Why would a country prefer quasi-alliance? Why would decision-makers choose quasialliance diplomacy? In order to answer these questions, it is essential to study quasi-alliance more broadly. This chapter classifies decision-makers’ foreign strategies into three types: alliance diplomacy, quasi-alliance diplomacy and neutrality diplomacy without discussion of collective security, cooperative security and political partners. It is highlighted that decision-makers’ options of foreign policies involve both interests and values.

First of all, decision-makers are supposed to counterbalance the benefits and costs and select a security cooperation mode in consideration of national interests. Alliance, as the highest level of security cooperation, could threaten potential enemies but will increase the cost of maintaining the alliance and the risk of unreliable written security commitments and the potential treachery of allies. Statistics show that only 27% of covenants are fulfilled when conflicts break out, and the credibility of alliance has always been questioned by political leaders and scholars. In order to avoid being abandoned or entrapped, those who want to implement security cooperation in a pragmatic manner will choose quasi-alliance rather than alliance diplomacy, whose fundamental dogma is that it is advisable to develop a relatively flexible quasi-alliance since alliance lacks reliability.

Second, decision-makers would also take values into consideration while pursuing quasi-alliance diplomacy because their options are usually influenced by domestic factors and subjective factors of decision-makers. As previously stated, with the fierce striving for hegemony, different countries made different choices among alliance diplomacy, neutrality diplomacy and quasi-alliance diplomacy. In the 1950s, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan together with the US established the South-East Asia Treaty Organization to defend against China, but most of these countries do not have geographical proximity with China, which thus would not pose a direct threat to them. Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and India are geographically adjacent to China, but they were not interested in the “Asian version of NATO” proposed by America. Even after the border clash with China, India did not join the multilateral Asian military alliance system initiated by the US. It can be demonstrated that quasi-alliance has not only been influenced by threat but also by values and strategic cultures of a state.