The Quad is here to stay - analysis

The Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhion 26 May sought to put that notion to bed. Attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of India, Japan and Australia, the grouping is moving into a more practical phase.

Arguments suggest that President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to China with his desire to stabilise trade ties with Beijing and possible ambiguity over Taiwan, has weakened Washington’s appetite for a sharper Indo-Pacific security posture and in turn, weakened the Quad. Quad has been seen to lose its edge, becoming too slow and too cautious, all while newer formats such as AUKUS, Camp David and the so-called “Squad” may take over the real security function.

Current strategic calculations show otherwise. The Quad is not becoming obsolete, but has gained further credentials as a needed deterrence and fallback, because the very strategic environment that created it has become more militarised and the threats have deepened.

The Quad’s Expanding Strategic and Economic Relevance

The joint statement from the meeting reaffirmed cooperation on maritime domain awareness, critical minerals, energy security, infrastructure, counter-terrorism and regional resilience, while expressing concern over coercive actions in the South China Sea and East China Sea and opposing unilateral attempts to change the status quo.

One of the most important outcomes was the decision to mobilise around US$20 billion in public and private investment for critical minerals supply chains, including mining and processing, directly responding to China’s dominance in rare earths and critical mineral processing.

This shows continuous extension of a comprehensive build-up of resilience in all power equations, not confined to hard power alone.

Key infrastructures, minerals, energy corridors, data flows and surveillance architecture are now part of the new balance of power. The Quad understands that securing the Indo-Pacific is not only about naval and military assets with aircraft carriers and missiles, but also increasingly about human capital for the controls of logistics, who finances infrastructure, who sees maritime movement first, who processes the minerals needed for defence and technology, and who can keep sea lanes open during crisis.

With the rising arms race and military spending, the Quad is seen as the natural needed bulwark for its members to maintain relevance.

Asia and Oceania’s military spending rose by 8.1% to US$681 billion, while China’s military spending rose by 7.4% to an estimated US$336 billion. In responding to that, India’s spending rose by 8.9% to US$92.1 billion while Japan’s spending reached US$62.2 billion, up 9.7%.

If U.S.-China relations become more deal-driven, regional partners will want an institutional hedge against sudden bilateral bargains or changes, and Quad comes in strategic. India, Japan and Australia do not want Indo-Pacific security to become hostage to a temporary trade understanding between Washington and Beijing, and the Quad gives them a platform to preserve continuity even when American domestic politics continue to be unpredictable.

The Quad’s flexibility is its strength, not being rigidly structured like NATO. It does not force members into a formal alliance but creating strategic convergence where interests overlap especially in areas of maritime security, freedom of navigation, supply-chain resilience, critical minerals, and trusted technology.

India has its own strategic reasons keep momentum on Quad, with the China-India border dispute, the need for Indian Ocean dominance, to counter Chinese maritime expansion, and the vulnerability of supply chains.

The Quad also gives Japan and Australia wider strategic depth and fallback, knowing that they alone cannot secure the wider Indo-Pacific.

Why Other Frameworks Cannot Replace the Quad

The Quad is seen to give the bigger and more overarching deterrence and resilience capacity in a bigger power framework as compared to other existing mechanisms including AUKUS, Camp David Pact and the Squad alone.

AUKUS does not include India or Japan, and it does not provide a wider Indo-Pacific political platform.

The Camp David framework between the United States, Japan and South Korea is important, but it is largely Northeast Asia-centric, driven by North Korea, China and regional missile threats, while primarily leaving out the Indian Ocean, South Asia or the wider Pacific.

The Squad - involving the United States, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, is especially relevant and strategic for the South China Sea, especially given Chinese pressure on Manila. This platform however, remains geographically narrower and politically less mature than the Quad.

The Quad remains the only platform that links the Pacific and Indian Ocean theatres, the only grouping that connects the world’s largest economy, the world’s most populous country, Asia’s most advanced maritime democracy, and Australia’s southern Indo-Pacific strategic base.

The grouping’s economic weight remains one of the plus points. Together, the Quad countries account for a huge share of global GDP, advanced technology capacity, naval reach, democratic legitimacy and maritime geography. Their combined population also exceeds 1.8 billion, giving the Quad a scale that no other Indo-Pacific minilateral capacities can replicate.

The Quad’s future also goes beyond China, although China is seen as the central driver, but not the only one. The Indo-Pacific faces a wider set of structural risks with rising conventional and non-conventional threats: maritime chokepoint vulnerability, attacks on commercial shipping, grey-zone coercion, illegal fishing, undersea cable risk, energy insecurity, cyber vulnerability, disaster response gaps, and transboundary crimes and health challenges.

The post-Ukraine factor is also seen as a strategic decisive factor. If the United States eventually recalibrates ties with Russia after the war, the strategic centre of gravity will eventually shift even more toward the Indo-Pacific.

A future U.S.-Russia accommodation, however limited or transactional, would allow Washington to redirect more capacities, resources, and military planning toward Asia. That will propel the relevance of the Quad as a mechanism where the United States can coordinate with India, Japan and Australia without creating a formal Asian NATO.

The Quad does have limitations and wariness; it is not a military alliance. India remains cautious and Australia must manage economic exposure to China, while Japan still faces domestic and constitutional constraints.

But these roadblocks are expected and the Quad survives because it is not over-institutionalised, allowing each member to move at its own pace while still building cumulative alignment and flexibility.

The real test of relevance is whether it can shape behaviour, build capacity, deter coercion and offer alternatives. In all these fronts, the Quad is more consequential, based on geography, capability, necessity and the absence of any better alternative. AUKUS’ scope is seen as too narrow, while Camp David is too regional, and the Squad is too limited. Bilateral alliances are too fragmented, while the Quad is seen to have the scale, reach and flexibility to connect the Indian Ocean and Pacific theatres into one strategic framework, keeping the region open, balanced and secure.

Read the original article here. 

Image attribution “Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at Hyderabad House” by MEAphotogallery, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons.