American Defense Agreements Post-World War II

American power is relative to the power of all other Nation-States and the sum of their collective agreements.

American diplomats built a web of alliances to comprehensively and collectively respond to the ever-developing inevitability of interstate conflict and deter upstart Nation-States from alienating or infringing upon on the sovereignty of their neighbors. Afterall, the world added 96 new Nation-States to the list of 99 after the conclusion of World War II in 1945. Holding a fragile new world order together, American-led collective defense agreements fostered a powerful rule of law system of international accord capable of withstanding the pressures of the adversarial Soviet Union-led alliance system known as the Warsaw Treaty Organization ("Warsaw Pact", 1955).

American diplomats formed defense agreements across the globe for expressly disparate ends depending on the theatre, and its associated dynamics, of concern. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, 1949) in Europe countered the looming threat of the Soviet Union (and later the Warsaw Pact as a whole). The now defunct (dissolved in 1977) Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO, 1951) established a common front to the perceived spread of communism in East Asia. The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty, 1948) brought 21 American Nation-States under one collective umbrella to mediate interstate conflict and rally collective defensive actions in the face of a volatile post-war power vacuum related to an eviscerated European imperium. And as recently as 2021, the Australia-United Kingdom-United States Trilateral Security Partnership (AUKUS, 2021) was built upon a shared concern for the negative impacts of Chinese belligerence on world order and peace.

The United States strikes bilateral defense agreements and negotiates the creation and maintenance of multilateral defense organizations to promote regional stability, engage in the peaceful settlement of difference, and engender a shared interest in collective security arrangements.

The graphic below presents America's agreements since the end of World War II. Explore the timescale and toggle the status filter to see what agreements dissolved or when they originated. This is the first of a series of graphics that will show the state of American foreign affairs and offer an approach to understanding America's international standing.

*For better viewability and the entire graphic, please visit the source here.*