By Asia Society Australia Maitri Fellow, Dr. Premesha Saha

Minilateralism is not a new phenomenon, but in recent times, especially after the resurgence of the QUAD2.0 in 2017, the rise of minilateral groupings like AUKUS and new trilaterals has led to a flurry of debate and discussion about the role of minilateralism in the strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific. Given the rise of great power competition, especially in the context of the tumultuous relationship between the US and China, the recognition by middle and emerging powers in the Indo-Pacific of the need to diversify their partnerships and the growing shortcomings of multilateral organisations have resulted in the rise of cooperative minilateral groups in the region. As scholars have pointed out, “minilateralism has emerged as an alternative – if not the cooperative format of choice – for several regional countries”.

Emerging powers like India, which insists on maintaining a non-aligned status and does not believe in forming alliances with any nation, participate in several of these minilaterals. With the prominence that minilateralism has assumed, are regional countries like India shifting from their long-established foreign policy stance of non-alignment? What are the driving factors that are pushing a non-aligned country like India to actively seek a presence in these groupings? There are also growing debates about the future direction of minilateral groupings. Most recently, these groupings have been recognised as the “building blocks of an Indo-Pacific regional architecture”. But can minilateral groupings really replace multilateral organisations like ASEAN (Association of the Southeast Asian Nations) and ASEAN-led mechanisms and play a central role in the regional architecture of the Indo-Pacific? There are also questions whether they might become more like military alliances in the future. In this scenario, what will be India’s future course of action, given that these developments will undoubtedly put India in a tough spot. This chapter will seek to examine these questions and to understand India’s position and policy towards minilateralism within the fraught and complex strategic setting of the Indo-Pacific region.

Defining Minilateralism and Explaining Its Rise

There is no fixed definition of minilateralism. Some scholars, like Brendan Taylor, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) of the Australian National University, state that “minilaterals typically involve three to nine countries who collaborate to address specific challenges that larger, more inclusive, and often more institutionalised multilateral structures are ill-suited to handle”. Minilaterals are task-oriented, exclusive, and more conducive to reaching consensus. Their informal nature also makes them more agile and adaptable. Given that minilaterals usually bring together like-minded countries or a “coalition of the willing”, reaching a consensus on policies and policy actions in these formats becomes easier. They therefore contrast with big multilateral groupings which, given their large pools of members with very diverse and varied approaches to foreign policy and security issues, diverging strategic interests, differing threat perceptions and different levels of economic development, make reaching a consensus in most cases a gigantic task.

Thomas Wilkins, from the University of Sydney refers to minilateralism as a cooperative mechanism which is “on a scale greater than bilateralism (think: US-alliances, and various Strategic Partnerships), but smaller than multilateralism (think: ASEAN or APEC-Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation)”. Minilaterals generally bring together some three to six states – though the numbers might vary – to “engage in practically orientated security cooperation in a newly institutionalised format. Designed to solve collective action problems outside of the confines of cumbersome multilateral organisations, they have emerged (or rather: re-emerged) as the instruments of choice for a range of states within the region wanting to increase their security cooperation.” Professor Kei Koga defines minilateralism as “an informal or formal grouping of three to five states that aim to coordinate their strategic agendas and facilitate functional cooperation in particular issue areas”.

As stated before, minilateralism is not a new phenomenon, minilateral groups have existed since the early 2000s, like the India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) founded in 2003, the BRICS grouping consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa formed in 2009, the Malacca Straits Patrol which includes Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand established in 2004, and MIKTA which includes Mexico, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Turkey and Australia established in 2013, to name just a few. The reason why minilateralism has now garnered so much attention is because, as Prof. Kei Koga puts it, since the second half of the 2010s, the Indo-Pacific region has seen the emergence of “strategic minilateralism”. He explains that the late 2010s witnessed the emergence of “more institutionalised and strategically oriented forms of minilateral security collaboration” influenced primarily by two factors: the rise of China and the lack of effective regional security mechanisms for managing and responding to it. It became clear that the traditional Asian security architecture, built around the US hub-and-spoke alliance network and ASEAN, was proving insufficient in dealing with a rising China and maintaining the regional status quo.

