New Delhi: The White House announced that US President Joe Biden will host this year’s summit-level meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, popularly known as the Quad, at Wilmington, Delaware, on September 21, promoting a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific while addressing various security, economic, and regional challenges is again in focus amidst the ongoing geopolitical churn.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian and Japanese counterparts Anthony Albanese and Fumio Kishida will attend the summit-level meeting of the four-nation grouping that outgoing President Biden will be hosting in what is his hometown.
According to a statement issued by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, this will be the first time that Biden will be hosting foreign leaders in Wilmington as President.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has made elevating and institutionalising the Quad a top priority, from the first-ever Quad Leaders Summit at the White House in 2021, to annual Summits since then,” Jean-Pierre said. “In recent years, Quad Foreign Ministers have met eight times, and Quad governments continue to meet and coordinate at all levels.”
This will be the fourth summit-level meeting of the Quad in the in-person format while two others were held in the virtual format.
What is the Quad and when and why was it formed?
The Quad is a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the US that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and then US Vice President Dick Cheney. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power in the Indo-Pacific, a region stretching from the east coast of Japan to the east coast of Africa.
The roots of the Quad can be traced back to the coordinated disaster response following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The four countries - India, Japan, Australia, and the US - formed the ‘Tsunami Core Group’ to coordinate relief efforts, showcasing their ability to work together effectively in a crisis.
In 2006, the idea of a formal security dialogue began gaining momentum when Japanese Prime Minister Abe proposed a strategic partnership between the four nations. Abe’s vision was to create a “democratic security diamond” to safeguard the maritime commons from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.
The Quad was supposed to establish an “Asian Arc of Democracy”, envisioned to ultimately include countries in Central Asia, Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula, and other countries in Southeast Asia – “virtually all the countries on China’s periphery, except for China itself”. This led some critics to call the project “an anti-Chinese move”, while others have called it a “democratic challenge” to the projected Chinese century, mounted by Asian powers in coordination with the US. China sent diplomatic protests to all four members of the Quad before any formal convention of its members.
The Quad’s first official meeting took place in Manila in May 2007 on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum. Australian Prime Minister Howard participated with other members in the inaugural meeting of the Quad at Cheney’s urging, one month after joint naval exercises near Tokyo by India, Japan and the US. In September 2007, further naval exercises were held in the Bay of Bengal, including Australia.
These were followed in October by a further security agreement between Japan and India, ratified during a visit by Manmohan Singh to Tokyo, to promote sea lane safety and defence collaboration; Japan had previously established such an agreement only with Australia.
Taro Aso, the then Japanese Prime Minister who had succeeded Abe, downplayed the importance of China in the Japan-India pact signed following the creation of the Quad. Then Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon similarly argued that the defence agreement was long overdue because of Indian freight trade with Japan, and did not specifically target China. On the cusp of visits to China and meetings with then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and then President Hu Jintao in January 2008, Manmohan Singh declared that “India is not part of any so-called contain China effort”, after being asked about the Quad.
However, the Quad process hit a roadblock because of Australia.
What caused the cessation of the Quad process for nearly a decade?
In 2008, Australia, under new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, withdrew from the Quad due to concerns over China’s reaction and to prioritise its economic relationship with Beijing.
Some US strategic thinkers criticised Rudd’s decision to leave the Quad. Former Asia director of the US National Security Council, Mike Green, said that Rudd had withdrawn in an effort to please China, which had exerted substantial diplomatic effort to achieve that aim. A December 2008 leaked diplomatic cable authored by US ambassador Robert McCallum reveals that Rudd did not consult the US before leaving the Quad.
This move by Australia effectively put the Quad on hold for almost a decade.
However, Rudd’s replacement as Australian Prime Minister by Julia Gillard in June 2010 was associated with a shift in Australian foreign policy towards a closer relationship with the US and a distancing from China.