29 August 2022, NIICE Commentary 8227
Avinav Singh Khatri
In order to assess the prospects of minilateralism in Asia, one has to start by understanding what minilateralism is. Minilateralism is simply a grouping of like-minded countries coming together to accelerate speed to achieve mutual interest or defend against any threats. Most of the times there are three countries that form minilateral frameworks, but, it is not always necessary to consist of only three countries; sometimes, it can be four or five or maybe more. However, trilateral relations have been the most effective. Minilateralism describes diplomacy practiced in a group of countries or organizations, which may be governmental, non-governmental, or other institutions of international politics, dealing with specific issues or problems—recognizing the challenges of the present global agenda. Such global agendas include global and transnational issues, such as climate change, terrorism, war, poverty, and infectious epidemics, which any single country cannot solve. These are too complex and intricate to treat as a whole and need to be broken down into smaller sub-topics that can be handled practically. The existing multilateral frameworks do not address such problems. For this reason, minilateral frameworks have been created that consist of a limited number of members and deal with defined topics.
Need for Minilateralism
Today’s world is dynamic and fast-changing. In this fast-changing world, a lot of disputes and tensions are also rising at the same pace. Reasons for such might be different. Furthermore, it is seen that such issues are not addressed adequately by multilateral institutes, thus new kind of small regional grouping, which is more effective, targeted, and can make rapid decisions, is felt necessary to resolve such regional disputes. As a result, various minilateral cooperation rises. The growth of this pattern of minilateral cooperation is related to the dissatisfaction of the regional countries with the existing multilateral mechanisms and the strategies of the relevant countries for dealing with regional changes. In recent times, minilateralism has gained worldwide attention.
Minilateralism in Asia Pacific
The phenomenon of minilateralism is increasing and becoming important in the Asia Pacific region. Several minilateral collaborative efforts have developed in the Asia-Pacific region over the past decade. This region has seen a series of intense steps towards minilateral cooperation which involves dialogue between countries like the US, Japan, India, Australia, and France. Also, several series of talks are going on with other countries of the Indo-Pacific regions, which have common interests and shared values, to establish collaborative cooperation in the region. This has resulted in the rise in minilateral cooperation such as trilateral dialogue between India, US-Japan, Australia-Japan-India, the US-Japan-India, and Australia, also known as QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), and the recent one between India Australia and France in 2020. Apart from these, trilateral partnerships among India, Indonesia, Australia, India, Japan France are in the pipeline.
There are various reasons for the rise of minilateral cooperation. They are formed to address regional issues, accelerate economic growth, strengthen diplomatic relations, promote trade, cooperate in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and many others. However, the minilateral cooperation that has emerged in the Asia-Pacific region is more focused on security cooperation. Australian scholar William T Tow in his article, “The Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, minilateralism, and Asia-Pacific Order Building, in an edited work of Yuki Tatsumi, “US-Japan-Australia Security Cooperation: Prospects and Challenges, published by Stimson Center, highlighted ‘minilateralism is becoming a prominent security trend in contemporary Asia Pacific geopolitics’. The primary reason for this is the aggressive rise of China and its disputes with various countries in the South China Sea. Many countries in this region have disputes with China, and countries are coming together so that they can negotiate with China to settle their disputes. Another reason is the decline in the need for US security guarantees by many medium-strength countries in this region. In addition to dealing with regional uncertainties, the minilateral cooperation between medium-sized countries like India, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea, Thailand Philippines, reflects their intention to create an independent regional architecture. North Korea’s nuclear threat is another reason.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has taught the world that the national solutions to global problems do not work. On the other hand, it is also seen that the efficiency of the multilateral institutions in effectively handling this pandemic is also heavily criticized. Several experts’ states that such an institute fails to handle this situation and therefore, the need for minilateral grouping, which consists of a small number of members and is specifically more targeted and rapid in decision making, is inevitable. While other scholars believe minilateralism will be diplomacy’s future due to its nature. In the context of the Asia Pacific region, more minilateral cooperation will rise because of the transformations that are going on in this region. However, more will also depend on how China and US respond to these changes and address the regional issues.
Avinav Singh Khatri is Research Intern at NIICE.