Strategic minilaterals are mainly influenced by, or are a response to, the complex and fraught geostrategic climate of the Indo-Pacific. The resurgence of the QUAD2.0 in 2017, the formation of AUKUS, and other trilateral security dialogues like that between US-Australia-Japan, as well as trilateral groupings like India-Japan-Australia, India-Australia-Indonesia and US-Japan-South Korea, among others, should be viewed in this context. These frameworks are “principally aimed at strategic competition across multiple potential domains – military, defence, economic, technological, ideological, and informational". They are seen as mechanisms aimed at: 1) maintaining a balance of power in response to China’s rise, and 2) maintaining the rules-based order and the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” vision by leveraging their strategic impact or sending out a strong message to countries whose rise is seen as belligerent. As some scholars point out, countries – especially middle and emerging powers which might fall outside the ambit of great powers but still have significant influence and strategic value – have begun to realise that “a thicket of such minilateral groupings engaging on a number of economic, security and strategic areas is better than relying on a single fragmented regional organisation that provides little by way of options and solutions in dealing with the regional challenges”. It is not just a matter of dealing with a “belligerent China”; minilaterals are also becoming an important platform for middle and emerging powers for navigating great power competition in the Indo-Pacific region, primarily that between the US and China.

India As a “Chosen Partner” for Minilateral Cooperative Frameworks

In India’s context, Kei Koga’s definition of minilateralism as an informal or formal grouping of a small number of countries that have shared interests coming together to “facilitate cooperation in particular issue areas” fits the best. This is reiterated by India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who states that “plurilateralism … describes a world beyond bilateral relations but which is short of multilateral. That where countries form combinations based on these convergences and overlaps. And you have really this phenomenon of groups of countries coming together for often a limited agenda, sometimes in an agreed theatre to pursue their interests.”

For India, minilaterals are essentially a platform for building coalitions and partnerships with like-minded nations in the Indo-Pacific region, in order to explore the option of working with regional countries on particular issues and to advance its own strategic interests and ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. India aims to emerge as one of the leading voices in the Indo-Pacific region and a leading global actor, and this ambition is facilitated by participation in minilateral groupings. Growing involvement in these formats also helps India in exploring policy options and keeping them open, that is in diversifying its partnerships and not putting all its eggs in one basket. This also makes it possible for India to act according to what New Delhi refers to as “strategic autonomy” and form “issue-based partnerships” in the Indo-Pacific region. Over the last decade, India has been involved in more than seven such trilaterals, at least five of them focusing specifically on different sub-regions within the Indo-Pacific.

Trilateralism is not new for India and can be traced back to the 1990s and early 2000s when India began participating in the Russia-India-China (RIC) and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) formats. With the Indo-Pacific concept gaining traction, India’s participation in minilaterals also intensified. But India’s growing participation in minilaterals was not just facilitated by its own willingness and ambitions, but also by countries like the US hoping that India could become a “balancer” against China’s growing assertiveness in the region. Increasingly, India has come to be seen as a balancing player in checking China’s rise and behaviour. Meanwhile even the US’s security allies, like Australia and Japan, have started to further strengthen and improve their bilateral partnership with India. The India-Australia, India-Japan, India-US security and defence partnerships have been growing steadfastly over the past decade. This undoubtedly helps explain why India has become a chosen partner in several minilateral initiatives like the QUAD and other trilateral dialogues and cooperative frameworks. The India-Japan-US trilateral began in 2011, well before the resurgence of the QUAD2.0 in 2017, and culminated in the Malabar exercises involving Japan in 2015 and Australia since 2020.

Since its resurgence in late 2017, the QUAD has dominated discussions as the most prominent example of minilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the region has also witnessed the rapid proliferation of a large number of other trilateral groupings, often including India. These initiatives include India-France-Australia, India-Australia-Indonesia, India-Japan-US, India-Japan-Australia, India-Japan-Italy and India-France-UAE, among others. There have also been calls for other trilaterals that ensure the participation of important stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific, such as the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Germany. 

