THE QUAD

THE QUAD

IN NEWS –

• China’s rising economic power undermined the traditional role of the United States of America in the Asia-Pacific region since the early 2000s.
• Even though the United States had strategic preoccupations with Afghanistan and Iraq, China remained a major powerhouse in the region.
• The United States came up with a policy of soft containment of China by organizing strategic partnerships with major democracies in the Asia-Pacific region.
• The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the Quad or QUAD) is a strategic dialogue between the United States, India, Japan and Australia – in this background.

TIMELINES

2007

• Initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the aid of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
• The diplomatic and military arrangement was unanimously viewed as a reiteration to increased Chinese economic and military regression.
• China responded to the Quadrilateral dialogue by declaring formal diplomatic protests to its members and calling it a “Closed Clique”!
• The Quad paused following the withdrawal of Australia during Kevin Rudd’s tenure as prime minister.
• However, India, Japan, and the United States continued to hold joint naval exercises under Malabar.

2012

• Shinzo Abe again emphasized the framework of Asia’s “Democratic Security Diamond” involving Australia, India, Japan and the US to safeguard the maritime interests stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific.

2017

• After a ten year hiatus, during the 2017 ASEAN Summit in Manila, all four former QUAD members led by Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and US President Donald Trump agreed to revive the quadrilateral alliance to counter China following the South China Sea.
• The diplomatic tension between Quad members against China was widely dubbed as “New Cold War’’ in the region and branded the group as an ‘Asian NATO’.

2020

• All Four Quad Countries – Japan, India, Australia, and the USA participated in the Malabar Exercise, an annual trilateral naval exercise between the navies of India, Japan, and the USA which is held alternately in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

2021 QUAD SUMMIT

• In March, the Biden Administration organized a virtual ministerial meeting where the leaders of the four Quad countries issued a “Spirit of the Quad” joint statement promoting a free, open rules-border, rooted in international law to advance security and combat threats both in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

OBJECTIVES OF QUAD

• As in the recently released statement titled ‘The Spirit of the Quad’, the group’s primary objectives include
  • maritime security
  • combating the Covid-19 crisis especially vis-à-vis vaccine diplomacy
  • addressing the risks of climate change
  • creating an ecosystem for investment in the region and
  • boosting technological innovation
• Also, the core objective of the Quad is to secure a rules-based global order, freedom of navigation and a liberal trading system
• Consistently, it is seen as a strategic grouping to reduce Chinese domination
• Further, Quad members have also indicated a willingness to expand the partnership through a so-called Quad Plus that would include South Korea, New Zealand, and Vietnam amongst others.

SIGNIFICANCE OF QUAD FOR INDIA

• Countering China’s economic and military rise
  • As a member of the Quad, in the event of rise in the Chinese hostilities on its borders, India can take the support of the other Quad nations to counter it
  • In addition, India can even take the help of its naval front and conduct strategic explorations in the Indo-Pacific region.
• For a free and open Indo-Pacific
  • The summit vowed to strive for an Indo-Pacific region, that is free, open, inclusive, and unconstrained by coercion
  • This aspect becomes important for India, in the wake of China’s aggressiveness and coercive nature in the strategic Indo-Pacific region
• India as a Net Security provider
  • For India to assert this role as a Region, its dominance in the Indian Ocean Region needs to be maintained and sustained.
  • In this perspective, QUAD provides India a platform to enhance security through partnership in the region
• Multipolar World
  • India has supported a rule based multipolar world and QUAD can help it in achieving its ambition of becoming a regional superpower

CHALLENGES TO QUAD

Lacks Definitive structure

• The QUAD despite its lofty ambitions, is not structured like a typical multilateral organisation and lacks a secretariat and any permanent decision-making body
• Instead of creating policy along the lines of the European Union or United Nations, the Quad has focused on expanding existing agreements between member countries and highlighting their shared values.

Imbalanced Cooperation

• The present four members of the Quad do not have the same levels of financial resources, strategic awareness, and military capabilities in the Indian Ocean
• Difficulty in addressing China’s concerns
  • China has strong economic ties with Quad members, especially Australia, which can be used to coerce or influence countries in its favour. This can turn out to be problematic for India

WAY FORWARD

• The following actions could deepen the agenda of QUAD grouping:
  • Strategic cooperation
    • Bearing the strategic lessons in mind, the four countries should take incremental steps to deepen their military cooperation, in ways that do not reasonably provoke an outsized reaction from Beijing, while developing the capacity to act credibly together if the need arises
  • Geography
    • While China can rely only on its own capabilities to project power across the Indo-Pacific, the Quad countries in combination can maintain a more beneficial multipolar order by bolstering each other’s maritime capabilities in their own respective geographic area of interest and advantage.
    • India should be supported to take greater responsibility for the Indian Ocean (particularly the Bay of Bengal) where it has natural advantages, Australia the Eastern Indian Ocean, South China Sea and Pacific Islands, Japan the East and South China Seas, with the United States having broader capability over the whole of the Indo-Pacific
  • Enhancing Joint capabilities
• There are a number of initial areas in which the four countries can augment their joint capabilities and complicate China’s two ocean strategy: improving interoperability; enhancing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; shared logistics for power projection; and capability development.