By negating the shared pessimistic prediction of a group of strategic elites in the United States and Australia, the four members of the QUAD (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), in their just-concluded summit hosted by U.S. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 21, have asserted that “The Quad is here to stay.”
Along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan, the US President has declared that the next Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting will be held in 2025 in the U.S. and India will host the next Quad Leaders’ Summit next year.
In fact, over the past four years, Quad heads of government have met six times, including twice virtually, and Quad foreign ministers have met eight times, most recently in Tokyo in July.
Quad country representatives convene regularly at all levels to consult one another, exchange ideas to advance shared priorities, and deliver benefits for partners across the Indo-Pacific region.
It is against this background that “The Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement” and the accompanying “Fact Sheet: 2024 Quad Leaders’ Summit” seem to have negated many premises of the nay-sayers.
Is India The Weakest Link Of QUAD?
These premises essentially revolved around the narrative that “India is the weakest link of the Quad” because of the beliefs that it is a developing country compared to the other three members and has not sided with democracy by not condemning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and that New Delhi will never be a security-partner to join the other three in fighting China in case it annexes Taiwan and attacks other countries in the Indo-Pacific.
But then, contrary to such premises, Quad has never been projected as an anti-China grouping. Quad meetings have generally avoided taking the name of China; what they have done is to emphasize their principles that oppose any country that acts unilaterally and forcibly to change the territorial status quo and maritime boundaries, disregards international law, and threatens free and open navigation.
These principles have only been re-emphasized in the just concluded summit’s declaration, which says, “We, four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific, unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity. We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate UN Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates, and no country is dominated—one where all countries are free from coercion and can exercise their agency to determine their futures. We are united in our commitment to upholding a stable and open international system, with its strong support for human rights, the principle of freedom, the rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and peaceful settlement of disputes and prohibition on the threat or use of force in accordance with international law, including the UN Charter”.
Similarly, when Quad talks of “security,” it is not in the military sense. Quad is not a military grouping. Quad members deal with military issues, including cooperation, bilaterally with one another.
Japan and Australia have a mutual security alliance, each with the United States separately. India’s military cooperation with the United States has seen a quantum jump and will go much higher following Modi and Biden’s bilateral talks on their proper implementation (But that merits a separate story). Multilaterally, all four Quad members participate in various military exercises, but these do not have any linkage as such with the Quad as a grouping.
Quad, Beyond Military
On the contrary, as the “Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement,” which is pretty long and includes as many as 58 paragraphs, makes it obvious, Quad concentrates on “non-traditional security issues” such as health, technology, connectivity, critical supply chains, maritime domain awareness, and humanitarian and disaster relief.
Some of these, which are quite innovative, are particularly noteworthy.
First, the Quad has decided to launch the historic “Quad Cancer Moonshot,” a collective effort to leverage public and private resources to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer in the Indo-Pacific, with an initial focus on cervical cancer.
Similarly, in their commitment to supporting health security and resiliency efforts across the region, the Quad countries have decided to strengthen their “Pandemic Fund” to enhance prevention, early detection, and response to potential disease outbreaks.
The Quad’s collaborative efforts include training health specialists from the Indo-Pacific to strengthen regional capabilities for health emergencies.
India, it has been decided, will host a workshop on pandemic preparedness and release a white paper outlining emergency public health responses.
Secondly, based on the progress of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) that was launched at the 2022 Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo, the latest summit has announced a new regional “Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI) to enable our partners in the region Indo-Pacific partners to maximize tools provided through IPMDA and other Quad partner initiatives, to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws, and deter unlawful behavior.”
India will be hosting the inaugural MAITRI workshop in 2025.
In this context, Quad leaders decided to launch the first-ever “Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission,” which will take place in 2025, to improve interoperability and advance maritime safety between their respective Coast Guards across the Indo-Pacific.
Thirdly, the Quad leaders decided to launch a Quad Indo-Pacific Logistics Network pilot project to pursue shared airlift capacity among the four nations and leverage collective logistics strengths in order to support civilian response to natural disasters more rapidly and efficiently across the Indo-Pacific region.
