The summit level dialogue comprising of India, US, Australia and Japan i.e. the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is widely seen as noteworthy, given its resolve and potential to influence the geopolitical structure and geo-economics of the Indo-Pacific region. It first acted as a consultative and an informal group when it came into existence post the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and later underwent a transformation in 2017, when the countries’ interests converged vis-à-vis a belligerent China’s assertive rise in the region and their shared commitment towards a rules-based order, a free and open Indo-Pacific (that is a veiled reference to China’s aggressive activities in the region), and co-operative action against terrorism. Thus, briefly, the Indo-Pacific strategy comprises of five elements: advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific, building connections within and beyond the region, bolstering Indo-Pacific security, driving regional prosperity, and building regional resilience to transnational threats.
The Indo-Pacific, which is technically a mental map, is a focal region of international attention and the intensification of China’s growth as a prospective hegemon has had the most profound impact on the security structure and the geopolitical backdrop of the twenty-first century. Beijing’s rise as a political, economic, scientific, and military powerhouse has given rise to a tectonic shift in the power equilibrium in the region. Consequently, it is understood that handling the rise of a discreetly pugnacious China is profoundly significant for the safety, security, and stability of the Indo-Pacific region. Quad needs to tread these waters successfully in order to curtail China’s long standing ambition of being the world hegemon.
In this context, especially in the post-Covid world, the United States perceives the relative influence of China to be burgeoning and it views Beijing as positioning itself as a major strategic competitor on the world stage. Furthermore, as the Sino-Indian relations plummet further, given the Chinese stealth encroachments in the Indian Territory and the economic hostilities between both, Beijing’s growing power projection proficiencies are greatly impacting the Indian strategic and security circles. Additionally, the Sino-Japan relations are also being worrisome due to China’s muscle flexing in the region, as Beijing has been an aggressive bully that is trying to establish rules and laws that favour its grandiose plans in the East China Sea where it attempts to challenge the status quo by coercion. The relations between Australia and China also have hit the lowest level in decades as there was a diplomatic and economic freeze between the countries for over two years. Therefore, in such a scenario, the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific is centred on cobbling together these strong states and curtailing the escalation of the Dragon’s aggressive actions in the region. Thus, the resurrection of Quad is a major balancing act to frustrate the growing threat of Chinese footprint and significantly, the robust strategic partnership is an attempt to thwart the Dragon that has become extremely authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad. The Quad members are working together in order to counter the rogue state and its exploitation and corruption in the Indo-Pacific, the South Asian region and the South China Sea.
The Quad as an informal IGO met in 2007 to discuss shared apprehensions about China and related maritime security issues across the Indo-Pacific, however, it disbanded soon after. As pressure from China mounted, in order to not put their lucrative and healthy relations with Beijing at stake, Australia quickly left the Quad, post which the period of dormancy of the Quad began for nearly a decade. During the Quad’s obscuration, the Australia-Japan-India (AJI) trilateral held its first dialogue in 2015 discussing issues such as freedom of navigation and maritime security. Nevertheless, as China’s antagonism kept increasing across the region, the trilateral developed more upgraded interaction and this was followed by the trilateral India- US, Japan- Malabar Naval Exercises. This further revitalized the Quad i.e. the Quad 2.0 with shared interests and converging ideologies per se, as there was a growing experience in security organization and this would prove to be pivotal in countering the hegemonic Beijing. As the world order undergoes a remarkable transformation, the world’s vibrant economies and like-minded states who uphold democratic values and principles, under the grouping of Quad have an extensively major role to play in grappling with the China challenge. As a constructive agenda of cooperation, Quad is seemingly an embryonic military alliance although it functions on the premise of informality, which is basically a geopolitical requirement; the grouping also delivers a practicable format for four diverse participants to synchronise security activities whilst upholding equivocal loci vis-à-vis China. However, despite Beijing’s aggressiveness and an increasingly hostile strategic environment, the members have so far avoided declaring obligations of joint defence and have displayed little interest, till date, for the Quad’s formalisation and deeper institutionalization.
