. The meeting of the heads of state of the US, Japan, India and Australia will discuss maritime interests, climate and vaccines – but ‘no single competitor’
. Experts are weighing in on how much the Quad can do and whether, in a crisis, they would really step in to help each other
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Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (centre) and the foreign ministers of India, Japan, Australia and the United States met in Tokyo in October. Now, the leaders of those nations are meeting virtually, drawing criticism from China about the purpose and significance of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Photo: AFP |
The first heads of state meeting of the “Quad” on Friday is expected to mark the start of a new power dynamic that would counter China’s influence in the region, but analysts ask how far can it go.
US President Joe Biden and his counterparts from Japan, India and Australia will meet virtually on Friday to discuss regional and global issues of “shared interest” – ranging from maritime issues and climate challenges to coronavirus vaccination.
Biden has put the Indo-Pacific and “an increasingly assertive China” in the spotlight of his interim strategic guidance released in early March, while US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue will play a key role in America’s Indo-Pacific policy.
The summit would be the first held under the Quad framework since the initial official-level meeting instigated by Japan in 2007.
The group was started to coordinate relief following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The Quad held rounds of dialogue after that but was considered “revived” under former US president Donald Trump late last year, when the group had a foreign minister-level meeting and held its first joint naval exercises.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Quad was well equipped to deal with the world’s “urgent challenges” but, when asked about China, said the format was “not about any single competitor”.
Beijing is clearly not convinced.
On various occasions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged the US not to create transitory “sea foam”, “exclusive cliques” and “small circles” and directly called the group “a so-called Indo-Pacific North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, referring to the military alliance against Russia and China formed during the Cold War.
Each member of the Quad has become increasingly wary of Beijing in recent years amid disputes over territory, trade, human rights issues and alleged espionage.
Apart from its continued tensions with the US, China is in a months-long border stand-off with India and has launched multiple trade sanctions against Australian products amid growing allegations of Chinese meddling in Australian politics. Japan is also wary of China’s newly adopted coastguard law.
The group, however, has always stopped short of discussing China openly. A Covid-19 vaccination roll-out coordinated by Quad countries and manufactured by India is expected to top the agenda at the leaders meeting.
“Of course, this sort of cooperation is designed to collectively challenge China’s vaccine diplomacy,” said Takashi Terada, professor of international relations at Doshisha University.
China has been accused of offering vaccines to friendly countries to expand its influence. Foreign Minister Wang denied this and said China viewed its vaccines as a “global public good”.
Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow in foreign and defence policy at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute, said he hoped to see the group grow beyond just military exercises and security matters to issues such as vaccines and supply chains in the region.
“A real achievement for quadrilateral engagement would be to expand cooperation beyond policies that benefit quad members directly and focus on offering practical things that benefit the region as a whole,” Sayers said.
Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst at Rand, said he expected the Quad under Biden would remain “cagey” on how China was regarded in Quad discussions, but would still have an underlying focus on maritime issues.
“The focus is on challenges not directly related to China, such as climate change, global supply chains and pandemic recovery. However, the underlying theme is clearly how best the four democratic partners can contend with Beijing’s growing coerciveness throughout the Indo-Pacific, and specifically within the maritime domain,” Grossman said.
Kyoto-based Terada said the new importance of the Quad symbolised a pivot by the US back to the Indo-Pacific.
“More importantly, this vision has been shared by Japan, Australia and India, helping to reduce their – especially Japan’s – doubt about the US commitment to regional security,” he added.
Liu Zongyi, an associate research fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said he expected the Quad to create disruption in the region and create a more hostile and negative environment for China in terms of security.
But he did not think the Quad would go far to threaten China’s established influence, particularly relating to economic matters.
“The US has been changing their alliance system in Asia since the Cold War, and that is expected to bring turbulence and disrupt order in the region,” he said, noting that US’ cooperation with its allies in the region had largely been bilateral in the past.
“The nature of Quad will still remain largely military or strategic, despite their approach to discuss other topics. One main reason is because China’s ability and willingness to invest in the region will still be ahead of these other countries,” said Liu, an expert in strategic studies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Yuan Jingdong, another Asia-Pacific security expert at the University of Sydney, also noted the limitations of Quad in developing into a formal military alliance.
“The Quad countries may all agree the rise of China is a major security challenge to their interests, but they may entertain different approaches given their divergent interests, priorities, and capabilities,” Yuan said.
Yuan gave an example: if military conflict took place between China and India, it was hard to imagine that Japan or Australia, or even the US, would intervene directly or with military force.
Meanwhile, experts said that even if China were removed from the equation, the strengthened relations among Quad members could still be complicated.
Brahma Chellaney, a strategic studies professor at the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, has quoted the Biden administration’s recent plan for including the Taliban in an interim power-sharing government in Afghanistan as one that “will destabilise Afghanistan, embolden terrorists and undermine India’s interests in its neighbourhood”.
“The Quad is a collaborative security initiative, based on the understanding that its members will collectively work to advance their strategic interests. But if the US is seen to act unilaterally in ways that undermine any other member’s regional interests, the Quad cannot flourish,” Chellaney said.
