By negating the shared pessimistic prediction of a group of strategic elites in the United States and Australia, the four members of the QUAD (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States), in their just concluded summit , hosted by U.S. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 21, have asserted that “The Quad is here to stay”.
Along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan, the US President has declared that the next Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting will be held in 2025 in the U.S. and India will host the next Quad Leaders’ Summit next year.
As a matter of fact, over the past four years, Quad heads of the government have met six times, including twice virtually. Quad Foreign Ministers have met eight times, most recently in Tokyo in July. Quad country representatives convene on a regular basis, at all levels, to consult one another, exchange ideas to advance shared priorities, and deliver benefits for partners across the Indo-Pacific region.
It is against this background that “The Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement” and the accompanying “Fact Sheet: 2024 Quad Leaders’ Summit” seem to have negated many premises of the nay-Sayers.
These premises essentially revolved around the narrative that “India is the weakest link of the Quad” as it is a developing country compared to other three developed members; it has not sided with democracy by not condemning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine; New Delhi will never be a security-partner to join the other three in fighting China in case it annexes Taiwan and attacks other countries in the Indo-Pacific.
But then, contrary to such premises, Quad has never been projected as an anti-China grouping. Quad meetings have generally avoided taking the name of China; what they have done is to emphasize on their principles that oppose any country that acts unilaterally and forcibly to change the territorial status quo and maritime boundaries, disregards international law, and threatens free and open navigation.
These principles have only been re-emphasized in the just concluded summit’s declaration, which says “we, four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity. We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate UN Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated—one where all countries are free from coercion, and can exercise their agency to determine their futures. We are united in our commitment to upholding a stable and open international system, with its strong support for human rights, the principle of freedom, rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and peaceful settlement of disputes and prohibition on the threat or use of force in accordance with international law, including the UN Charter”.
Similarly, when Quad talks of “security”, it is not in the military sense. Quad is not a military grouping. Quad members deal with military issues, including cooperation, bilaterally with one another. Japan and Australia each have a mutual security alliance with the United States separately. India’s military cooperation with the United States has seen a quantum jump and will go much higher following Modi and Biden’s bilateral talks on their proper implementation (But that merits a separate story). Multilaterally, all the four Quad members participate in various military exercises, but these do not have any linkage as such with the Quad as a grouping.
On the contrary, as the “The Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement” , which is pretty long with as many as 58 paragraphs, makes it obvious, Quad concentrates on “non-traditional security issues” such as health, technology, connectivity, critical supply chains, maritime domain awareness, humanitarian and disaster relief.
Some of these, which are quite innovative, are particularly noteworthy.
First, the Quad has decided to launch the historic “Quad Cancer Moonshot”, a collective effort to leverage public and private resources to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer in the Indo-Pacific, with an initial focus on cervical cancer.
Similarly, in their commitment to supporting health security and resiliency efforts across the region, the Quad countries have decided to strengthen their “Pandemic Fund” to enhance prevention, early detection, and response to potential disease outbreaks.
The Quad’s collaborative efforts include training health specialists from the Indo-Pacific to strengthen regional capabilities for health emergencies.
India, it has been decided, will host a workshop on pandemic preparedness and release a white paper outlining emergency public health responses.
Secondly, based on the progress of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) that was launched at the 2022 Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo, the latest summit has announced a new regional “Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI) to enable our partners in the region Indo-Pacific partners to maximize tools provided through IPMDA and other Quad partner initiatives, to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws, and deter unlawful behaviour”.
India will be hosting the inaugural MAITRI workshop in 2025.
In this context, Quad leaders decided to launch the first ever “Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission, which will take place in 2025, to improve interoperability and advance maritime safety between their respective Coast Guards across the Indo-Pacific.
Thirdly, the Quad leaders decided to launch a Quad Indo-Pacific Logistics Network pilot project, to pursue shared airlift capacity among the four nations and leverage collective logistics strengths, in order to support civilian response to natural disasters more rapidly and efficiently across the Indo-Pacific region.
