Strategic Minilateralism and the Regional Security Architecture of the Indo-Pacific

This book presents research on minilateralism; a major new trend within the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific region that commands attention. It specifically focuses on the predominant sub-category of “strategic minilaterals” – exclusive small-group configurations of major powers driven by the imperatives of strategic competition in a bid to reshape the regional order. In a deteriorating Indo-Pacific security environment, a greater understanding of this phenomenon across its conceptual and applied dimensions is a priority for scholars and practitioners.

The book first accounts for the rise of strategic minilateralism as a response to strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific theatre. It then positions the resurgent phenomenon of minilateralism alongside multilateral organisations, military alliances, and strategic partnerships within a three-layer taxonomical model that captures the changing nature of the security architecture in the Indo-Pacific.  Following this, it generates a dedicated analytical framework for addressing the focal questions appertaining to “strategic minilaterals”, patterned around their design, functionality, and future solvency. The framework is then applied to probe the inner workings of the Quad, AUKUS, and US-Japan Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) to evaluate their relative strengths and weaknesses as instruments of strategic competition. The book’s distinctive contribution is to codify and conceptually substantiate strategic minilaterals as a significant new form of security alignment and situate them within their multiple external and internal operating contexts.