One month after the third Quad foreign ministerial meet was held in virtual mode, the very first leaders-level summit of the four-nation grouping was held on 12 March 2021 and was hosted by the United States, in what was President Joe Biden’s first plurilateral engagement. The other three nations are Japan, India, and Australia.
The Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, traces its origins back to 2007, when former Japanese Prime Minister of Japan mooted the idea in a subtle way, only to get disbanded in the next year, before it could re-emerge in 2017. Now, with the elevation of the dialogue to a leaders-level summit, the good news is, it has been upgraded to the apex level of diplomatic engagement, but the bad news is, there is still a lack of clarity on the ‘security’ part of the dialogue.
What the leaders’ summit discussed
The heads of government of respective countries have issued a joint statement following the conclusion of Friday’s summit. It talks in length about having a shared vision for a ‘free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific’, by bringing in diverse perspectives, and goes on to elucidate having a collective response to tackle the pandemic, climate change, cyber security, and cooperation in developing critical technologies of the future.
The summit has also established three new working groups, namely, vaccine experts, climate response, and also critical and emerging technologies. The statement only had a feeble mention of ‘maritime security’, reiterating the importance of freedom of navigation in the East and South China Seas, in light of the United Nations Convention on Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). There was also mention of North Korea and the situation in Myanmar. In overall, the statement seems to be set in an ‘idealistic’ tone.
The elephant in the room finds no mention
It is an apparent fact that China and its exponential rise in the past two decades is the elephant in the room and the major factor behind the rise of Quad to this level. Still, the leaders are unwilling to acknowledge it, while they are being eloquent on other non-security issues.
Even though the Quad countries have a history of cooperation right from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it was in 2007 Japan’s Shinzo Abe gave a security angle to the grouping by including a non-Pacific country to the concept of Asia-Pacific – India, thereby expanding the strategic continuum to the Indian Ocean, which forms the Indo-Pacific.
The rise of China in the past two decades has been a matter of concern for all four Quad partners, in the past two decades. It was Abe who put forward the idea of the ‘confluence of two seas’ – the Indian and Pacific Oceans –and build a democratic arc of prosperity in the regional continuum.
India and Japan finds their geographic positioning in China’s territorial or maritime neighbourhood, unlike mainland United States or Australia, lying away. If economic factors and the diaspora drive Australia’s relations with China, for the United States it is the emergence of prospects for a new Cold War with China, both in economic and geopolitical terms.
Chinese assertive posture in sub-regions of the Indo-Pacific such as the East and South China Seas, the Senkakus, the Himalayas, the Indian Ocean, South Asia, and other parts of the world provide enough reasons for India and Japan to work together closer bilaterally and fortunately they are doing it proactively. The US-Japan-Australia alliance in the Pacific is also very much in place. Individual members of the Quad grouping mutually engage bilaterally and trilaterally, as well.
An unclear raison d’être and misplaced priorities
For now, the Chinese leadership and strategic community do not view the Quad as a threat due to the vagueness in it’s the grouping’s stated purpose. A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson that came hours before the summit said, the Quad summit should not target or damage the interests of third-party countries, alluding to itself, and the Chinese state media considers Quad as a US-led attempt to contain Beijing.
The leaders of Quad democracies should collectively address this specific issue to make the grouping meaningful and different from any other random plurilateral grouping. But, in that front, it is a reality that the recent leaders’ summit couldn’t reach up to the mark.
During the course of this summit, each Quad leader articulated the unique outlooks of their own respective countries on Quad and the Indo-Pacific region. None of them had China as a central focus. Although it is true that other issues also have its own significance it is not what the Quad is meant when China is emerging as a revisionist power. A mere mention of freedom of the seas lacks teeth, as it was done in a way without explicitly pointing fingers at China.
Impediments for a full-fledged Quad alliance in the Indo-Pacific
Among Quad partners, Japan and Australia are formal treaty allies of the United States. But, India values its strategic autonomy and maintains a complex set of relations with Russia and China and multilateral platforms led by a Sino-Russo alliance such as Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. India has also been historically closer to Russia and major buyer of arms. For the time being, India is just a Quad partner and may not ascent to the status anally in the near future, while the other three will continue to be allies to each other.
Even though the Biden administration has recently acknowledged China as a strategic threat, he is seriously trying to rebuild ties with China, which has hit a dangerous low with Donald Trump’s presidency. But, opening the door of diplomacy has its own set of challenges due to the trust-deficit that marks Chinese diplomacy.
All these facts didn’t reflect in the first Quad leaders’ summit, which instead put focus on more generalistic issues such as climate change, pandemic, and so on. This should not be what Quad exist for.
What needs to be done?
The Quad should have a higher purpose other than the things articulated in the summit that have ample other multilateral platforms to execute, and it has to be the balance of power in the context of China’s rise. Areas of strategic convergence by Quad partners have to be duly articulated much more specifically than mere mentions of the maritime security among other issues, even to an extent of disturbing China. Only then it will be meaningful to have an Indo-Pacific-wide coalition of democracies.
China has to be acknowledged as a systemic and strategic rival in realistic terms. Even though the Malabar naval exercise, with all Quad partners as participants took place in November 2020, gives an indication of the shaping of a soft security alliance, a full-fledged alliance depends entirely on India’s strategic posture and its willingness to make compromises on its strategic autonomy, going beyond the signing of key defence agreements with the United States.
With the subtle militarization of the Quad already happened with Exercise Malabar, it has to be built upon. A possible expansion of the Quad with partners such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea will also be in good interest and be more meaningful as a mechanism of balance of power.
If the Quad partners decide to carry on beating around the bush and ignore the elephant in the room in the future summits, China will see it as an opportunity to increasingly project its power in Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific, which will undermine the national and strategic interests of all democracies in the region.
