[PeterisP]

Many interesting points, but the "mutual defensive pacts that will automatically draw nations into war" part seems to not apply today.

For NATO, the key part is Article 5 that specifies "armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all", and is intentionally drafted so as to not apply to "Cold war turning hot" in Asia (e.g. the Korean war or Vietnam war or Afghanistan or Iraq) and to any "non-core territories" e.g. French or British overseas territories or pacific islands like Guam. Heck, a literal repeat of Pearl Harbor and invasion of Hawaii would not trigger Article 5 (though NATO could and would likely take action despite not being required to do so) - the NATO treaty is explicitly designed to not draw nations automatically into war unless USSR or someone else starts WW3 in Europe or attacks mainland USA. It's hard to imagine any Chinese actions regarding their ambitions (e.g. South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) that could trigger the NATO Article 5 which would automatically draw nations into war, anything in Asia would give each nation a choice whether to get involved and if so, how much.

I'm not informed about the Russia-China treaties much, but IMHO they also don't have any strong mutual defence pacts, they have some limited military cooperation and sharing but that's it; they had a mutual defence pact in 1950s but that's long gone now. For example, there's the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Sino-Russian_Treaty_of_Fr... where the strongest relevant obligation in Article 9 would require each party, if it's attacked, to.... immediately contact the other and consult about the situation; it does not include any agreement or obligation to actually do anything about it.