechanisms doesn’t produce clarity; instead, it risks institutionalizing ambiguity where strategic certainty matters most. That confusion leaves Beijing uncertain about where Washington’s real red lines sit, which is exactly the kind of uncertainty that makes miscalculation—not restraint—more likely.
And this is where the elephant in the room becomes impossible to ignore. The appeal of minilateralism is for a U.S. administration looking to preserve influence without committing to additional formal treaty obligations at a time when the durability of existing commitments, including NATO, is itself being questioned. For middle powers, that flexibility cuts both ways. They gain access, coordination, and a seat at the table, but they also have reason to insure themselves against the risk that U.S. commitments could become less reliable or more conditional under any given administration.
The proliferation of minilaterals is therefore not simply a response to China’s rise, but a reaction to uncertainty about the staying power of American commitments—particularly from a Washington now willing to consider the once-unthinkable action of abrogating treaty obligations. This underlying fear of American unreliability is precisely what fuels the strategic hedging of regional middle powers.
That is why mutual hedging, rather than mutual defense, is the more accurate description of the region’s emerging security order. The arrangements may deepen cooperation, but their very flexibility reflects a shared reluctance to make the kind of commitments that would transform cooperation into an obligation to fight. If a crisis erupts tomorrow, no amount of coordination between foreign ministries will answer the question that matters: who is actually obligated to fight, and under what conditions, once a crisis escalates?
Until the region has a clearer answer, its growing web of minilateralism may be producing more cooperation, more coordination, and more activity.But it is not necessarily producing more certainty. And deterrence ultimately depends on certainty.
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Mutual Hedging, Not Mutual Defense
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at FPIP.