The persistence of the US-led alliances in the Asia-Pacific: An order insurance explanation

Alliance persistence in the face of the disappearance of mutual threat or the deterioration of mutual threat perceptions between allies comprises the major concern of this article. This article argues that an alliance (whose primary threat-centric rationale has significantly diminished, if not disappeared) persists if two conditions are met: (i) the alliance serves as an essential arrangement for pursuing an 'order insurance strategy' (which is termed in this article as 'alliance for order insurance') and (ii) the allies invest for such benefits with arrangements to ensure alliance preservation against challenges that arise as a result of alliance mismanagement (which is termed in this article as 'insurance for alliance'). To test this argument, this article evaluates the persistence of the United States- Australia alliance in the post-Cold War period. Also, to achieve some basis for falsification, it explores the discontinuation of the United States-New Zealand leg of ANZUS since the mid-1980s and the United States- Philippines alliance during most of the 1990s.