he Quadrilateral or the Quad grouping of nations was the brainchild of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But back in 2007 when he proposed this coming together of Australia, the US, Japan and India, there have been only a few takers for the grouping. and therefore the simple reason for it had been this: back in 2007, China wasn’t the threat it’s today.
China wasn’t the bully in Asia that it’s now, neither did it have global hegemonic ambitions. Shinzo Abe was very clear about why he wanted this group of nations to return together. it had been explicitly to counter a growing and assertive China. There was no other rationale for the grouping. Countering China was its raison d’etre.
Quad wasn’t meant to be the forum that pushed back against global climate change or a club of do-gooders gifting vaccines to the planet . There’s a reason why China calls it the Asian NATO. Because it’s . But last week, with the announcement of AUKUS, that singular raison d’etre of Quad has been killed.
The list of dialogue points for the primary ever in-person Quad summit are classified under four buckets: global climate change , emerging technologies, vaccine development and public health. These are the highest four issues that the leaders of the large democracies within the Indo-Pacific are going to be discussing. That’s not what Shinzo Abe would have discussed.
While these are all noble, and maybe , important topics to debate , this is often not what’s getting to deter an assertive China. what’s getting to deter Beijing is that if it’s made to understand that the value of confrontation is just too high to pay. That’s what Quad was meant to try to to . But it’s floundered.
However, that’s exactly what AUKUS is doing. By equipping Australia with a nuclear powered submarine, and by allowing British submarines to park in an Australian base, that’s exactly what AUKUS will do: counter China.
This sends out a loud and clear message to Beijing. subsequent time you are trying to bully smaller countries like Vietnam or Philippines within the South China Sea or run bombers past the Taiwan Straits, you better consider because the battlefield just changed. Someone just brought a machine gun to a pistol fight.
Of the four Quad countries, US and Australia are already military allies, in order that ticks an enormous box. The Japan and US are treaty allies wherein if Japan is attacked by China, then the US is treaty sure to defend it. Yes, there’s still the difficulty of Japan’s pacifist constitution which can still twiddling my thumbs the complete extent of military co-operation with the US and other strategic partners. But the sole country which can be tooth and nail against any quite military alliance with the US or the other member of the Quad are going to be India.
It doesn’t matter whether a right or left-leaning government is in office. This one thing they both agree on. What good are the Malabar exercises which now includes both Australia and Japan, if within the world , it doesn’t translate into a brotherly code of defending one another when the enemy attacks.
Hypothetically, if China were to attack a Sri Lankan vessel or a Maldivian boat and if these countries turn towards big brother India, what would we do then? Are we more happy standing up to the dragon alone? Wouldn’t India be more happy if it were to possess the backing of three other big military powers? If the Quad must live up to what it had been founded for, then all four countries, and India especially , must shed its reticence to deeper military co-operation.