What is the point of the Quad?

The loose coalition of America, Australia, India and Japan is yet to prove its mettle

A monitor displaying a virtual meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden (top L), Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison (bottom L), Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (top R) and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seen during the virtual Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting, at Suga's official residence in Tokyo on March 12, 2021. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota / POOL / AFP) (Photo by KIYOSHI OTA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Sep 23rd 2021

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY in Asia is revving up. Last week President Joe Biden announced a new pact with Australia and Britain, AUKUS, to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines. And on September 24th the leaders of America, Australia, India and Japan will gather in Washington, DC, for the first in-person meeting of another grouping, the “Quad”. Although its leaders have never sat down together, the group can trace its roots back to joint disaster relief after the Asian tsunami almost 17 years ago. Its communiqués talk of securing a “free, open, prosperous, rules-based and inclusive Indo-Pacific”. But what really unites the four countries is the spectre of China and its growing muscle. What is the Quad, and what does it want to achieve?

After the initial co-operation on disaster relief, America, Australia, India and Japan met in 2007 for a “quadrilateral dialogue” on security matters. Many bet the new bloc would fizzle. India, once non-aligned and still suspicious of anything that smacked of an alliance, was non-committal, but in the end it was Australia, discomfited by China’s prickly reaction, that was the first to abandon the group in 2008. Since then China has projected its power across Asia and the Pacific. And so, after the four countries’ foreign ministers got together at a gathering of the Association of South-East Asian Nations in 2017, the Quad returned.

All four members have seen their relationships with China deteriorate. Chinese incursions around islands that Japan controls but that China claims in the East China Sea have grown ever more frequent. Australia has faced Chinese restrictions on all manner of exports, from wine to coking coal, following its call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Indian and Chinese troops have clashed on their disputed border, resulting in the first fatalities in 45 years.

As a result, America has expanded its naval patrols in the South China Sea. Last year America, India and Japan invited Australia to re-join the annual Malabar naval exercises after a 13-year gap, giving the Quad a de facto naval face (India insists the Quad and Malabar are entirely separate). A new “Blue Dot” infrastructure network, aimed by America, Australia and Japan at countering China’s Belt and Road Initiative, promotes transparency and environmental sustainability (India is yet to sign up). In March the Quad’s leaders met for the first time, virtually, and agreed to expand vaccine manufacturing for South-East Asia. This month they were set to discuss co-operation on the pandemic, climate change, infrastructure, emerging technologies and of course security. China’s government, meanwhile, last week warned against forming “closed and exclusive ‘cliques’” and said the Quad was “doomed to fail”.

The Quad remains a work in progress. It has not yet really achieved all that much. It has certainly not stopped China from threatening its members. The promise of Asian vaccinations was predicated on supplies from India, which its enormous second wave stymied. The importance of unofficial “Quad-plus” partners has also grown, as shown in the AUKUS deal (how it will work with the Quad remains to be seen) and growing British and French naval patrols in the Pacific. But the leaders’ meeting this week is a statement of intent and energy. China’s hardening edge in military, diplomatic, economic and technological fields has given the grouping renewed purpose.

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What is the point of the Quad?

The loose coalition of America, Australia, India and Japan is yet to prove its mettle

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