Minilaterals are the new game in town. They act as loosely aligned groupings of several countries with specific strategic objectives in mind, working on shared interests and similar challenges. Running on voluntary commitments rather than legal bindings, minilaterals provide ample room for collaborations on diverse issues from security to economic cooperation.
Flexibility Trumps Rigidity
Many developing countries feel the need to engage in minilateral formats, as their flexible nature expands the scope of cooperation on urgent issues. Take, for example, the quick response of the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD)—US, India, Japan and Australia, during the early days of the pandemic. The QUAD started a robust vaccine partnership to supply critical vaccines and medical equipment to countries in the Indo-Pacific.
Apart from the flexibility, countries like India feel that minilateral groupings act as practical alternatives to traditional alliances, often perceived as sclerotic. For a country with a deep history of non-alignment and distrust of the West, India does not want to get bogged down under the hard security guarantees of a traditional alliance system. Nor are its Western partners keen to do so. As a country that prioritizes its strategic autonomy, India knows that it has to do the heavy lifting of securing its northern borders with China itself. Relying on an external actor to put boots on the ground is not a viable option, as New Delhi fears that complete dependence on external partners for security will constrain its independence in taking foreign policy decisions.
The Tale of the Elephant and the Dragon
Dramatic events in the Himalayas over the last two years have perhaps awakened New Delhi from its strategic slumber. Thousands of troops from both New Delhi and Beijing have been locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff along their disputed border since early 2020. Fighting between the two sides caused serious fatalities in the strategic Galwan Valley in June 2020, marking the worst border clash between the two Asian giants since 1967.
Given these developments, New Delhi’s entrenched belief of the last three decades that trade and economic reliance on Beijing could hold together a fragile bilateral equilibrium, despite an unsettled border, has been completely shattered. Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreements of the last few decades have run their course. With its incursions on the border, China is slowly chipping away at Indian territory by changing the facts on the ground. Through the rapid deployment of force and heavy infrastructure, China seeks to present India with a fait accompli: accept the new positions on the ground or face the dragon’s fire. Beijing’s assertion on the border completely nullifies the agreements that the Asian neighbours have signed in the last three decades, throwing peace on the borders in peril. As a result, strategic indecisiveness and naïve assumptions about the benign rise of China no longer cloud the thinking of the mandarins in New Delhi.
Unlike in the past, New Delhi conspicuously recognises China for what it is: India’s trickiest challenge in the coming decades. A long standoff in the Himalayas is a stark symptom of the larger Sino-Indian malaise. India also has reservations about China’s expanding maritime presence in the Indian Ocean region. China’s attempts to create semi-permanent bases in key ports around India – the so-called string of pearls strategy – is perceived as a threat as well. Last but not least, there is also Beijing’s all-weather partnership with Islamabad and the prospect of a two-front war – giving sleepless nights to many in New Delhi.
Everyone Likes Powerful Friends with Shared Interests
It is therefore a no-brainer that India now seeks to actively engage in flexible partnerships with like-minded partners in the Indo-Pacific. The United States, unsurprisingly, has a fundamental role in these strategic calculations. Washington is implicitly moving away from being the sole security guarantor in the Indo-Pacific to being an active facilitator of regional minilaterals. It wants regional powers like Japan, Australia and India to lift more weight and has assisted in the formation of local minilaterals anchored in the Indo-Pacific.
The QUAD is the most conspicuous manifestation of the current balance of power dynamics where Japan, India, Australia and the United States have coalesced together to provide a counter-weight to China’s belligerent rise, hoping to raise the costs for any Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. The desire for peace and stability, which could be disrupted by unilateral Chinese actions, lies at the core of such initiatives. The Japan-India-Australia trilateral and the India-Indonesia-Australia grouping are also pertinent examples of regional actors shouldering the responsibilities of an overstretched America. We have also witnessed the renewed engagement of European powers who have long-standing historic interests in the Indo-Pacific. France and the United Kingdom have taken the lead in contributing towards evolving frameworks like the Paris-Delhi-Canberra axis along with the AUKUS.
It is worth noting that these groupings of like-minded countries are not a euphemism for the ‘hub and spokes’’ system of a bygone era. Contemporary regional minilaterals are new constructions in their own right as they have demonstrated a keen willingness to engage with South East Asian players like Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. The eagerness to work with ASEAN is also a part of the same phenomenon. The presence of “non-aligned” India is ample reason to show that these minilaterals are products of changing times. Experts believe that such an approach will be mutually reinforcing for all minilaterals in the region that have overlapping interests.
Due to their vast capacity for manoeuvrability, India and like-minded countries also view these groupings as platforms for multifaceted cooperation. Maritime domain awareness, humanitarian assistance, outer space cooperation, emerging and critical technologies, resilient supply chains and climate change are other promising areas for deepening institutional ties among these countries. Such an agile outlook will strengthen the functional roots of these minilaterals and will help them outlive the immediate purpose of their existence: to counter the ambitions of an assertive China, be it salami-slicing on India’s borders, claiming territories in the South and East China Seas, or expanding military presence in the South Pacific islands region.
For countries like India that feel encumbered by existing multilateral institutions, that do not reflect contemporary geopolitical realities, small minilaterals combine the synergies of international cooperation with the efficiency of closely knit groupings. On the one hand, minilaterals do not carry historical baggage and are spared of bureaucratic bottlenecks of traditional multilateral institutions. On the other, they can also act as stepping stones for consensus-building and agenda-setting in multilateral organisations. Take, for example, QUAD’s initiative in outer space. The grouping resolved to ensure uninterrupted access to space by framing consensual outer space governance rules and norms. A part of this initiative is ideal debris management practices for fostering outer space sustainability.
All these developments indicate that the global balance of power is changing. It is thus imperative for India to meaningfully participate in minilaterals and work towards practical and measurable goals that create favourable outcomes for international stability and global order.