In June 2024, the United States Studies Centre hosted the inaugural Track 1.5 Trilateral Dialogue between representatives of Australia, Japan and South Korea (AJK). The dialogue was designed to advance the policy debate on trilateral approaches to shared strategic objectives while supporting Track 1 efforts in this space. This report summarises the outcomes of that dialogue, including major themes, debates and recommendations that emerged.

Key points

• Australia, Japan and South Korea share numerous strategic objectives, ranging from economic development to humanitarian and development assistance and regional deterrence.
• Trilateral engagement on these shared strategic objectives has the potential to generate synergies that allow AJK to achieve ends that might be difficult to achieve either bilaterally or in isolation, for example through building resilience, distributing risk and pooling influence.
• Given that AJK trilateralism is effectively ‘starting from scratch,’ initial trilateral efforts should be directed towards low-risk initiatives that will ‘work out the kinks’ of trilateral cooperation and establish habits of cooperation that will lay the groundwork for more ambitious initiatives. 
• There are several enablers of AJK trilateralism that are likely to improve the prospects of success for AJK initiatives including shared national values around sustainable development and the rules-based international order and shared regional strategic interests around bolstering supply chain resilience and regional deterrence.
• Barriers to AJK trilateralism also exist and would need to be managed. These include difficulties in achieving and sustaining trilateral consensus on managing relations with China; political constraints on trilateral engagement, including sometimes volatile Japanese-South Korean relations; and the multitude of competing political priorities of each state that will drain limited diplomatic resources.