"The Quad Has Come of Age"
Prime Minister Modi made this declaration at the first ever Quad Leaders' Summit held last week
Hi there, I’m Aman Thakker. Welcome to Indialogue, a newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments in India. The aim of this newsletter is to provide you with quality analysis every week on what’s going on in India.
Thank you very much for subscribing. My writing, and this newsletter, benefits from your feedback, so please do not hesitate to send any suggestions, critiques, or ideas to aman@amanthakker.com.
The First Ever Quad Leaders’ Summit
“Today’s summit meeting shows that Quad has come of age.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made this declaration at the first ever Quad Leaders' Summit, held last week on March 12, 2021. What exactly is the Quad? What is it doing? And why is a leader-level summit meeting a big deal? Let’s dive into these questions, and more, in today’s edition of Indialogue.
I outlined a brief history of the Quad when I discussed the second Quad ministerial-level meeting in October 2020. I wrote then:
In 2004, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States came together to manage the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. This grouping, focused on this narrow mission in 2004 and ceased quadrilateral engagement after the tsunami response, continued to persist as an idea among strategists. By 2006, then-Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, on a state visit to Japan with his newly-elected counterpart, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, noted, in a joint statement, the “usefulness of having dialogue among India, Japan and other like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific region on themes of mutual interest.” With the United States and Australia making up these “other like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific,” the Quad was born.
By 2007, the Quad had two components. The first was diplomatic - an informal meeting of officials from all four countries on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila. The second was military - a joint exercise involving all four countries, as well as Singapore, under the aegis of the then-bilateral U.S.-India MALABAR Exercise (Japan, Australia, and Singapore were invited as “non-permanent partners” in 2007; MALABAR was officially upgraded to a trilateral exercise in 2015, when Japan became a “permanent partner.”)
However, by 2008, the Quad was comatose. Partly, domestic political compulsions forced the countries to take a step back from the Quad. Prime Minister Abe - seen as the driving force behind the grouping - resigned his position in September 2007. Prime Minister Singh faced backlash from the left flank of his domestic political alliance over growing U.S.-India ties as well as the Quad. However, the Quad was ultimately put down after Australian officials, sensitive to China’s vocal concerns over the Quad, declared that they “would not be proposing to have a dialogue of that nature” again.
In the years since, the idea of resurrecting the Quad has continued to linger, gaining speed in recent years. Since 2008, India has deepened its ties with all three countries through a variety of bilateral and trilateral mechanisms. The rise of China, and its increasingly assertive behavior that has threatened key interests of all four countries, has also given additional impetus to restart the group. On Nov. 12, 2017, nearly a full decade after the first informal meeting of the Quad, the four countries announced that officials from all four countries had met to discuss “issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Since its rebirth, the Quad has met numerous times, and has steadily elevated engagement from the working level (at which level officials of all four countries met six times in total: November 2017, June 2018, November 2018, May 2019, November 2019, and September 2020) to the ministerial level (which has been held three times in total: September 2019, October 2020, and February 2021) to, finally, the leader level this past week.
With the steady elevation of the Quad, expectations of what it can be and do have grown dramatically. In the past, some have argued that the Quad is simply a “talk shop,” with no real active quadrilateral cooperation between all four countries. Others have placed high expectations of the Quad, suggesting it come emerge as a military alliance akin to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe.
This week’s summit, and the deliverables announced as part of the Summit helped as a corrective to set expectations right vis-à-vis the Quad, underscoring that while it is certainly not an alliance or an “Asian NATO,” it is far from simply an “all talk, no action” mechanism.
The first major announcement was that the Quad would launch a vaccine initiative to effectively leverage each country’s comparative advantages to provide one billion doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to countries in the Indo-Pacific. While the United States and Japan would finance the initiative, India would take the lead on production, passing the ball to Australia to undertake the logistics of distribution across the region.
