Agenda Driven

Col Ajay Singh (retd)

The most significant aspect of the Quad summit hosted by President Joe Biden in Washington this September was that it was held so soon after the virtual meeting of heads of states in March. It heralded one thing—Quad seems to be here to stay. Coming in the backdrop of the Afghanistan debacle, and the ripples caused by AUKUS, it is a message that the focus has indeed shifted to the Indo-Pacific, where this grouping hopes to counter an increasingly belligerent China.

Unfortunately, this meeting too, did not formalise the alliance, nor did it lay out a definite charter—less the fact that foreign ministers would meet once a year. But the meeting did highlight the concerns of the four members that ‘our shared futures will be written on the Indo-Pacific.’ And this grouping would help provide a balance in the region against an increasingly assertive China, and perhaps provide a security umbrella without overtly military overtones.

In the vision for ‘shared prosperity in the Indo-Pacific’ the Quad summit rolled out three C’s—Covid, critical technologies and climate change. The fourth ‘C’—China—was not mentioned. But it was the elephant in the room. What that implies is that the grouping aims to synergise the economic, ideological and technological clout of its members to provide a cohesive alternative to China.

Leaders of the QUAD countries in the US

The roll-out of 1.2 billion doses of vaccine for the region—in which the Indian Biological E will manufacture the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, whose technology will be supplied by the US; the financing by Japan and the delivery logistics by Australia is just one of the ways in which we can move together. The first attempt had been unfortunately stymied when India had been unable to export the vaccines because of the