Since its renewal, the Quad has received major attention and conjectures about is geopolitical eminence. The hub of mercantile traffic and most certainly, the battleground for influence in Asia, the Indo-Pacific has seen the reincarnation of Quad as a turning point in order to contain the exponential expansionist activities of the Dragon. Beijing’s debt trap diplomacy through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is definitely reaping benefits for it by securing its sphere of influence in the region under consideration. Each of the members of the Quad faces varying domains, degrees and levels of threats from China and thus, need to develop a stronger approach. The four nations have come together on an ambitious project traversing cooperation on vaccines, technology and infrastructure, and unanimously working towards the overtly tacit aim designed to blunt Beijing’s challenge. Quad is a geopolitical game changer which is evident from the meetings between Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Fumio Kishida, and Anthony Albanese. India has a major incentive to develop this close-knit strategic friendship with the leading democratic players of the Indo-Pacific, given its border issues with the ever-hungry China. The Quad is thus, at a tricky juncture and must prioritise defence and security issues in its purview. As the Indo-Pacific security environment becomes more multifarious, the Quad countries have been augmenting the interoperability between their militaries, in the face of the challenge of Beijing-led regional order. While China continues its unabated attempts at gaining foothold, and given its callous attitude towards violating sovereign and jurisdictional rights of the neighbouring nations, this calls for a system of checks and balancing by the Quad that has an undeniable role. This comes at the backdrop of the frantic pace of China’s warship infrastructure construction and reports of a larger nuclear-powered carrier in the pipeline which is a major threat to the other states in the region and to the international order. China has, over the decades, developed into an influential entity that has an unconcealed ambition which is evident from its military and economic might and ever- expanding projects and initiatives including the BRI processes, debt traps, and self-serving trading arrangements. The Quad provides the steady push back that has been needed against the predatory activities of this regional bully that talks of principles that it does not itself adhere to. The Quad as major entity, through proper institutionalisation would, in such a scenario brew in the required fear and nervousness of containment of China’s growing ill-founded ambitions; this can be done through proper diplomatic and economic channels like denial of technologies and markets to the aggressor state.
While the role of Quad in curbing China’s bellicosity is undeniable, there remain certain caveats and lacunae that need to be tackled with regard to the former. There is a major need for all the member states of the grouping to not shy away from calling out the Dragon for its expansive illegitimate designs and thus, this points out to the need for calling a spade a spade, here, alluding to the military aspect of the grouping. Mere symbolic grouping focussing on softer issues is not sufficient, and China needs to be aware of the fact that Quad was founded on the premise to clip Beijing’s ever-spreading imperialist wings. The Quad, thus, is not narrow-purposed, nor is it a geopolitical clique or “Asian NATO” as believed and branded by the adversary. The time is now ripe for the Quad to provide fresh impetus to its role as a summit-level grouping by combining its military and non-military policies as one integrated strategy for the region, and the world at large, given that China’s aggressive posturing sees no bounds. It needs to provide a buffer against China’s threats to the international norms and its attempts at altering the status quo, by sticking to the task at hand in the most rigid manner i.e. respecting and upholding the rules-based international order. Moreover, if the Quad countries unleash an attack on China from all possible fronts, it can greatly dissuade the reprobate state from its exorbitant expansionist designs. This network-based security system that would rely on developing the offensive as well as defensive capabilities of the Quad would be highly beneficial towards countering China’s threats and frustrating it militarily as well as economically.
The Quad has energised in the recent years with virtual as well as face-to-face summits, with a commitment towards an emboldened Indo-Pacific. There is a great need for it to embrace an active defence and security role for counter-balancing the truculent China which an be done through areas like health, infrastructure, climate policy and maritime cooperation and technology collaboration, by controlling the supply chain to their benefit and most importantly, by forming an exhaustive network of information-sharing to prevent a security and power vacuum in the region that can be dominated by China. Thus, to conclude, while the agenda is packaged differently, there is no denying the fact that the Quad is driven by concerns of a potentially ravenous China that seeks to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and this sustained partnership needs to become broad-based as well robust inorder to achieve its goals.