India’s non-aligned posture and its decision not to become part of formal military alliances benefits countries like the US as well as its allies like Japan and Australia. By including India in groupings like the QUAD, it becomes easy to convey a message that such minilateral groupings are not essentially military groupings or alliances. For instance, it has been repeatedly stressed that the QUAD “is not a military grouping or a military alliance". India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar has also repeatedly stated that “the QUAD would not become another NATO, but the alliance is a common platform looking at unmet demands in the market”. This helps in garnering some diplomatic support from regional institutions like ASEAN. As scholars have pointed out, “to meaningfully contribute towards regional order building, these groupings will need to gain diplomatic support from regional constituencies, particularly ASEAN. As a regional institution, ASEAN has long sought to maintain a neutral diplomatic position between the great powers.” India, like ASEAN, also prefers not to have to choose sides and maintains a neutral position when it comes to great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. 

It should likewise be noted that India is also a member of initiatives and forums like IBSA, BRICS, BIMSTEC, the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and the G20. While some forums like IBSA are now seen as minilateral groupings, it is still not clear if other forums can be put in the same category. Nonetheless, these are not multilateral organisations, though bigger than trilateral groupings. As has been pointed out earlier, there is no fixed definition of minilateralism yet and the number of members can vary. In this context, these forums can also be categorised as minilaterals catering to different sub-regions in the Indo-Pacific. During its presidency of the G20 in 2023, India identified multilateral reform as one of the top presidential priorities. Accordingly, the G20 idea bank, Think20 (T20), also established multilateral reform as one of its priorities. The T20 Task Force on “Towards Reformed Multilateralism” (TF7) aimed to construct a roadmap for “Multilateralism 2.0”.

This, however, does not mean that India does not consider being part of multilateral organisations as important. For instance, India has always actively participated in the meetings of ASEAN and ASEAN-led organisations. India is a firm supporter of so-called “ASEAN centrality”, i.e. the idea that Asian security issues and conflicts are above all for ASEAN to address and resolve. This can be seen in most statements that have been issued by India outlining its Indo-Pacific vision. During his keynote address at the Shangri La Dialogue in June 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “we are active participants in ASEAN-led institutions like East Asia Summit, ADMM Plus and ARF. We are part of BIMSTEC and the Mekong-Ganga Economic Corridor, a bridge between South and Southeast Asia. ASEAN represents the greatest level of diversity of culture, religion, language, governance and prosperity of any grouping in the world. ASEAN unity is essential for a stable future for this region.” The year 2024 marked the tenth year of India’s Act East policy and the joint statement that was issued on the occasion of the 21st ASEAN-India Summit on 10 October 2024 in Vientiane welcomed “the Decade of Act East Policy of India, where ASEAN is at the heart and of utmost priority, which has contributed to advancing ASEAN-India relations through cooperation in areas of political-security, economic, cultural and people-to-people relations”. The statement further stressed that India will maintain its commitment and support for ASEAN Centrality and unity in the evolving regional architecture, and will remain committed to working closely through ASEAN-led mechanisms and fora including the ASEAN-India Summit, East Asia Summit, Post Ministerial Conference with India (PMC+1), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) and Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum (EAMF). It will also continue to support ASEAN integration and the ASEAN Community building process, including the Master Plan for ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) 2025, the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) and the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). India has been actively engaging with ASEAN under several initiatives, such as the inaugural ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise in 2023, and co-chairing the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group on Counter-Terrorism (2024-2027). Furthermore, India has signed joint statements with ASEAN, supporting the AOIP (ASEANIndia Joint Statement on Cooperation on the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific) and the ASEAN-India Joint Statement on Maritime Cooperation, among others.

