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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Asian minilaterals – small, flexible, issue-specific security groupings—have grown in number and visibility across the Indo-Pacific, increasingly drawing Washington’s attention as potential vehicles for burden-sharing and regional security coordination. The Biden administration emphasized these arrangements as tools to strengthen cooperative security and uphold a rules-based regional order. The Trump administration, in turn, has pressed allies and partners to assume greater responsibility for their own defense, with analysts identifying minilateral cooperation as one potential mechanism. Senior officials have suggested that middle powers – such as Australia, India, and Japan – could play a larger role in regional security, potentially coordinating their efforts to maintain the balance of power. This framing carries an implicit assumption: that these Asian middle powers will organize themselves into peer coalitions capable of collectively balancing Chinese influence. Whether regional states are in fact moving in this direction, however, remains an open question.

This report argues that this assumption is mistaken, and that the gap between US expectations and regional realities carries significant risks. An empirical analysis of 32 non- US, non-Chinese Asian minilaterals reveals that only 25 percent involve collective balancing among peer states – the model Washington increasingly anticipates. The remaining 75 percent take fundamentally different forms: spheres of influence, in which dominant states like India and Australia manage their immediate neighborhoods hierarchically; client coalitions, in which stronger states organize weaker partners to address specific external challenges such as infrastructure dependencies and supply-chain vulnerabilities; and security communities, in which peer states cooperate on functional issues and confidence-building rather than explicit balancing.

These patterns do not reflect Asian reluctance to manage regional security. Rather, they reflect rational strategic choices shaped by geography, power asymmetries, and local threat perceptions—factors largely beyond Washington’s control. The Indo-Pacific’s vast distances contribute to widely varying threat perceptions across subregions, making it difficult for potential balancing partners to agree on priorities and sustain coordination. Regional powers like India and Australia tend to concentrate attention and resources on hierarchical neighborhood management, where power asymmetries make cooperative hierarchy more efficient than peer coordination. Southeast Asian states, facing Chinese pressure primarily as economic and maritime coercion rather than an existential military threat, prioritize strategic flexibility and functional cooperation over explicit balancing commitments. US alliance guarantees further reduce incentives for peer-based coalitions by meeting the security needs of treaty allies like Japan and Australia through hierarchical arrangements with Washington, effectively crowding out independent collective balancing coalitions.

These structural constraints make organizational diversity the equilibrium state of the Indo-Pacific security architecture, not a temporary phase on the way to a network of peer balancing coalitions. Pressuring arrangements to adopt roles they were not designed to fill risks destabilizing the functional cooperation they already provide without yielding valuable alternatives. Spheres of influence help to manage local instability and limit openings for Chinese influence. Client coalitions contest specific dimensions of Chinese power through development financing and supply-chain resilience. Security communities reduce intraregional conflicts that might otherwise invite external interference and become arenas for US-China rivalry. Collective balancing, where it exists, signals that peer cooperation remains a credible option and complicates Chinese strategic calculations. Together, these diverse arrangements contribute more to regional security than any single type could achieve alone.

The solution is not to abandon burden-sharing ambitions but to align them with regional realities. Washington should pursue its core objective—preventing Chinese regional hegemony – by supporting arrangements as they exist rather than pressuring states into coalitions they neither want nor can sustain. Regional states, for their part, should resist one-size-fits-all pressure while clearly communicating how their preferred organizational forms advance regional stability.

Recommendations for the United States:

Avoid competing with Indian and Australian spheres of influence. Coordinate bilateral engagement with New Delhi and Canberra rather than undercutting regional leadership while welcoming their neighborhood efforts as meaningful burden-sharing.

Reinforce rather than replicate client coalitions. When Japan or India leads infrastructure and supply-chain initiatives, offer complementary support rather than launching parallel US-led programs that fragment coordination.

Preserve security communities by avoiding public and private pressure for explicit balancing. Southeast Asian functional cooperation advances US interests by reducing intraregional conflict, even when it avoids anti-China framing.

Resist creating US-led alternatives that crowd out peer-based coordination. When Washington joins regional frameworks, strategic coordination tends to migrate to hierarchical arrangements, undermining the independent coalitions it claims to support.

Align rhetoric with realistic expectations about what regional minilaterals can deliver, recognizing diverse forms of burden-sharing as advancing US interests.

Recommendations for Asian States:

Sphere leaders should institutionalize regional stabilization mechanisms and maintain regular consultations with Washington to coordinate engagement while resisting pressure to convert spheres into explicit anti-China coalitions.

Client coalition leaders should coordinate among themselves to identify coverage gaps, align standards, and respond collectively to Chinese economic coercion.

Security community members should maintain their inward functional orientation, resisting balancing commitments that would undermine their trust-building and conflict-prevention functions.

Collective balancing participants should focus on intelligence-sharing and strategic dialogues on discrete challenges, laying groundwork for deeper coordination over time.

All regional states should invest in interoperable capabilities (e.g., maritime domain awareness, communications platforms) that enable effective participation across minilateral types.

The Indo-Pacific’s organizational diversity is not an obstacle to overcome but a strategic foundation—one Washington must learn to work with rather than against.

About the Author

Dr. Kelly A. Grieco is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, where her work focuses on US foreign policy and defense policy, addressing questions about U.S. military alliances and the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific, as well as military strategy, drone warfare, and the future of war. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Nonresident Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center of the Marine Corps University. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This essay is published as a part of APLN’s Asia Dialogue on China-US Relations, supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The views represented herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of affiliated institution(s), nor that of APLN, its staff, members, board, or funders. APLN’s website is a source of authoritative research and analysis and serves as a platform for debate and discussion among our senior network members, experts, and practitioners, as well as the next generation of policymakers, analysts, and advocates. Comments and responses can be emailed to apln@apln.network.

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