QUAD SUMMIT MAY BE A FORCE VS CHINA, OR A FAILURE: FOREIGN POLICY

On Friday, March 12, 2021, US President Joe Biden will lead the Quad leaders’ virtual summit with Japan, Australia, and India on such issues as the COVID pandemic, climate change, and economic cooperation, Salvatore Babones wrote for the Foreign Policy magazine, but the Quad needs a more serious mission if it wants to significantly take-off and prevent a repeat of the stillborn Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in 2007.

“The COVID-19 pandemic, trade, and climate are all important issues, but they’re not Indo-Pacific issues. There’s nothing about them that requires high-level cooperation among the region’s leading democracies. There’s only one issue that affects the Indo-Pacific region as a region—the one issue that even makes the Indo-Pacific a meaningful regional concept—and that’s maritime security. China, North Korea, and even Russia threaten the secure integration of the Indo-Pacific region on, over, and under the seas. As an alignment of powerful regional democracies, the Quad can effectively counter regional revisionism by these powers. Indo-Pacific maritime security is the one issue that makes the Quad the Quad,” Babones argued.

“The participants in the first Quad spoke vaguely of regional security and held one set of joint naval exercises but never developed a coherent narrative about exactly what the four members would do as a group. When the Quad was reborn in November 2017, its goals were much clearer: ‘Upholding the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific and respect for international law, freedom of navigation and overflight; increase connectivity; coordinate on efforts to address the challenges of countering terrorism and upholding maritime security in the Indo-Pacific.’ North Korea was on the agenda, too,” he added.

After Donald Trump was kicked out of the White House, the Quad resumed joint naval exercises in November 2020 and the following month proposed the creation of a new US fleet command in the region that might serve as a permanent multinational force. Indo-Pacific maritime security, Babones stressed, is an issue that is high on all four Quad leaders’ own policy agendas.

Chinese coast guard vessels, newly empowered with authority to fire on foreign ships, have repeatedly entered Japanese waters and bullied civilian boats. In the Indian Ocean, Chinese survey ships operating without transponders have been detected mapping the seafloor in support of submarine operations.

Australia has been confronted by the threat of a massive Chinese base, allegedly for its fishing fleet, just over 120 miles off its shores, in a corner of Papua New Guinea that hosts no known commercial fishing stocks but controls a strategically important strait.

“These challenges reflect China’s penchant for pushing military operations to a point just short of war, relentlessly harassing opponents without offering a clear casus belli. The US Navy itself routinely faces these kinds of operations when transiting waters near China in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea. The four Quad navies have a strong interest in working together to track and if necessary confront Chinese vessels acting illegally or just plain dangerously in both international and territorial waters. The countries could also cooperate to help train the coast guards and air forces of Indo-Pacific littoral countries in maritime surveillance and law enforcement,” Babones concluded.

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