India’s Driving Factors

Until not long ago, India hesitated to take part in small groupings with an anti-China underpinning. This has clearly changed. As mentioned above, India has been proactively engaging in minilateral and trilateral formats and is most of the time seen as a chosen and preferred partner by the US as well as its allies. What has driven this change?

a. Fractured ties with China

One of the primary factors that led to this change is the 2020 India-China clash in the Galwan Valley. This incident tarnished the India-China bilateral relationship. India had opted for the diplomatic route when it came to dealing and negotiating with China even after the Doklam crisis in 2017, but the 2020 clash permanently fractured the relationship. For instance, India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar has stated that, “the relations between India and China have been in an ‘abnormal state’ since the 2020 Galwan clashes. It is very hard to try to be normal with a country which has broken agreements… So if you look at the last three years, it’s a very abnormal state.” It can be argued that even before this clash, India was already a part of many minilateral initiatives, but what needs to be noted is that India then maintained a “carefully balanced approach”. It refrained from making statements that would irk the Chinese leadership. For instance, during the QUAD2.0 meetings in 2017, no joint statement was released. Each country came out with their own individual statements since there was a lack of agreement on whether to take a hard or a softer approach towards China. On close examination of India’s statement, it could be seen that New Delhi clearly held back from making any bold or sharp comments against China on its aggressive actions in the South China Sea or the lack of transparency in its BRI projects. But now, India can very frequently be seen calling out China for its actions in the disputed waters of the South China Sea as well as along the India-China border. India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar has often stated that “India has a ‘special China problem’ which is over and above the world’s general China problem”. Even if one closely analyses India’s current approach towards disputes like the South China Sea, a change of approach is clearly visible. India no longer maintains a neutral, carefully orchestrated stance when it comes to calling out China’s actions in the South China Sea. In his recent meeting with his Philippine counterpart, Enrique Manalo, Minister Jaishankar stated that “India firmly supports the Philippines for upholding its national sovereignty”.

b. Coalitions of like-minded countries, issue-based partnerships and strategic autonomy

Forming “issue-based partnerships” with like-minded countries in the region which have shared interests and objectives is an important goal for India’s Indo-Pacific vision. By participating in trilaterals with other middle powers in the Indo-Pacific, India gains more flexibility in its regional policy. India has made it clear that it “prefers issue-based partnerships rather than value-based alignments" to bolster its independent foreign policy and preserve its strategic autonomy. Partnering with different countries on different issues thus helps India enhance its policy of multi-alignment. India has made its intentions clear that it is not planning to join formal US-led alliances, and its participation in initiatives like the QUAD should not be seen as clinging to or following a US-dictated foreign policy path.

c. Outreach to sub-regions in the Indo-Pacific

Minilaterals aim to ensure strategic stability and to cater to strategic interests and threats in the sub-regions of the Indo-Pacific such as Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Oceania and South Asia. Joining minilateral platforms therefore complements India’s outreach in sub-regions like Southeast Asia, which forms the core of India’s Act East policy. Resource constraints sometimes limit India’s outreach, which in turn impacts India’s overall influence and presence in these sub-regions. As Southeast Asian scholars and policy-makers point out, “despite India’s rising global status and role in key organisations such as the G20 and being a comprehensive strategic partner of ASEAN, India is still losing its strategic relevance in Southeast Asia”. Therefore, being a participant in minilaterals which mainly involve countries like Japan and Australia, which are very much present and proactively engaged with Southeast Asian countries through various development and security initiatives, gives India an opportunity to work with these two countries to help build its profile and image in Southeast Asia.

d. Better and improved bilateral relationships

Strong bilateral relationships are very important when it comes to sustaining these minilateral initiatives. Since joining initiatives like the QUAD and other trilateral dialogues, India’s bilateral relationships with countries like the US, Australia, and Japan have improved remarkably. For instance, the US has sought to strengthen its relationship with India through initiatives like the United States-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (known as iCET and launched in January 2023), the India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) which brings together the two countries’ defence start-ups and was initiated in June 2023, and the recent signing of the Security of supply Agreement (SOSA). Numerous key foundational arrangements have been inked as well, including the 2018 Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), the 2019 Industrial Security Annex for enabling private sector participation in defence supply chains, and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) for the sharing of geospatial information.

