Japan-Australia relations: the multi and the mini
Dr Malcolm Cook is East Asia Programme Director with the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Australia. In this article, he discusses the emergence of new 'mini-lateral' groupings such as the G20.
In a recently released Lowy Institute Perspectives, my colleague Andrew Shearer and I look at future areas of multilateral cooperation between Australia and Japan. Traditionally, the focus on Japan-Australia relations has been on the deep bilateral economic relationship and on regional diplomacy and architecture. Yet, we believe that globalisation and the consequent shift of power in the Asia-Pacific are making multilateral cooperation between close bilateral partners with common interests in this region more and more important.
Alas, the traditional, post-World War II organs of inclusive multilateralism are not adjusting well to the modern world of diffused power and many more states. Multilateral trade negotiations have only delivered one successful round of negotiations in the last quarter century. At the same time, the Atlanticist nature of these bodies under-represents Asia and its major powers, and they seem to be largely impermeable to change. Japan is still an “enemy state” under the United Nations Charter and Australia, like New Zealand, is grouped with Western Europe. The Rudd government is fighting Finland for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
The most interesting result of our research is the growing role of new, ‘minilateral’ groupings - such as the G-20, the Proliferation Security Initiative and the recently renamed Major Emitters' Meeting - in Japan-Australia cooperation on a range of global issues.
The Bush administration was the driving force behind the creation and elevation of many of these issue-specific, lightly institutionalised supplements to traditional, glacially-placed multilateralism. The new Obama administration’s attitude towards minilateralism as an approach, and towards the existing minilateral bodies, is unclear yet it will be decisive for their future effectiveness.
For those of us interested in Japan-Australia relations and the future of inter-state cooperation, we should supplement our traditional understandings with a new focus on these minilateral groupings. This is true both for those of us in countries represented in these groupings and for those of us whose countries are not.
