Community Building in Asia? Trilateral Cooperation in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief

How important is the 'community-building' dimension of the Australia-Japan-US trilateral relationship? This basic question is often overshadowed by a wider debate about whether or not the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) is a containment mechanism developed by the United States, Japan, and Australia to block China's rise. As rivalries grow in the Asia-Pacific region, so the containment issue continues to overshadow the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) and community-building components of the TSD. However, the development of HA/DR capabilities by the United States, Japan, and Australia since 2005 has been significant, and HA/DR now has a substantial history as part of the TSD. This chapter argues that the TSD has established itself as an important institution for HA/DR cooperation across the region, and that such 'community-building' efforts are likely to grow more important in the coming years.