The Quad leaders also announced two significant mechanisms to regularize meetings and engagements under the umbrella of the Quad. First, they launched three working groups to collaborate on three areas: an expert group on vaccine to support the vaccine initiative, as well as working groups on climate and on critical and emerging technologies. Reporting on the last of these working groups suggests that the four countries will focus on cooperation on the procurement of rare earth minerals, of which China produces 60% of the current supply. Finally, the leaders also announced that the foreign ministers of the Quad countries will meet annually moving forward.
These developments are significant in three ways. First, the Quad’s meaningful cooperation, particularly on vaccines for the region, demonstrates that criticisms that it was just a “talk shop” are unfounded, and that the four countries can effectively cooperation on issues that are important to their region.
Secondly, the summit demonstrates that many of the traditional hesitancies that we ascribed to members of the Quad, particularly India, are not significant factors anymore. Unlike in 2007, India’s engagement with the Quad today is built upon a strong foundation of bilateral relationships that have gone of strength to strength in the 21st Century. The fact that Prime Minister Modi’s participation in the Quad Leaders’ Summit as India was engaged in discussions with China to resolve the crisis in Eastern Ladakh is but one indication of how hesitations to engage with the Quad have, in my opinion, been overcome.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the summit demonstrates that, while part of the strategic logic of the Quad is rooted in all four countries’ shared concerns about China, the Quad is not all about China. There is little doubt that all four countries, including India, have seen value in the Quad and taken it forward is also because of China’s assertiveness and aggression, of which the recent the ongoing crisis in Eastern Ladakh is the latest, and also the most prominent. However, as the announcement of the vaccine initiative shows, the Quad is not simply about China. Rather, the Quad is one important way in which these four countries can exchange information, pool resources, and find ways to cooperate in ways that would benefit the broader Indo-Pacific region.
Obviously, there remains more to be done, and concerns about the Quad continue to linger. There remain areas where the Quad has not directly come together to collaborate on, but where all four countries share interests, particularly on infrastructure development. Concerns about Quad persist in South East Asia, with experts such as Dr. Rohan Mukherjee at Yale-NUS pointing out that the Quad’s mentions of “ASEAN centrality,” have become “Quad dogma with almost zero content,” underscoring ASEAN’s deep ambivalence about U.S. power and the Quad. Finally, it is not unreasonable nor out of the question that a rapprochement between China and one of the members of the Quad could limit future cooperation under this mechanism (particularly as China remains a top trading partner of all four countries).
Despite these concerns, Prime Minister Modi’s declaration about the Quad coming of age remain significant, as do the announcements of substantive cooperation between the four countries announced at their first leader-level summit. The Quad’s vaccine initiative, as well as other announcements on climate and critical and emerging technologies, underscore how cooperation between the four countries on addressing key concerns for all countries in the region harkens back to the Quad’s origins and how the four countries came together to respond to the 2004 Tsunami.
Further Reading:
Official Documents:
President Biden, Prime Minister Modi, Prime Minister Morrison, and Prime Minister Suga in an op-ed for The Washington Post: Our four nations are committed to a free, open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific region
Dr. Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution: What you need to know about the “Quad,” in charts (Part I, Part II, & Part III)
Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation America (ORF America): The real significance of the Quad
Dr. Alyssa Ayres, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University: Pivot to Democracy: The Real Promise of the Quad
Dr. C. Raja Mohan, Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at National University of Singapore: Why does the deepening Indo-US friendship puzzle so many?
Evan A. Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), and James Schwemlein is a nonresident scholar in the South Asia Program at CEIP: How Biden Can Make the Quad Endure
If you would like to support Indialogue, please consider sharing the newsletter on social media using the button below!
News Roundup
Days before the Quad Leaders’ Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on the phone with the Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, on March 9. The two leaders discussed cooperation in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project, and through the Quad.
Prime Minister Modi spoke on the phone with the President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on March 13. The two leaders discusssed “topical developments and the ongoing cooperation between both countries in bilateral and multilateral forums.”
