What is the Quad, the alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the US that is increasingly worrying China

On March 8, 2018, the Minister of Foreign Affairs ChineseWang Yi scorned the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal strategic forum between Australia, India, Japan and the United States colloquially known as “the Quad”, stating that the group would soon dissipate like “the foam of the sea”.

The claims were not entirely unfounded, as the Quad had failed in the past. However, the growing commitment of its members, who meet tomorrow at a summit in Tokyoand attempts to expand its sphere of influence, have set off alarm bells in Beijing and Wang himself recently accused Washington of trying create an Asian version of NATO that “disrupts regional peace and stability”.

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Furthermore, President Joe Biden opened a new chapter on Monday when he officially revealed the Economic Framework for Prosperity in the Indo-Pacific (IPEF) on the second day of its visit to Japan, a new economic grouping that will include 13 countries – the four members of the Quad, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei–, the equivalent of around 40% of world GDPa move that China has already repudiated.

President Joe Biden shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a bilateral meeting at Akasaka Palace, Monday, May 23, 2022, in Tokyo. (Evan Vucci – AP /)

“I believe that together we are going to win the competition of the 21st century,” Biden said during the launch.

Despite the current escalation, fueled by Beijing’s refusal to condemn Russia, intimidation of Taiwan and now the creation of the IPEF, tension in the Indo-Pacific has been building for some time. According to Joel Wuthnow, a senior fellow at the National Defense University, in recent years Chinese strategists have watched with growing concern as the Quad turned from a shaky diplomatic setup to a more “institutionalized” and “threatening” deal..

The origin of the Quad

A few years before the creation of the Quad, there was the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TED), a series of meetings between the United States, Japan, and Australiain which the former hoped that its allies in the Indo-Pacific space would contribute to facilitating the evolution of its global strategy to combat terrorism and nuclear proliferation in exchange for the maintenance of strategic and security guarantees in the region.

Also, in 2004, The devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean prompted the creation of a core group to coordinate aid between the United States, Japan, Australia and India. Although days later the team disbanded and the countries joined the broader relief efforts coordinated by the UN, the initiative set a precedent.

Three years later, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested a more formal meeting of the four nations. The first was held in May 2007 at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in the Philippines and was characterized as an “informal grouping” in which common interests were discussedaccording to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Open and transparent, this network will allow the free movement of people, goods, capital and knowledge”said Abe.

An undated photo released on Dec. 31, 2021 by the Xinhua news agency shows a J-15 fighter about to land on the Chinese Navy’s aircraft carrier Liaoning during military training. (Hu Shanmin/Xinhua via AP/)

Based on the concept of a “democratic peace”, the Quad was accompanied by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale in the region, entitled “Malabar Exercise”.

The diplomatic and military deal was widely seen as a response to China’s rising economic and military power, and Beijing responded by issuing formal diplomatic protests to its members, calling it the “Asian NATO”

The group only lasted a year. Amid unclear goals and mounting Chinese pressure, the countries hesitated to formalize the dialogue. Furthermore, Abe unexpectedly resigned in September 2007, and so the “main animator and architect” of the Quad was eliminated, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Intermission

In the years that followed, former members of the Quad they continued to cooperate bilaterally or trilaterally, especially with regard to joint military exercises.

Obama attempted a more comprehensive approach under his strategy of “pivot to Asia”, which was part of a strategic rebalancing of United States resources and priorities towards the world’s most populous continent. Having long had strong relations with Japan and South Korea, Washington wanted to have a more comprehensive Asia-Pacific strategy that would include greater engagement with Southeast Asian nations as a means of containing China’s growing assertiveness in the region.

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping shake hands in a historic climate agreement. (AFP Agency/)

“The United States wanted to show China that it would compete economically, diplomatically, and militarily on its own turf. Furthermore, the pivot would help disengage the United States from the Middle East, where it had been bogged down for nearly a decade in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he wrote in The Diplomat Peter Birgbauer, an analyst at the Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies.

However, according to analysts, Obama’s strategy hit potholes almost from the start. The emergence of new iterations of global terrorist organizations, coupled with a burgeoning civil war in Syria, meant that The United States still had to focus a considerable amount of time and resources on a region where it was already managing two wars.

Revival with Trump

Donald Trump came to power promising a much tougher approach with the Xi Jinping government. In his first days in office, he had his economic team draw up plans to add tariffs to Chinese goods and demanded that Beijing increase the amount of goods it bought from the United States.

In this context, Trump and Abe met during the ASEAN summit in 2017 and agreed to carry out the so-called strategy of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, which was seen as a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump. (Reuters Agency /)

The visit coincided with a meeting of Japanese, Indian, Australian and US officials that included a discussion of Beijing’s growing role in the South China Sea, and in which Trump expressed his interest in reactivating the Quad.

The Quad met five times between 2017 and 2019. Naval ships from the United States, Australia, Japan and India participated in the Malabar exercise in 2020.

Quad Plus

In March of that year, Quad members held a meeting with representatives of New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam for discuss their respective approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic, which China considered another attempt to expand the sphere of influence. This new grouping of key Indo-Pacific states was called Quad Plus. In May 2021, already under the Biden Administration, another meeting was held in which Brazil and Israel were invited, two countries without a border with the Pacific Ocean, to participate in the Plus format to discuss the distribution of vaccines.

In February of this year, the Quad met in Melbourne with the possibility of expanding the scope of the organization in the face of the united front represented by Russia and China, and which they consider a threat to the openness and sovereignty of the countries of the region. And tomorrow they meet again in Tokyo.

America wants “affirm the image of what the world could be if the world’s democracies and open societies came together to dictate the rules of the game” around American “leadership”US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters today aboard Air Force One. “We believe this message will be heard in Beijing. But it is not a negative message and it is not directed against any country,” he added.

With information from AFP, ANSA and Reuters

Source: Elcomercio