The Quad leaders have decided to attach great importance to the infrastructural developments in the region. Accordingly, the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership will harness the Quad’s expertise to support sustainable and resilient port infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific in collaboration with regional partners.
It is intended to harness the Quad’s collective expertise to support sustainable and resilient port infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific. Partners will share practices that ensure their ports can maintain an acceptable level of service and infrastructure to ships, especially in the face of disruptions.
And here, too, India will hold the inaugural Regional Ports and Transportation Conference in Mumbai in 2025.
Fourthly, the Quad leaders’ special emphasis was on their resolve to strengthen “the Quad Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience.” For them, strengthening quality undersea cable networks in the Indo-Pacific is important, as their capacity, durability, and reliability are “inextricably linked to the security and prosperity of the region and the world.”
They mentioned how Japan, Australia, and the U.S. are working in this regard. “Complementing these investments in new undersea cables, India has commissioned a feasibility study to examine expansion of undersea cable maintenance and repair capabilities in the Indo-Pacific”, they noted.
Fifthly, the Quad leaders talked about “Critical and Emerging Technology.” The Quad plans to expand support for ongoing Open RAN field trials and the Asia Open RAN Academy (AORA) in the Philippines, building on the initial $8 million in support that the United States and Japan pledged earlier this year. In addition, the United States plans to invest over $7 million to support the global expansion of AORA, including through establishing a first-of-its-kind Open RAN workforce training initiative at scale in South Asia, in partnership with Indian institutions.
Sixthly, the Quad leaders highlighted how their governments are deepening leading-edge collaborative research to harness artificial intelligence, robotics, and sensing to transform agricultural approaches and empower farmers across the Indo-Pacific. They announced an inaugural $7.5+ million in funding opportunities for joint research and highlighted the recent signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation among the four countries’ science agencies to connect research communities and advance shared research principles. They all agreed on the need to achieve “safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems”.
Seventhly, the Quad partners decided to launch “the BioExplore Initiative” – a joint effort supported by an initial $2 million in funding to use AI technology to study and analyze biological ecosystems across all four countries. This initiative will help advance the ability to discover and use the diverse capabilities found in living organisms to yield new products and innovations with the potential to diagnose and treat disease, develop resilient crops, generate clean energy, and much more. The initiative will also aim to build technological capacity across the Quad nations. This project will also be underpinned by the forthcoming Quad Principles for Research and Development Collaborations in Critical and Emerging Technologies, which advances sustainable, responsible, safe, and secure collaborations in biotechnologies and other critical technologies among the Quad and across the region.
Eighthly, a semiconductor supply chain’s “Contingency Network Memorandum of Cooperation” has been announced. It is meant to leverage the complementary strengths of the Quad partners to realize a diversified and competitive market and enhance Quad’s resilience in semiconductor supply chains.
Every Quad country has been assigned to play a major role in fulfilling all these goals. Some of these roles where India will take the initiative have already been mentioned. But, particular mention may be made about Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of a grant of US$7.5 million for making available HPV (human papillomavirus) sampling kits, detection kits, and cervical cancer vaccines to countries in the Indo-Pacific as part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
India will also offer technical assistance and capacity building on DPI (Diphenyleneiodonium) in cancer care to interested countries from the Indo-Pacific through its commitment of $10 million to the WHO’s Global Initiative on Digital Health.
Serum Institute of India, in partnership with GAVI and the Quad, has committed to supporting orders of up to 40 million HPV vaccine doses for the Indo-Pacific region. India will also invest $2 million in setting up new solar projects in Fiji, Comoros, Madagascar, and Seychelles.
Viewed thus, if the Quad is not about dealing with China, but, as the Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement said, “A Global Force for Good,” then India is not its weakest link but an equal and active partner.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda has been commenting on Indian politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. A former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship, he is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. He has been a Visiting Professor at Yonsei University (Seoul) and FMSH (Paris).
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