A New Strategic Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific

A New Strategic Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific Kei Koga (bio) The emergence of "strategic minilateralism" has been a trend in the Indo-Pacific since the second half of the 2010s. Although minilateral cooperation between the United States and its allies and partners started in the early 2000s, the late 2010s saw more institutionalized and strategically oriented forms of minilateral security collaboration begin to emerge from two main drivers: the rise of China and the lack of effective regional security mechanisms for responding to that rise.1 China's rejection of the South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal ruling in July 2016 served as a particular catalyst for this new "strategic minilateralism" in the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, Beijing's growing regional influence, including through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has become more visible, drawing diplomatic support for China's presence from its neighbors. In response to China's rise and the threat it poses to U.S. regional primacy, Washington has attempted to link its bilateral alliances and partnerships together since the early 2000s, as shown in the establishment of the Australia-Japan-U.S. Trilateral Strategic Dialogue in 2002. Nevertheless, this effort has not yet proved to be sufficiently effective in pushing back against China. In this context, new strategic minilaterals, such as the Quad (comprising Australia, Japan, India, and the United States) and AUKUS (comprising Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), have been constructed. Examining the institutional development and key characteristics of the Indo-Pacific's new strategic minilateralism, particularly the Quad and AUKUS, this essay argues that such frameworks are largely a Western construct that attempt to fill the expectation and capability gaps in regional security systems for underwriting the existing regional order. There are basically two types of minilateralism: one aims to shape the regional order through rule- and norm-making, while the other focuses on military cooperation to check rising powers' behavior. Both share the same strategic [End Page 27] objective—to defend the existing international order from challenges posed by states that provide alternatives to it, particularly China. While these institution-building efforts are creating a new regional institutional architecture in the Indo-Pacific, its development remains an ongoing process. The success of minilateralism depends on how the United States and other members of these groupings formulate a grand design for minilateral frameworks and develop an optimal division of labor among themselves. Defining Indo-Pacific Minilateralism The term "minilateralism" is often used without a clear definition. This essay defines minilateralism as an informal or formal grouping of three to five states that aim to coordinate their strategic agendas and facilitate functional cooperation in particular issue areas.2 To be sure, the number of states required for any grouping to be considered a minilateral is relative, depending on what types of multilateralism exist and are dominant in the region at any given time. For example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has been considered a multilateral framework ever since its 1967 inception, grew from its original five members to ten in 1999. In Central Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, established in 2001, consists of six states and is considered a multilateral framework. By contrast, the Five Power Defence Arrangements has a mixed record: while it was traditionally considered to be multilateral, some now regard it as a minilateral grouping.3 According to the definition adopted in this essay, however, in the contemporary Indo-Pacific context, any interstate groupings comprising only three to five members should be considered minilateral rather than multilateral. Even according to this definition, minilateralism remains a fluid and flexible concept. It encompasses both informal and formal arrangements, with minilateral groupings sometimes transitioning between these two categories. For example, the China-Japan-Korea Trilateral Summit was originally an informal gathering held back to [End Page 28] back with the ASEAN +3 process. Since 2008, however, it has evolved into a more formal framework after it was convened independently and then formalized through the establishment of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in 2010. The Trilateral Summit also gradually expanded its agenda to include economic and diplomatic issues alongside nontraditional security cooperation.4 By contrast, the formal U.S.-Japan-Korea Trilateral...