Japan hosted the second in-person Quad summit in Tokyo a year ago. Owing to the recent turn of events, it turns out that the archipelago is poised to host the leaders of the four nations – India, Japan, Australia and the United States – yet again in the second consecutive year, in another historic Japanese city – Hiroshima – where this year’s G7 summit is taking place from May 19 to 21.
The previously planned rendezvous for the third in-person summit of the four-nation grouping was Sydney, scheduled for May 24, which now stands cancelled with an announcement by the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier this week, the reason being the absence of the leader of the most powerful and influential member in the grouping – the President of the United States.
Washington’s “reliability” as a trusted and preferred partner in the region has been negatively affected with the postponing of visits to Oceania and its resultant cancellation of the Quad summit. Earlier this year, in March, the four foreign ministers of the Quad met in New Delhi on the sidelines of G20 meeting, laying the groundwork for the summit in Sydney, instead of which the leaders will meet in Hiroshima on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
Domestic pressures amid strategic rivalry
Soon after the Hiroshima summit, President Joe Biden will head back to Washington without touching down in Sydney or Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, as heated negotiations with the congressional leadership on the controversial issue of debt ceiling, to ward off the possibility of Washington defaulting on its national debt, are currently underway. This latest episode of political polarisation in the U.S. would mean a self-goal for American foreign policy in the fast-changing game of regional geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific.
In the last two years, the Chinese diplomatic influence and geoeconomic engagements in the region had been gathering momentum and intensity at a rapid pace. As the strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China, both at the global and regional levels, remain high on the one side and the Chinese posturing in maritime Asia and the Pacific turning more and more belligerent on the other, President Biden’s visit could have reinvigorated Washington’s security ties in the region and could have also assuaged the apprehensions of some regional countries surrounding the AUKUS deal recently forged with London and Canberra.
While Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has cancelled his visit to Sydney in the wake of announcement of President Biden’s inability to attend the summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will go ahead with traveling to Sydney as planned, as he has bilateral-level engagements with the Australian government. Prime Minister Modi will also visit Papua New Guinea for the third summit of the Forum for India–Pacific Islands Cooperation and then will be going on a state visit to the U.S. in June.
From September 2019 to March 2023, the Quad foreign ministers have met six times in person and once in virtual mode. Two leaders’ summits were held in Washington and Tokyo in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Cancellation of the Sydney summit is a diplomatic point scorer for Beijing as Washington’s opportunity to reassure its allies and partners in the Pacific has been thrown under the bus, at least temporarily.
Chinese disapproval
Ever since the Quad took off in its new avatar in November 2017 after a decade of inactivity there has been an allegation that the U.S. has been calling the shots in the grouping. But the participation of a multi-aligned country like India, which simultaneously engages in forums led by China and Russia such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) can be cited as an example of the “openness” of the grouping.
The perceived “China-balancing” character of the grouping is due to the “strategic insecurity” that Beijing poses to the four countries and also to several other countries in the region. China poses a strong strategic competition and systemic challenge to the U.S. as the former’s military continues to modernise rapidly, while its diplomatic and economic engagements with countries in the region continue to be astutely dynamic.
China’s initial reaction to the Quad was to denounce it altogether by stating that it would “dissipate like sea foam”. Later, as each year passed, Beijing doubled down its criticism of the grouping and dismissed it as an “exclusive clique” or a U.S. strategy to “contain” its rise and an attempt to create an “Asian NATO”. The Chinese foreign ministry has frequently called for the U.S. to abandon its “Cold War mentality” and correct its approach of bloc confrontation.
Despite these strongly-worded allegations, the fact remains that the Quad is still not a military alliance and its areas of cooperation are largely non-security in nature, ranging from emerging technologies, maritime data sharing, educational cooperation, sustainable infrastructure, cybersecurity, supply chain resilience, countering disinformation and humanitarian relief. At the same time, the fact that a domestic issue in the United States is capable of forcing the grouping to cancel its highest level of engagement is a testament of the level of influence and power Washington yields on the grouping and in setting its overall agenda.
Disappointment in the Pacific
The last few years have seen the U.S. and China building up diplomatic offensive against each other in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly after China struck a security agreement with the Solomon Islands last year. One of the key agendas of the Quad is to offer middle and smaller powers in Southeast Asia and the Pacific better economic and infrastructural alternatives to the ones offered by China by pooling each other’s resources and strengths together like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) launched last year.
Lying north of Australia, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is an island nation of 9.4 million people, which is courted by both Beijing and Washington for geostrategic reasons. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Papua New Guinea five years ago, in 2018, in the first ever visit by a Chinese leader to the island state, while Biden hosted the Pacific Island leaders at the White House in September, last year.
President Biden was expected to sign the U.S.-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), which would have been the foundational framework for security cooperation between the two countries. PNG’s capital Port Moresby have been also preparing for the visit by a sitting U.S. President – first in the nation’s history – for the past six months, including the declaration of a national public holiday.
Despite the cut down on the Quad summit, the future prospects of co-operation in the grouping need not be seen as grim, as cooperation at the ministerial and working levels are making progress from year to year. Characterised by its flexible and functional inner dynamics, the Quad continues to evolve from a loose coalition of like-minded democracies to a much more solid forum by adding new layers of cooperation each year, after each summit, not only in terms of cooperation among the members themselves, but also to engage with all key regional actors in all ways possible.
