Quad Nations Double Down on Security and Stability Across the Indo-Pacific

The US has followed Indian inclinations and ensured that Quad has become a provider of public goods in the region.

Leaders of Quad nations in a group photo.

(Photo: X/@narendramodi)

The leaders of the Quadrilateral Grouping (Quad) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden — met for their sixth leader’s summit in Wilmington, Delaware (Biden’s hometown) on 21 September.

In their joint statement, they deployed their strongest language yet against China’s activities in the Indo-Pacific without actually naming China. They stated they were “seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas” and that they strongly opposed “any destabilising or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.”

They also expressed serious concern about the militarisation of disputed features and condemned “the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, including increasing use of dangerous manoeuvres.”

In his opening remarks at the summit, Modi said, “Our message is clear—the Quad is here to stay, to assist, to partner, and to complement.”

He went on to add, “We are not against anybody, we are for an international rules-based order, respect for sovereignty” and that a “free, open, inclusive, and prosperous Indo-Pacific is our shared priority and shared commitment.”

The summit was earlier expected to be held in New Delhi but given his re-election campaign, Biden was not keen to travel abroad and requested India to shift the venue. It was then held in his hometown and since he has dropped out of the presidential race, it has become a farewell summit for him. Modi has said that India will be happy to host the summit in 2025.

The PM specifically thanked Biden for his commitment and leadership to the Quad. It was Biden who, in 2021, boosted the organisation by hosting the first leadership-level summit, virtually in March 2021, and then in-person in Washington DC in September of the same year. In 2022, there were two summits, the first held virtually in March, and later an in-person event in May in Tokyo.

Incidentally, the 2023 summit was also shifted from Sydney to Hiroshima at the last minute at the instance of President Biden who found himself unable to go to Australia and Papua New Guinea at the time. So, Australia hosted the summit in Hiroshima instead.

Of the original list of leaders, only Modi and Biden have attended all six in-person summits, and when Biden retires this November, Modi will be the senior-most leader of the Quad.

After the Delaware meeting, Quad leaders announced a range of outcomes relating to the expansion of its work. Foremost among these is the “Quad Cancer Moonshot”, a follow-on to its COVID-19 vaccine initiative where all four countries would contribute to fund efforts to combat cervical cancer. India would offer $10 million and the Pune-based Serum Institute of India and GAVI would provide 40 million vaccines for the region.

An important step would be the expansion into the Indian Ocean of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) to monitor the marine environment for unregulated fishing and humanitarian disasters. This would be done under Indian auspices.

Then there would also be a Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI) to train Quad partners “to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws and deter unlawful behaviour”. India will host the first MAITRI workshop in 2025.

The Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission will see personnel from the Indian, Australian, and Japanese coastguards board a US Coast Guard vessel and subsequently, other Quad countries will take turns hosting it. Such an exercise would be undertaken with a view of “reinforcing peace and stability and the continuity of international law,” said White House spokesperson John Kirby.

Along with the Coast Guard exercise, a Quad logistics network will be launched to allow for sharing cargo space on vessels and aircraft for humanitarian and disaster relief operations (HADR).

It may be recalled that the May 2022 Tokyo summit created the IPMDA which aimed at bringing together regional information fusion centres to provide a near real-time picture of shipping activity in the region and track “dark shipping” to detect piracy and illegal fishing. This scheme has obvious security implications though its goal was not overtly military.

The Quad has often been spoken of as a strategic alliance. That it is, but without military trappings. The US has followed Indian inclinations in ensuring that the Quad has instead taken on the role of being a provider of public goods in the Indo-Pacific, and this has resulted in a steady growth of regional cooperation along with an emphasis on maritime domain awareness, quality infrastructure, critical and emerging technologies, climate and clean energy, humanitarian relief and disaster relief, cybersecurity, space, telecommunications, healthcare, and so on.

India’s membership in the Quad is the institutional manifestation of its Indo-Pacific policy. Its origins lie in the global changes that occurred in the wake of the Cold War and the Indian government’s self-conscious decision to undertake a “Look East” and then an “Act East” strategy which was largely, though not exclusively, geo-economic in its scope.

India is the only country that lies outside the region of the Quad's principal focus— the western Pacific Ocean. It is also the only one of the four that is not a formal military ally of the United States. Yet, in its own way, it is the lynchpin of the Indo-Pacific strategies of the Quad countries.

The military adjunct of the Quad functions separately as the Malabar Exercise, which pre-dates the former's origins and began as an Indo-US venture in the 1990s, had a chequered history with countries periodically joining and leaving it. But as of 2020, it has stabilised with Australia, India, the US, and Japan regularly conducting the exercise either in the Pacific or the Indian Oceans.

At the sidelines of the May 2022 Quad meeting in Tokyo, President Biden announced the creation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) which was meant to make up for the US walkout from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The idea was to provide economic backing to US policy in the Indo-Pacific which was over-reliant on defence.

The US has offered the IPEF as an à la carte menu that members can choose to work on one or several areas relating to four pillars—(Pillar I) trade, (Pillar II) supply chain resilience, (Pillar III) clean economy, and (Pillar IV) fair economy.

In February, India signed up for Pillar II, ie, supply chain resilience, and maintained an observer’s status on the trade pillar. Now, in the Delaware summit, it signed up for the clean economy and fair economy pillars. The Clean Economy Agreement envisages the promotion of technical cooperation, workforce development, capacity building and research collaborations, as well as investment and funding initiatives.

The Fair Economy Agreement aims at creating a more transparent and predictable trade and investment environment across the Indo-Pacific. This will include efforts to combat corruption and bribery and promote tax transparency.

There is considerable overlap between the agendas of the IPEF and the Quad. But where the former has 14 members, the latter only four. The IPEF could therefore be a pointer to the future evolution of the Quad as a larger grouping that could include seven ASEAN members, South Korea, New Zealand and some Pacific Island countries.