"SQUAD" GOALS: THE NEW QUADRILATERAL ALLIANCE IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

Carta Internacional, 2020

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, abbreviated to Quad, comprises Australia, the United States, Japan, and India. Although many think tanks and media outlets have written about recommendations to further this initiative, this essay believes the Quad is only evidence of a rising patchwork of small strategical dialogues within the Indo-Pacific region. The aims here are twofold: (a) to demonstrate the definitions and relevance of the Quad amid the soaring rivalry in the Indo-Pacific; and (b) to grasp this initiative as a "minilateral" grouping, which is settled in a more informal structure than multilateral institutions. In assessing these hypotheses, this research employs a qualitative content analysis of official statements and documents about the Quad meeting and national policies toward the Indo-Pacific. A systematic bibliographical review was applied to refine theoretical frameworks and to triangulate sources. In conclusion, this paper infers the Quad is not as ambitious and strong as previous literature claimed. These four members developed divergent interests in the Indo-Pacific; thereby, an alliance against China seems unlikely.

Policy Report, 2019

The quadrilateral security dialogue, or “Quad,” was reborn in 2017 to secure a “rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.” Bringing together the US, Japan, India, and Australia, the Quad was initially intended as a mechanism for responding to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. However, it quickly became entangled in growing strategic competition across Asia and collapsed in 2008. Although the four countries still sometimes differ in their views of the region’s strategic trends, the Quad’s revival points to a greater alignment of interests this time around. Nonetheless, major challenges to the Quad’s viability remain. First, it is unclear whether the four powers will be able to maximise opportunities for cooperation while ensuring that wider geopolitical rivalries do not again overwhelm the grouping. Second, given that it has been revived to support this “Indo-Pacific” order, the Quad is constrained by the vagueness of the Indo-Pacific concept and the absence of Indonesia.

Lowy Institute Analysis Paper, 2020

After a ten-year hiatus, the Australia-India-Japan-US Security Quadrilateral Dialogue — informally known as the Quad — was resurrected in 2017 with the aim to support a ‘free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific Region’. While there are important differences among the four countries on threat perceptions, military capability, strategic priority, capacity to bear the costs of potential retaliation, strategic culture and constitutional imperatives, these differences place limitations on Quadrilateral cooperation, but do not preclude it. All four countries have common interests in maintaining a stable balance of power in the region, freedom of the seas, an open rules-based economic order, to counter debt-trap diplomacy and to limit the use of coercion by a state to assert territorial claims. Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has become more assertive and ambitious, vigorously pressing its claims in the East and South China seas and promoting its BRI. Concerned to preserve the existing liberal rules-based order, the Quad states have already responded by increasing their cooperation. Despite the COVID-19 shock and the domestic upheavals and distractions it poses, this cooperation will continue to deepen. While India is an outlier among the four states because of different perceptions of the threat China poses, this does not prevent the four states from cooperating more deeply on standard setting, diplomatic messaging, practical economic measures, and military cooperation, to sustain the liberal rules-based order which has been beneficial to all of them.

Codrul Cosminului, 2023

Consisting of the US, India, Japan, and Australia, the Quad consultative forum emerged as a new multi-foreign policy formation in the Indo-Pacific. Described as a strategic partnership in the face of China's increasing expansionist policies, the Quad also explains India's foreign policy's strategic autonomy and pluralistic approaches. In recent years, India's actions to improve its strategic alliances against the expansionist states in the region within the framework of the liberal order brought the Quad back to the fore of activities aimed at limiting China's actions in the region. In this context, the primary purpose of the Quad to establish a strategic partnership stems from the desire to protect maritime interests. Ensuring the security of energy resources, free trade and navigation, disputes over the border and continental shelf, and economic-based disputes are the main reasons for bringing the Quad back to the agenda. While India's pluralistic foreign policy understanding and China's recent policy perception overlap, the conflicting environment in the global world order pushes China to an expansionist policy in the Indo-Pacific; India, on the other hand, is trying to balance China by establishing various alliances. Although the scale of the economic engagement of the US with countries party to the Quad is no more significant than China's, Quad 2.0 is now a structure where the state parties can take joint steps for security and strategic partnerships due to military interests and cultural ties from the past.

The Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation between Australia and India, made during Kevin Rudd’s visit to New Delhi in November 2009, is part of a developing web of security agreements being spun across the Asia Pacific. For Australia the Declaration is a notable step in the process of developing a closer security relationship with India. However, some grant it wider significance, seeing it as plugging a “missing link” in a web of bilateral security agreements connecting Australia, India, the United States and Japan - the four members of the so-called Quadrilateral security dialogue that was proposed and then quickly abandoned in 2007. With the Australia-India Declaration all four members of the putative “Quad” now have bilateral security arrangements with each other, facilitating the further development of their relationships. Should, as some argue, the Declaration and other bilateral security arrangements be seen as heralding a coalition among Asia-Pacific maritime powers implicitly aimed at containing China?

HASANUDDIN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES (HJSPS), 2021

The rise of China's assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region has indirectly compelled the US, Japan, Australia, and India to reactivate the long dormant Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) to coordinate their strategic approaches. This article analyses both form and function of the Quad from realist institutionalist perspective to assess the diplomatic and military arrangements between Quad members. Realist institutionalist assumes that the type of the multilateral institution, whether it is an alliance or a coalition, along with its size, will affect the decision-making structure, power distribution, and internal leverage, which in turn affect cohesion, war-fighting effectiveness, interoperability, and the organization's legitimacy. Alongside an evaluative empirical analysis of Quad, this paper addresses the question how Quad will thrive although previous attempts at NATO-like security institution failed. Realist Institutionalism theory will illuminate why and how such informal quasi-alliances vis-à-vis China are going to be the structural new normal for the Indo-Pacific region.

Malaysian Journal of International Relations, 2021

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a strategy to contain China which has now reached the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as part of the Chinese geostrategy in the Indo-Pacific to counterbalance US and western hegemony. The dynamics brought by the minilateral realm and bilateral conflicts within the Indo-Pacific have contributed to the shaping of the region's security architecture. This article discusses the contentions between India-China competition; ASEAN, Quad, and the implications to IOR; and how the Quad Plus notion is affecting further geopolitical deliberation in the Indo-Pacific. The article concludes that the Quad is an important platform for years ahead and the rising notion of the Quad Plus will remain as the future challenge for both sides. This may redefine the Indo-Pacific concept itself, however, it is assured that ASEAN will play as a collaborative agent to China and the Quad, while also prioritise their interests over the region.

As an ongoing American foreign policy 're-balancing " attests, the Asia-Pacific region is subject to uncertain transition manifestations and implications for global peace and economic prosperity. This is reflected in growing tensions and potential flash points, driven by a rising China and other regional powers with divergent interests and collective security concerns. Nearly a century ago, facing a similar global transition, the great powers formed a regional security system at the 1921-22 Washington Conference and subsequent conferences in the 1920s and 1930s. While historically seen as ambitious if ultimately unsuccessful, the Inter-War Naval Control regime created a security system to accommodate competing strategic visions, resolve political differences and address security dilemmas—strikingly similar problems faced today in the Asia-Pacific region. Design of a new regional security system that avoids these historical errors can fulfill the original security objective inspiring the re-balancing effort. Success can be further assured through a new U.S. grand strategy, sustained by a strong, bipartisan national consensus, that aims to reshape a revised liberal world order that does not rely exclusively on American hegemony to function, and is built upon a consensus and convergence among regional states of new norms of behavior for political economy, security, and deterrence of potential conflicts. This study investigates a new regional security system to manage power transition issues without great power conflict by framing a broad politically-based approach to enhance regional political stability and reduce both military and non-military incentives to resort to threats of intimidation or force. Employing lessons learned from the successes and failures of the Inter-War Naval Arms Control agreements, the framework envisions generic security guarantees, new security and economic structures, and norms and procedures for intervention, conflict containment and resolution, while considering underlying political, economic and military differences and obstacles to regional cooperation and existing constraints upon U.S. material resources.

Electronic Journal of Social and Strategic Studies, 2021

The rise of China has changed the Indo-Pacific region's regional dynamics and led to the geopolitical competition between major powers of the 21 st Century. In 2007 Australia, India, Japan, and the United States initiated QUAD, a multilateral initiative based on shared security interests and mutual geopolitical concerns. Even though the QUAD initiative had limited scope for bilateral and multilateral cooperation , the recent meetings between Australia, Japan, India, and the US created security and strategic concerns for China. China considered this initiative a threat and declared its intention to establish an Asian NATO to protect its economic and strategic interests. However, India-Australia-Japan has claimed QUAD as an economic and democratic initiative to create a free, transparent, and interconnected Indo-Pacific region. However, India can use this collaboration to balance the power politics in the Indo-Pacific region against China's domination. The multilateral cooperation on strategic and military lines will boost India's position in the Indo-Pacific region. This paper's main objective is to analyze the politics of balance of power between India and China in the Indo-Pacific region with QUAD's help and its implication for China.