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Early next week, Tokyo will host the foreign ministers’ meet of the Quad – in the run-up to the summit to be held in New Delhi later this year.
The Delhi summit, earlier tentatively scheduled for January, was postponed and will likely take place in November, after the US presidential polls, to obviate the hurdle of the prior campaign engagement of the US President. That, however, doesn’t mean that the Tokyo meet will only set the stage for the one in Delhi. In the current flux of regional security in the Indo-Pacific, the meeting in Tokyo has a more immediate agenda to engage foreign ministers of India, the US, Japan, and Australia.
When India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar will join US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japan’s foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa, and Australian foreign minister Penny Wong, one clear impetus will be to carry forward what was discussed in the Quad’s foreign ministers’ last meeting in New York in September last year.
The progress made on the working groups as well as the forum’s initiatives, including those in the realm of economic security, are set to be part of the meet’s agenda. But being primarily a security forum aimed at countering the influence of China in the Indo-Pacific region, the forum will turn its gaze on the recent security-related developments.
In recent months, the Chinese maritime forces have been in confrontation with the Philippines in the South China Sea. This has been continuing since last year, and the Philippines has on several occasions accused Chinese vessels of threatening security and even infringing its exclusive economic zone. The Quad members see it as another demonstration of Chinese hegemonic designs in the South China region.
Besides the Quad’s concerns about Beijing’s insidious moves for clout in the South China Sea, New Delhi is likely to reiterate the territorial security concerns that China continues to pose on Indo-China borders. India’s key interest in Quad, like other members, is to mount a counter to China’s interventions in the security paradigm of the region.
The nature of Quad remains that of an informal strategic forum and not a formal security group like that of NATO, which China did apprehend at one point in time. Even the informal forum took time to be injected with some degree of urgency, and it had its share of doubts to overcome. Its search for renewed focus was largely a Canberra-led impetus, and in course of time the other Quad members saw the regional logic in it. But the initiative in the first place had come from Tokyo.
After former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pitched the idea of stitching Quad as an informal forum in 2007, the initial American enthusiasm of seeing it as a pivot to Asia went missing for a few years before the Donald Trump administration revived interest in it around 2017. The fact that the Joe Biden administration later chose to persist with a focus on Quad was one of the many bipartisan continuities visible in Washington.
This shedding of historical hesitations about an Indo-Pacific security forum was a process that unfolded over a period of time before Quad gathered some diplomatic steam, though in informal terms. China had hoped that the US, distracted with West Asia, Russia, and Afghanistan, might not address the Indo-Pacific as an immediate priority. But the US assessment of the Chinese hegemonic moves in the South China Sea and posturing in the East China Sea prodded Washington to rejuvenate the Quad.
At the same time, India’s apprehensions about China’s string of pearls encirclement strategy weren’t new; it took time for India to see Quad as a long-time strategic forum and not a short-term tactical pressure forum in the face of its continuing border tensions with Beijing.
The focus on being a counterweight to China has also meant that the issues of global security beyond Indo-Pacific, or trans-Indo-Pacific, like the continuing Ukraine war or the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, haven’t significantly crept into Quad’s agenda.
India’s differences with other Quad members over their unilateral condemnation of Russia for the Ukraine war haven’t come in the way of addressing common concerns in the Indo-Pacific region. India has been consistent in exercising strategic autonomy by not singling out Russia and joining sanctions against Moscow for Ukraine and instead urging both Ukraine and Russia to work for cessation of military hostilities through diplomatic and peaceful solutions. Even if other Quad members would want India to echo their voice on the issue, this hasn’t been a roadblock in pursuing their shared security interests in the Indo-Pacific.
At the same time, this is the first ministerial meeting of the Quad after another trans-regional conflict broke out in West Asia in the form of the Israel-Hamas war. There isn’t any significant discordant note among the Quad members on this conflict, as they share similar positions on how they view it and the way forward to end it.
Since finding its renewed impetus in recent years, however, Quad members have also looked beyond the key security agenda of the forum to also use it for addressing some areas of common economic interests. They see it as crucial for the goal of economic security in the region. This entails securing resilient supply chains, particularly in critical minerals and sourcing rare earths, to plug the vulnerabilities of member countries to extraneous factors. The Quad could be leveraged to offer alternatives for countries in the region, and the working groups could be directed towards these objectives also.
As the Quad waits for its summit in the later part of the year, the Tokyo meet of the foreign ministers will be as preparatory as it will be about finding responses to the immediate security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region. In the process of doing so, the foreign ministry heads of the member countries are also likely to explore the avenues of pursuing common economic interests. In reinforcing the conventional security counterweight to China in the region, building regional economic security can be handy in ensuring credible supply chains for the countries in the region.
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