Maybe Mark Esper didn't say precisely that ASEAN need to evolve into a Nato-style alliance, but that was the sense practically. However Douglas Paal, a great friend of this podcast, said that only ignorant American policy makers and analysts can believe in such an alliance. When Dulles tried to dictate security policy in the region, he refused to send air conditioning appliances to the US Embassy in Bangkok because he believed that the city was not so hot in the summer. The Americans that believe in a Nato-style alliance in SEA are making the same clumsy mistake of Dulles.