The Quad leaders have decided to attach great importance to the infrastructural developments in the region. Accordingly, the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership will harness the Quad’s expertise to support sustainable and resilient port infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific, in collaboration with regional partners.
It is intended to harness the Quad's collective expertise to support sustainable and resilient port infrastructure development across the Indo-Pacific. Partners will share with each other practices that ensure that their ports are able to maintain an acceptable level of service and infrastructure to ships, especially in the face of disruptions.
And here too, India will hold the inaugural Regional Ports and Transportation Conference in Mumbai in 2025.
Fourthly, special emphasis by the Quad leaders was reflected on their resolve to strengthen “the Quad Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience”. For them, it is important to strengthen quality undersea cable networks in the Indo-Pacific, the capacity, durability, and reliability of which are “inextricably linked to the security and prosperity of the region and the world”.
They mentioned how Japan, Australia and the U.S are working in this regard. “Complementing these investments in new undersea cables, India has commissioned a feasibility study to examine expansion of undersea cable maintenance and repair capabilities in the Indo-Pacific”, they noted.
Fifthly , the Quad leaders talked of “Critical and Emerging Technology”. The Quad plans to expand support for on-going Open RAN field trials and the Asia Open RAN Academy (AORA) in the Philippines, building on the initial $8 million in support that the United States and Japan pledged earlier this year. In addition, the United States plans to invest over $7 million to support the global expansion of AORA, including through establishing a first-of-its-kind Open RAN workforce training initiative at scale in South Asia, in partnership with Indian institutions.
Sixthly, the Quad leaders highlighted how their governments are deepening leading-edge collaborative research to harness artificial intelligence, robotics, and sensing, to transform agricultural approaches and empower farmers across the Indo-Pacific. They announced an inaugural $7.5+ million in funding opportunities for joint research, and highlighted the recent signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation among the four countries’ science agencies to connect research communities and advance shared research principles. They all agreed the need to achieve “safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems”.
Seventhly, the Quad partners decided to launch “the BioExplore Initiative” – a joint effort supported by an initial $2 million in funding to use AI technology to study and analyze biological ecosystems across all four countries. This initiative will help advance the ability to discover and use the diverse capabilities found in living organisms to yield new products and innovations with the potential to diagnose and treat disease, develop resilient crops, generate clean energy, and much more. The initiative will also aim to build technological capacity across the Quad nations. This project will also be underpinned by the forthcoming Quad Principles for Research and Development Collaborations in Critical and Emerging Technologies, which advances sustainable, responsible, safe and secure collaborations in biotechnologies and other critical technologies among the Quad and across the region.
Eighthly, a semiconductor supply chain's “Contingency Network Memorandum of Cooperation” has been announced. It is meant to leverage the complementary strengths of the Quad partners to realize a diversified and competitive market and enhance Quad resilience in semiconductor supply chains.
In fulfilling all these goals, every Quad country has been assigned to play a major role. Some of these roles where India will take the initiative have already been mentioned. But, particular mention may be made about Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of a grant of US$7.5 million for making available HPV (human papillomavirus) sampling kits, detection kits, and cervical cancer vaccines to countries in the Indo-Pacific, as part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
India will also offer technical assistance and capacity building on DPI (Diphenyleneiodonium) in cancer care to interested countries from the Indo-Pacific through its commitment of $10 million to the WHO's Global Initiative on Digital Health.
There is a commitment from Serum Institute of India in partnership with GAVI and the Quad to support orders of up to 40 million HPV vaccine doses for the Indo-Pacific region. India will also invest $2 million in setting up new solar projects in Fiji, Comoros, Madagascar and Seychelles.
Viewed thus, if the Quad is not about dealing with China, but, as the Wilmington Declaration Joint Statement said, “A Global Force for Good”, then India is not its weakest link but an equal and active partner.
By Prakash Nnanda
(prakash.nanda@hotmail.com)
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