In October last year we wrote “Although the [revamped] Quad group comprising these four Indo-Pacific partners is still quite new, its significance is growing rapidly, and the US clearly views this new strategic grouping through the lens of its broader strategic competition with China”.
In January this year we predicted that it would be one of the few Trump-era policies that would survive the transition to a Biden presidency: “If President Xi Jinping and the leadership in Beijing had hoped for a new beginning with a new Administration in Washington, they will be sorely disappointed. The Biden-Harris team will continue to confront China over human rights issues in particular, and [the Quad] will be seen as a continuation of the policies put in place by former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo”.
In fact, the Biden Administration has gone even further than the Pompeo policy by elevating the status of the Quad (full name, the ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’) by hosting a meeting of the leaders of the four nations, and by expanding the range and scope of issues on which the four countries pledge to cooperate. Previously, the grouping had been restricted to Ministerial-level meetings, and its public statements limited to predictable boilerplate about upholding the principles of freedom of navigation; respect for territorial integrity and national sovereignty; and peaceful dispute resolution.
The most recent meeting, however, was significant on a number of levels: it was the first multilateral meeting for President Biden since taking office; it was the first time heads of government from the Quad countries have held a summit since the group emerged after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; and it endorsed the concept of an “Indo-Pacific” strategic zone of cooperation (and competition) at the highest levels of government in Washington, Tokyo, New Delhi and Canberra. Furthermore, the Quad group broadened its remit for action to include cooperation on vaccines, climate change, and technology – including cybersecurity.
For Scott Morrison in particular, this is a significant foreign policy win. Australia is now at the centre (literally) of US Indo-Pacific strategy, and the Quad group’s new ‘tier one’ status means that US engagement in our region is more likely to deliver tangible outcomes than did President Obama’s notional ‘pivot to Asia’. And as the deep winter of Australia’s relations with China shows no sign of a thaw, groupings such as this provide priceless psychological and physical support for the Australian government in its dealings with Beijing.
For the US, the new group is the ideal vehicle for an Administration committed to working through multilateral groupings and institutions on a principles-based foreign policy. This stands in contrast to the more transactional, America First (often America Alone) policies of the previous Administration. The fact that the new national security and foreign policy leadership in Washington saw this meeting as worthy of being the President’s first speaks volumes, and in the words of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “Make no mistake; today is a big day for American diplomacy. This summit is a big deal for the president and for the country”.
There are two obvious challenges for this upscaled Quad grouping: the first is to convince other regional players (ASEAN, South Korea for example) that they are not being marginalised by this new quad on the block; and secondly, walking the fine line between being a non-treaty grouping of like-minded countries pursuing ideals of international law and cooperation, and being seen in Beijing simply as an anti-China coalition.
In fact, the Quad leaders made no public reference to or criticism of China, although the “challenges” posed by China were discussed in private, and there were dog whistle references to the grouping being part of the “the competition of models between autocracy and democracy.” That is a more nuanced version of former Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement that the Quad would be a vehicle to “begin to build out a true security framework, a fabric that can counter the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to all of us.”
But the intent is the same.
We’ll leave the final word on the upgraded and revitalised Quad to US National Security Adviser Sullivan: “The Quad, at the end of the day, at the end of today, is now a critical part of the architecture of the Indo-Pacific.”
Sydney Avenue Consultants 