With Australia, India has signed many agreements like the Mutual Logistics Sharing Agreement. The two countries upgraded their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2020, and have been hosting 2+2 dialogues. These dialogues have focused on a wide range of strategic, defence and security issues. Discussions have also covered bilateral, regional and global matters of mutual interest, and the need to further advance cooperation under the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Both sides also exchange views on shared priorities for strengthening minilateral and multilateral cooperation. With Australia, India has the biennial AUSINDEX maritime exercise and the Austra Hind Special Forces exercise. Besides the QUAD, India and Australia are also a part of the Australia-India-Indonesia , India-Australia-France and India-Australia-Japan trilaterals, which focus on building supply chain resilience.

e. Maritime security

Trilateral initiatives like India-Australia-France and Australia-India-Indonesia, along with the QUAD, focus heavily on maritime security. For instance, when the first meeting of the India-Australia-France trilateral took place in 2020, the statement from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs reported that “the initiative is meant to arrive at convergences in our approach to the Indo-Pacific region and to explore ways to strengthen trilateral cooperation, particularly in the maritime domain”. Similar to the India-Australia-France trilateral, the Australia-India-Indonesia trilateral also focuses on various aspects of Indo-Pacific geopolitics, including development assistance programmes, maritime issues, and HADR efforts. The QUAD summit in May 2022 established the QUAD Humanitarian and Disaster Relief Mechanism and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness. The objective of these initiatives is to enhance regional capacity for disaster management and maritime domain awareness rather than constitute specific types of traditional military cooperation.

Maritime security forms an important pillar both in India’s Act East policy and in its Indo-Pacific vision. India has often been tagged by countries as the “net security provider” in the Indian Ocean, but during the International Fleet Review hosted by India in 2016, Prime Minister Modi stated that “given the scale and complexity of modern-day challenges, international maritime stability cannot be the preserve of a single nation. The navies and maritime agencies of the world need to work together and engineer virtuous cycles of cooperation”. Therefore working in tandem with countries in the Indo-Pacific to ensure maritime security and freedom of navigation rather than going it alone is the approach that India has adopted. In this context also these trilateral initiatives are complementing and furthering India’s foreign policy objectives of ensuring security and stability in the maritime domain, specifically in the Indian Ocean – India’s backyard.

One advantage that these minilateral groupings have is that their agendas evolve with time, keeping in mind the advent of new challenges and threats. For instance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the QUAD members worked on vaccine diplomacy and vaccine delivery. The agenda of the QUAD has been evolving with every meeting and the issues it looks at range from maritime security to supply chain resilience, critical and emerging technology, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, climate change, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, STEM research fellowships, terrorism, space, infrastructure and cyber security, among others.

Challenges for India

While India is seen as a chosen partner when it comes to minilateral initiatives, sometimes India is also regarded as the “slowest moving player” in minilateral groupings. It has often been argued that it is because of India’s hesitance that the QUAD has not been able to focus on hard security issues. With the emergence of initiatives like AUKUS and the “Squad” – the newly minted minilateral which includes Japan, Australia, the Philippines and the US – many analysts question “whether the QUAD is being supplanted in the domain of traditional security”. While the QUAD does focus on a plethora of issues which fall under the ambit of non-traditional security, a focus on hard security issues has been absent and there has been a “gradual de-securitisation of the QUAD in areas of traditional security”. Given its longstanding commitment to strategic autonomy in its foreign policy, India’s aversion to being part of security initiatives that in some ways appear as alliances might “leave India increasingly aloof in the evolving security architecture of the Indo-Pacific”. 

