| Summary/Abstract |
Why did American-led postwar institution building lead to different types of security orders in Asia and Europe? The article investigates the failure of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)—the only postwar multilateral security organization in the Asia-Pacific region that resembled NATO—as contrasted with NATO’s survival. Despite the popular notion of ‘American liberal hegemony’, the US-led multilateral security institution in fact faced serious resistance in Southeast Asia during the early years of the Cold War, as regional players viewed SEATO as yet another form of Western imperialism threatening their independence. The article makes a theoretical argument for the role of delegitimation in hegemonic order formation and shows that the Asian historical experience of Western colonialism had structural consequences for American-led hegemonic order building in Asia. China-India joint delegitimation strategies against the United States invoked local actors’ collective beliefs against colonialism portraying SEATO as a vehicle of Western domination. Once established, the United States’ European allies within SEATO placed constraints on the exercise of American hegemonic power, by taking advantage of the multilateral rules of SEATO and refusing to act collectively in the local crises in Laos. Archival evidence suggests that such delegitimation and restraint strategies were fairly successful in terms of limiting SEATO membership and blocking interventions in Indochina, strengthening Asian neutrality rather than creating a pro-US bloc in the region.
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