A New Strategic Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific

T he 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 ruleand norm-making, while the other focuses on military cooperation to check rising powers’ behavior. Both share the same strategic