Minilateral Trends are the Future of Inter-State Cooperation

Coalition building has always been a significant and necessary aspect for a state seeking to shape or continue to have an international strategic order in its favor. These coalitions have evolved in various forms, including international organizations, regional institutions, regional alliances, and multilateral groups, and now minilaterals are leading international geopolitics. From a unipolar to a multipolar world, the United States has spearheaded most of these initiatives around the world.

What are Minilaterals? 

Minilaterals are usually informal arrangements with three to five states with a common goal regarding a particular challenge or a joint vision of collective security. Minilaterals carry a flexible approach to regional or global cooperation, and member states need not be geographically contiguous. We are witnessing an incremental rise in minilateral groupings to coordinate functional cooperation in wide-ranging areas of military security, trade, climate change, technology, and transnational organized crime. 

The emergence of minilaterals as a means of inter-state cooperation is related to the inability of large international and regional organizations to bring about cooperation and action on important issues that states face, owing to their unwieldy nature and diverse agendas of member states. Minilaterals are increasingly seen as cooperative frameworks to safeguard national interests and get strategic deliverables by coordinating with like-minded countries in mutual interest. 

There is continued criticism of the efficacy of multilateral organizations in political and security affairs and their failure to make their governance inclusive to reflect contemporary geopolitical reality.  In such a scenario, cooperation among smaller groups of major powers is a more pragmatic approach to achieving joint objectives.

Minilateral Trends

Minilaterals with a few members bound together by a common cause have emerged as the preferred mechanism for states to enhance their security cooperation. With compatible allies and partners, the United States has worked to create strategic minilateral coalitions beyond bilateralism and multilateralism to protect the existing international order. The minilaterals are not alliances in the traditional sense but judicious partnerships.  In the long run these minilaterals may direct the global balance of power.

Given the present global geopolitical environment, minilateral partnerships like Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) comprising the United States, India, Australia and Japan, and Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) are especially becoming relevant for preserving a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region, a critical component of the U.S. national security strategy.

The Quad member states are aligned in their vision of technological growth, space exploration, emerging technology, health care, supply chain resilience, maritime security, freedom of navigation, and intelligence sharing. Though the partner states may diverge on certain issues, their concerns converge to negate expansionist designs in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The main purpose of AUKUS, formed in 2021, is to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia and maintain a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region. Powerful members in both the minilaterals, with joint enterprise and capacity, add strength to the strategic perspective of the Free, Open and Inclusive Indo-Pacific concept.

Net Assessment

Minilateral arrangements are the future of democratic global governance. These cooperative frameworks give the United States an advantage in making issue-based strategic partnerships and shaping the global order. With the inclusion of Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy in his team, U.S. President Donald Trump has already indicated his emphasis on technology-driven development at the national level. Quad and AUKUS signify the extension of high-tech security and development at the global level. The U.S. should continue to lead and channel minilaterals like Quad and AUKUS to contain the expansionist states. This way, it can leverage the collective essence of democratic powers for regional stability and crisis response, aligning economic and security issues in the global domain.

(L-R) Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin walk together ahead of the AUKUS Defense Ministers Meeting at Old Royal Naval College on Sept. 26, 2024 in London. Photo by Kin Cheung – WPA Pool/Getty Images