ABSTRACT
In March 2006, the governments of Australia, Japan, and the United States held the first Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) ministerial meeting, in which foreign ministers Alexander Downer, Taro Aso, and Condoleeza Rice gathered to discuss a wide range of security issues, both regional and global. This was followed by a busy year-and-a-half of a number of TSD activities organized at different arenas, including meetings of defence ministers and senior foreign ministry officials in charge of counter-terrorism, which led to the first trilateral summit of leaders in September 2007. These diplomatic exercises received a good amount of attention from commentators in media and foreign policy circles some of whom characterized the TSD as ‘a little NATO’ in Asia to check China’s growing influence.2 Such a notion about the new trilateral framework, not surprisingly, raised eyebrows in Asia. At the same time, the idea to bring together the United States and its two Pacific allies was well received by foreign policy practitioners and security specialists in the respective TSD countries (Thomson et al. 2007).3
