'Globetrotters Mark' by 'Sardar' Sanjay Matkar : The New QUAD World – “A partnership for Peace, or a Force against China?”

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad is an informal dialogue between India, Japan, the United States, and Australia that is maintained by annual summits, information exchanges, military drills, and trade meetings.

An informal alliance of these four countries was first formed for humanitarian and aid operations after the 26 January 2004 earthquake in Indonesia, that sent deadly tsunami waves towards communities along the Indian Ocean coast-lines, killing an estimated 228,000 people in 14 countries. This earthquake was the 3^rd largest recorded in history, the largest in the 21^st century and with the longest observed duration of between 8 and 10 minutes; that majorly impacted Aceh (Indonesia), Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu (India) and Khao Lak (Thailand).

Three years later, these countries formed the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue due to the initiatives of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The Quad’s first main action was conducting the Malabar Naval exercise, which involves India, Japan and the United States of America as its permanent partners. The annual Malabar exercises includes diverse activities, ranging from fighter combat operations from aircraft carriers through maritime interdiction operations, anti-submarine warfare, diving salvage operations, amphibious operations, counter-piracy operations, cross–deck helicopter landings and anti–air warfare operations.

The Quad almost failed in the forthcoming year, when the then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided to exit the alliance in what was globally quoted as his desire of not wanting to be part of the group seen as an open challenge to China, which had in those days become a powerful economic partner of Australia; a story that was not factually correct.

Kevin Rudd sought to correct the record with what he called were “inconvenient truths” in the 26 March 2019 article in the Nikkei Asian Review, where he majorly blamed the ambiguity of the original proposal and the divergent interests of the countries involved, for its slow-down. Rudd’s explanation on the initial failure of Quad was reinforced by the opinions of Shyam Saran, the then Foreign Secretary of India (until 2006) and later on the personal envoy of India’s then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As per Saran’s opinion the concept of Quad was proposed as a cooperative effort between the four countries to coordinate an emergency response to natural tragedies. It was never, from India’s perspective at least, a de–facto military alliance. Nevertheless China, and to an extent Russia, came to see it as a “containment” strategy against them. This became a challenge since neither of the four countries wanted China to determine the future of Quad, while having differing views about what, precisely, the Quad was supposed to achieve.

At this time, the then USA president George W. Bush had other regional ambitions, particularly to keep China engaged in the so called ‘six party talks’ about North Korea’s nuclear program. The US also was attempting on gather support in the UN Security Council to condemn Iran’s nuclear weapons. Antagonizing China would not have helped these broader objectives of the USA, at the time. While the USA put its interest in Quad on the slow road, Australia had also stated in July 2007, that the quadrilateral talks was “not something that they were pursuing”. Relationships between the Quad partners were also becoming distinctly ‘unfriendly’. The Rudd government had stated that it would reverse a decision by its preceding government to sell Australian uranium to India which angered New Delhi, while Rudd’s personal visit to China angered the Japanese.

Ten years later, the strategic circumstances in the wider Indo–pacific region changed profoundly. With Abe’s return as Japan’s Prime Minister in December 2012, there was a renewed interest from Japan to revitalize the Quad. He was joined by Australia in these efforts in 2017, and USA’s decision to formally announce the end of its strategic engagement with China and replace it with a new, but not yet fully defined doctrine of engagement also saw the USA embracing the Quad with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the Quad concept in 2019 suffered some of the same handicaps it did in 2008; including the lack of a strategic vision that articulated its substantive and practical purpose beyond the classical counterbalancing against Beijing, its operational characteristics, as well as an agreed assessment of its likely effectiveness in deterring, or exacerbating, particular forms of Chinese geopolitical behavior.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bilateral summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping in April 2018 reflected a degree of deliberate hedging in India's relationships with both the U.S. and China, reinforced by India's doubts as to how reliable a long-term strategic partner USA may prove to be in the future. Nuanced positions on China began to emerge in both India and Japan, reinforced by China's own desire to de-escalate historic strategic tensions with India and Japan to help offset Beijing's worsening relationship with Washington.

The Quad’s resurrection in 2017 reflected the change in attitudes in the region towards China’s growing influence. USA now considers Quad as a pivot towards focusing more on the Indo–Pacific region, mainly as a counter-force to China’s assertive actions. China has frequently asserted that the Quad group is an attempt to form an Asian NATO, though unlike the original European alliance, there is no mutual–defense pact in effect, with the emphasis being meant to deepen economic, diplomatic and academic ties among the four countries of the Quad.

The latest meeting of the Quad on Tuesday, 21 May 2022; marked an in-person gathering of the group’s leaders with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Australia’s new PM Anthony Albanese, USA President Joe Biden and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in attendance. This meeting has not been without its controversies; with the former three countries being united in their stand of supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, especially with the sanctions against Russia, while India stands by its increasing purchases of Russian oil and gas to ensure its own energy security.

While USA President Joe Biden tried to pursue his agenda of the Ukraine–Russia conflict in his Quad speech, stating that; “Russia’s war on Ukraine is a humanitarian catastrophe that is more than a just a European issue, it’s a global issue; and the world (including India in Biden’s opinion) has to deal with it”.

The Indian Prime Minister Modi was very clear when he stated that “Quad has made an important place for itself before the world in such a short span of time. Today, Quad’s scope has become extensive, its form effective. Our mutual trust and our determination are giving new energy and enthusiasm to democratic powers.”

The Australian PM stated that, “We will bring more resources and energies to securing our region as we enter a new and more complex phase in the Pacific strategic environment. We’ll continue to stand with you, our like-minded friends, and collectively stand for each other”, and Japan’s PM Kishida stated that “We should listen carefully to voices of the countries in the ASEAN, South Asia as well as the Pacific Island countries, so as to further advance cooperation, conducive to solving urgent issues facing the vision (for Indo Pacific Region).”

The other issue of discomfort to USA, Japan and Australia is that of India banning free exports of its wheat to the world, while the Russia–Ukraine conflict is causing global price spikes that affect their economy adversely.

Even with the differences in the individual foreign policies of each nation; the Quad member nations did announce the formation of the ‘Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness’ [IPMDA], the sharing of satellite data through the ‘Quad Satellite Data Portal’, the Quad Vaccine Partnership, and the Quad Fellowship program that would allow 100 students from Quad countries to go to USA to pursue graduate degrees in STEM areas. Cooperation agreements were also reached in the areas of ‘5G supplier diversification and open RAN’, and the ‘Quad Cybersecurity Partnership’.

In its joint statement, the Quad pledged to take "decisive action" to "strongly support the principles of freedom, rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes without resorting to threat or use of force, any unilateral attempt to change the status quo, and freedom of navigation and overflight”, further stating that these were "essential to the peace, stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region and to the world."

Despite the advances that Quad is making in working together in various areas of mutual group interests, India is focused on non-traditional security issues, which the other three, who are deeply intertwined as military partners, find difficult to understand and accept. The Quad is not a security alliance, nor will it become one. Unlike NATO, it is not a bloc of countries defined by mutual security guarantees and combined military resources. However, as China increases its military presence and assertiveness across the Indo-Pacific, the Quad must be flexible and develop a robust security agenda if it seeks to sustain itself, and its sphere of influence, in the coming years.