Minilaterals

• India recently conducted a virtual trilateral dialogue with France and Australia.
• Economic and geostrategic challenges and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in COVID-19 pandemic and domestic responses to COVID-19.
• Cooperation on Marine Global Commons and potential areas at the trilateral and regional level, through regional organisations such as ASEAN, Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the Indian Ocean Commission.
• Priorities, challenges and trends in regional and global multilateral institutions, including best ways to strengthen and reform multilateralism
• Building on the strong bilateral relations synergising respective strengths to ensure a peaceful, secure, prosperous and rules-based Indo-Pacific Region.
• While bilateral and multilateral dialogues, such as India’s 2+2 Dialogues with Australia, Japan, and the United States, Quad etc, are common phenomena in the Indo-Pacific, the recent times have seen emergence of ‘minilaterals’. There is already an India-U.S.-Japan trilateral and also an India-Australia-Indonesia trilateral is taking shape.

Factors responsible for the rise of Minilaterals

• Easier to strike convergence in interests: focus on mutual objectives and goals
• Strategic rationale: India-France-Australia trilateral for ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific order
• Moving beyond uncertainties created by certain partners: larger groupings might find in their interest to move to smaller partnerships to overcome uncertainties created by specific partners. For example- unpredictability of American policies
• Seeking Informal dialogues:discuss emerging issues in a flexible manner without establishing rigid commitments and going through lengthy formal negotiations

Overcoming challenges pertaining to multilateralism and multilateral institutions

• Polarization and ideological infighting: often led by a few influential leaders. This increases the probability of creating fissures on the lines of differences in ideologies or particular issues
• Reverse globalization and rise in protectionist tendencies: Countries started looking inwards and find it difficult to cooperate on multilateral platforms beyond their national interests
• Institutional sclerosis: where institutions fail to adapt and change at a sufficient pace. Existing Multilateral institutions are facing difficulties to address new and emerging global challenges such as climate change, data privacy, cyber security etc.