The Asia-Pacific region illustrates a shift toward “minilateral” cooperation amid global fragmentation, as highlighted in the World Economic Forum and McKinsey’s 2026 Global Cooperation Barometer. Despite economic headwinds, the region maintains resilience through pragmatic partnerships in trade, technology, and energy security via frameworks like APEC, RCEP, ASEAN’s DEFA, and APAEC.
Intraregional trade accounted for over half of the region’s merchandise exports and imports last year, with APEC’s 21 economies representing roughly half of world trade. This regional integration demonstrates how smaller, interest-based groupings can complement multilateralism, offering agile solutions while connecting to broader global networks.
In a fragmented world, the Asia-Pacific region exemplifies how “minilateral” cooperation fosters resilience. Despite global economic headwinds, its pragmatic, interest-based partnerships within frameworks like APEC and RCEP maintain vital exchanges. This regional integration, seen in trade, technology (ASEAN’s DEFA), and energy security (APAEC), demonstrates how smaller groups can navigate geopolitical complexities. While not replacing multilateralism, this approach prioritizes agile, adaptable solutions that can connect to wider global networks, building collective resilience against shocks and fostering innovation for practical benefits.
- The Asia-Pacific region demonstrates how ‘minilateral’ cooperation can build resilience in a fragmenting world.
- Such regional collaboration can provide more agile, pragmatic frameworks for cross-border exchanges that can also plug into wider global networks.
- The recent Annual Meeting of the New Champions highlighted three main thrusts of Asia-Pacific cooperation.
“Fragmentation” has become a geopolitical watchword in recent years, with global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund warning of the increasing danger and costs (over $7 trillion) of a more segmented and fractious global landscape.
While the forces of fragmentation have intensified in recent years, especially regarding technology, finance and trade, cooperation has not ended. This is one of the central issues explored in the World Economic Forum and McKinsey’s 2026 Global Cooperation Barometer. The barometer assesses cooperation across five key pillars: trade and capital; innovation and technology; climate and natural capital; health and wellness; peace and security. Its findings indicate how cooperation is evolving from multilateral toward minilateral arrangements, highlighting how “cooperation among smaller groups of countries has persisted as economies continue to find value in working with each other through pragmatic, agile, interest-based partnerships”.
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the clearest examples of this shift, where regional cooperation is increasingly taking a practical form. Despite the headwinds to global economies, the region is expected to grow by 4.4% this year. This resilience is in part driven by strong intra- and inter-regional cooperation. Last year, intraregional trade accounted for 53% of the region’s merchandise exports and 56% of its imports, with Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s 21 member economies accounting for around half of world trade. Integration in Asia-Pacific makes the region a crucial test case of how cooperation is being reconfigured towards more regional and flexible forms of collaboration.