But there is a counter-argument to this. India has been focusing on enhancing its defence credentials and engagements on a bilateral level with countries like the US and Australia, which are fellow QUAD members. India’s recent sale of Brahmos missiles to the Philippines also shows that India is slowly establishing a footprint in the realm of defence technology and arms sales. Undoubtedly, India is hesitant to join any grouping that looks like a military alliance, but it is working bilaterally with countries in the Indo-Pacific on defence and security issues, and on hard security issues as well. It is true that India is working on a bilateral level with fellow QUAD members on hard security issues outside of the QUAD platform, but this has indirectly led to the QUAD evolving more strongly. For instance, Australia’s inclusion in Malabar would not have materialised without the development of a closer Australia-India bilateral relationship, especially in the defence and security domains. As Tanvi Madan has pointed out, “while the QUAD is not a regional security organisation or alliance and does not involve formal security commitments or treaty obligations, it does have security and even some military dimensions”.

The challenge that India and also, to some extent, the other QUAD members will have to deal with is the Trump 2.0 administration in the US, which might generate momentum for a greater push to include hard military and security issues within the agenda of the QUAD. If India continues to hesitate, President Trump might not be willing to invest any more US resources in initiatives like the QUAD. If a scenario like this evolves, then India, along with Japan and Australia, will have to lay out the benefits of the QUAD very clearly and spell out why such initiatives are important to maintaining a stable, rulesbased order. Sarah Teo rightly points out that, “although it was under the Trump administration that the QUAD was revived, the forum’s institutional progress has occurred mostly under the Joe Biden administration. It is uncertain how Washington’s approach towards minilateralism may change under a potential second Trump government, but its past record of withdrawing or threatening to withdraw from cooperative arrangements raises questions about the durability of US-led minilaterals.”

Another challenge that India will face with the arrival of the Trump administration is to show it is not a part of an antiwestern bloc. India is a member of BRICS, which includes Russia, China and Iran, countries that have been pushing the bloc to assume an anti-western attitude and approach. Therefore, India will have to carefully navigate through this dilemma and ensure that it is the primary player in preventing BRICS from evolving into an anti-western grouping of countries.

Another pertinent challenge that might arise is that most of these groupings came about with the intention of dealing with a rising China. Now that countries like Australia and even India itself are working to improve their ties with China, can this in some way affect the appeal of these groupings? Though India is working on dis-engaging with China at the border and is open to working with China when it comes to trade and investment, it has also called out China for its unlawful actions in the South China Sea and along the India-China border. The trust deficit that India faces will be hard to repair. India will always have a different approach when it comes to dealing with the China challenge as it is the only QUAD country which shares a land border with China; India’s threat perception is therefore different from those of the other QUAD members. 

Conclusion

India’s involvement in minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific has to be evaluated and seen from the context of how it bolsters India’s independent foreign policy, preserves its strategic autonomy and enhances its multi-alignment posture. Being a part of minilateral groups has facilitated India’s ambitions of becoming a credible global player with a voice in global platforms. Its involvement in minilateral and trilateral initiatives has also led to improvement in India’s bilateral ties with countries like the US, Japan and Australia, among others. These initiatives have also facilitated trust building and better understanding of each other’s strategic interests, objectives, and threat perceptions.

At the same time, there are certain challenges that India will have to navigate when it comes to brushing away criticism of how its policy of not joining military groupings has slowed the working of certain minilaterals like the QUAD. India will need to engage more frequently with its QUAD partners to develop a shared understanding of threat perceptions, and minilaterals can provide the necessary platform.

For minilaterals to remain a viable option, there is also a need to look beyond the China challenge. With the advent of new governments, the China policy of countries will change. This is visible in the case of countries like Australia or the Philippines for instance. Therefore, there is a need to constantly revise the agenda of minilateral groupings by keeping in mind the larger Indo-Pacific theatre and the challenges that the region faces, which are not just instigated by the rise of a more belligerent China. This is already being done to a large extent by the QUAD but for India it is imperative to ensure that minilateralism remains sustainable and thrives in the long term.

This article originally appeared in 'Friends and Foes in the Indo-Pacific: Multilateralism Out, Minilateralism In?', Italian Institute for International Political Studies.