In Forum: 2024 — Minilaterals in the Indo-Pacific

19 January 2024

Minilaterals have become the partnerships of choice for addressing joint problems in the Indo-Pacific and deepening cooperation beyond traditional formats. With multilateral institutions such as the United Nations increasingly paralysed by geopolitical competition and rising frustrations with the dysfunctionality of the (liberal) international order, minilaterals promise a small but smart alternative to global governance. Examples such as the Quad, AUKUS, and various trilateral formats suggest that minilaterals can be more than a one-time photo op. At the same time, minilaterals are still searching for their rightful place alongside more established bodies such as the ASEAN and the expanding Belt and Road Initiative.

In this In Forum, 9DASHLINE invites several experts to assess whether minilaterals can make global governance more effective and whether the institutional landscape of the Indo-Pacific will become overcrowded in 2024.

MINILATERALISM AS A COMPLEMENTARY — OR EVEN AN ALTERNATIVE — MODE FOR THE INDO-PACIFIC

NAZIA HUSSAIN — ASSOCIATE RESEARCH FELLOW, CENTRE FOR MULTILATERALISM STUDIES (CMS), THE S. RAJARATNAM SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (RSIS), NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU)

Mounting concerns over seemingly irreconcilable interests in global governance, the slow pace of multilateral negotiations, and great power competition have increasingly pushed minilateralism to the fore as a complementary — or even alternative — mode of diplomacy and rulemaking. Efforts at building minilateral mechanisms in the Indo-Pacific have intensified, starting with the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia in 2017 and the announcement of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security partnership in 2021. Minilaterals offer an edge vis-à-vis informality, select membership, and a narrower issue-based focus.

Setting aside its advantages, minilateralism has been met with varying degrees of acceptance and scepticism in the Indo-Pacific. There are concerns that these new minilateral arrangements, driven by the ideological impasse stoking US-China tensions, may pose a serious challenge to the existing ASEAN-centric multilateral architecture and the rules-based order in the region. However, minilateralism does not have to be mutually exclusive with or a substitute for multilateralism. Rather, it can be seen as a layer of cooperation which is complementary to broader multilateral mechanisms. Harnessing synergies between minilateralism and multilateralism is crucial for balancing out both modes of diplomacy, and emerging minilaterals have the potential to make global governance more effective in this era of intensifying great power rivalry.

MINILATERALS ARE HERE TO STAY, BUT STILL PROVING THEIR WORTH

SHIBANI MEHTA — SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, SECURITY STUDIES PROGRAM, CARNEGIE INDIA

The nimble, non-ideological, and voluntary format of minilaterals is a functional innovation to overcome the paralysis that has weakened the multilateral system. It enables pragmatic coalitions in which countries retain their agency in defining the group and their role in it. These features make minilaterals particularly suited for the Indo-Pacific. The diverse national interests, varying degrees of threat perceptions, and unique political ambitions that make up the Indo-Pacific provide, as C Raja Mohan described, the testing ground for minilaterals.

The features that make minilaterals attractive also harbour the risk of efforts being duplicated, especially in non-security initiatives. For instance, numerous groups in the Indo-Pacific recognise the challenges posed by illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, difficulties in managing outer space debris, or the need for resilient undersea cable protection. This may result in parallel decision-making tracks across the network of minilaterals causing inefficiencies with multiple small groups addressing the same problem with different solutions.

Achieving a balance between flexibility and inclusivity is crucial to ensure that minilaterals contribute to enhancing, rather than fragmenting, global governance.

MINILATERALS FOR SOUTH CHINA SEA MARITIME SECURITY

DR CHARMAINE WILLOUGHBY — ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, DE LA SALLE UNIVERSITY

Minilateral arrangements are an alternative mechanism for addressing South China Sea maritime security. These arrangements can circumvent protracted discussions on territory and sovereignty by focusing on less sensitive — but no less important — areas of cooperation like the environment, climate change, coastal development, combatting human trafficking, and counterterrorism.

Two minilateral arrangements hold promise in the South China Sea. The first can revolve around maritime law enforcement, with concerned parties converging on common issues like illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, piracy, and armed robbery at sea. The effort will require increased coordination among the coast guards and navies and joint maritime training. The second potential minilateral arrangement in the South China Sea lies in civil maritime security programmes, specifically focusing on developing and applying maritime domain awareness. Initiatives here can include coastal management, coral reef restoration, capacity building of local communities, and efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. From this perspective, minilateralism can be integral to minimising the effects of great power rivalry.

MINILATERALS AS A SYMPTOM OF MULTILATERALISM'S INADEQUACY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

RAJESHWARI KRISHNAMURTHY — VISITING FELLOW, INSTITUTE OF PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES (IPCS)

As a collective endeavour, global governance is as much a continuous process involving multiple moving parts as it is an outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike their multilateral counterparts that are generally more broad-based and structurally defined, minilaterals are customisable formats of organising particularistic, solution-oriented collaboration among smaller groups of like-minded stakeholders on shared concerns or priorities, typically issue and (sub)region-specific. Thus, be it in the Indo-Pacific or elsewhere, the proliferation of minilaterals is not productive or counterproductive in and of itself.

Burgeoning minilaterals in the Global South — especially in the wider ‘Indo-Pacific’ region — are not just symptomatic of the inadequacies that hinder extant global governance structures in addressing contemporary issues. Their thematic objectives also highlight shared key concerns among regional and extra-regional stakeholders against the backdrop of multiple and simultaneous transitions where the social, technological, geopolitical, and environmental intersect, influencing stability, security, and development. Equally, the operative features of these arrangements — including legal touchstones and procedural aspects of how cooperation and coordination is organised — speak to the enduring normative purchase of multilateral values that underpin the wider global governance ‘project’ as well.

Emerging minilaterals can have a complementary effect towards making global governance more context-responsive to present and future realities, for all stakeholders. Nevertheless, whether extant and emerging minilaterals and multilaterals ultimately benefit or injure global governance hinges on the extent to which their practical effects are steered to not only not conflict with, but also align with, the fundamental goals of global governance and multilateralism.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/首相官邸.