By Ankit Panda
Are trilaterals a good approach to building common thinking about Asian order?
Yesterday, my colleague Prashanth Parameswaran outlined the burgeoning trilateralism between India, Japan, and Australia. As Prashanth notes, the three countries have remarkable commonalities as democracies increasingly concerned by China’s assertive behavior in its near seas. The Japanese representative at the talks, Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki, noted that he and his Indian and Australia counterparts “had a full day discussion on China.” He added that the three partners agreed that “more or less … [they] are on the same page.”
The trilateral is one among many uniting like-minded states in the Asia-Pacific. Consider these additional trilateral dynamics in Asia, some of which have emerged in just last 18 months: the United States, Japan, and India meet trilaterally at a senior level; the United States, Japan, and Australia consult trilaterally and even share intelligence; the United States and its two East Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, have been ramping up their trilateral coordination as well (though this remains limited by poor ties between Seoul and Tokyo). Across these growing networks of trilateral cooperation and consultation, we see a convergence of like-minded states. These states share skepticism and concern about China’s rising influence as a security actor in Asia and largely seek ways to either preserve the status quo or prevent Beijing from altering it in ways deleterious to their interests.
So far, these various trilaterals have attracted little outside attention and understandably so: they’ve been short on deliverables and their outcomes have been anodyne, limited largely to increasing mutual understanding among high-level diplomats. Still, as tensions rise in the South China Sea over China’s intentions for Asia’s maritime commons and China embraces a new security posture, commensurate with its new military might, these trilateral networks could form the backbone of a broader security framework in Asia. Asia does not lack for regional organizations, but there is currently no real forum that allows for Asia’s prominent democracies with an appetite for preserving the regional status quo — Japan, India, South Korea, and Australia, certainly — to convene and consult.
Read the full story at The Diplomat