Indian and Chinese diplomats held the 21st meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) on March 12. The meeting, which came on the same day as the Quad Leaders’ Summit, marked the seventh time India and China had discussed the ongoing border crisis in Eastern Ladakh under the aegis of the WMCC mechanism.
India crossed a landmark milestone in its campaign to vaccinate its population against the virus that causes COVID-19, administering more than two million shots on in 24 hours on March 8, 2021.
The International Financial Services Centres Authority, established by the Government of India to develop and regulate financial products, financial services and financial institutions in India’s International Financial Service Centres, has released a new consultation paper outlining new regulations to cover the issuance and listing of securities by Start-ups, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), debt securities including those focusing on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) and Smart-Cities, green bonds, social bonds, sustainable bonds, and sustainability linked bonds. The complete consultation paper is available here, and is open to public comments until March 31, 2021.
India’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd visit to India from March 19-21, 2021. To coincide with Secretary Austin’s visit, reports indicate that India will be acquiring 30 MQ-9 Reaper or Predator B, 10 each for the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force in a deal worth ~$3 billion.
As Chair of the BRICS in 2021, the Ministry of Commerce & Industry held its first meeting of the BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues to discuss issues such as cooperation on the global multilateral trading system, consumer protection in e-commerce, a non-tariff measures resolution mechanism, sanitary and phyto-sanitary issues, and more.
India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation has successfully completed a trial of a land-based prototype of an Air Independent Propulsion System. In doing so, India joins a select group of countries with a capacity to develop this system which allows conventional, diesel-electric submarines to remain under water for longer.
India’s Commerce Secretary, Dr. Anup Wadhawan met with his counterpart from Bangladesh, Dr. Md. Jafar Uddin, The two officials discussed several issues of mutual interest, such as streamlining Certificate of Origin procedures, regional connectivity initiatives, anti-dumping duty on Jute products, harmonization of standards, removal of port restrictions, trade infrastructure-related issues, India-Bangladesh CEOs’ Forum, sharing of trade data, and the upgradation of border trading infrastructure.
India and Uzbekistan began the second edition of their annual bilateral joint army exercises, DUSTLIK on March 10. The exercise, which will continue till March 19, involves participation from 45 soldiers each from the Indian and Uzbekistan Armies, and focuses on counter terrorist operations in the “mountainous/rural/urban scenario.”
Five to Read
From cogent analysis to potentially big news that you should keep an eye on, here are a few commentaries and other pieces of writing that I found particularly enlightening:
Mr. Vijay Gokhale, India’s former foreign secretary and former Indian ambassador to China, writes: “The death of twenty Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers in a violent face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), on June 15, 2020, is an inflection point in the seventy-year relationship between Asia’s largest modern states. Experts on both sides share this view… China’s latest acts on the LAC in eastern Ladakh have, from the Indian perspective, fractured the border management framework that both sides have built since 1993 and seriously damaged India-China relations. Misperceptions appear to be deepening, and an absence of trust is at the heart of the discord. This paper examines dynamics between India and China to understand the factors that have deteriorated the relationship.”
Stephanie Findlay, journalist at the Financial Times, reports: “The High Court of Delhi said on Tuesday it would hear the first legal challenges to India’s sweeping new internet rules that have shaken Big Tech and stoked concerns over free speech and privacy. The Foundation for Independent Journalism will argue in court that the rules are an “over-reach” that give prime minister Narendra Modi’s government power to “virtually dictate content”. The non-profit organisation publishes a digital news website called The Wire. Legal experts say that the case, set for hearing on April 16, will kick off a wave of legal challenges against the expansive rules, which directly impact WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter’s operations in India, along with streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon, and digital news publishers.”
Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, in an interview with the Press Trust of India: about India’s economic situation “Virus willing, we will definitely see a huge rebound in growth this year. We have to be careful in interpreting it, though. There will be a temptation to see it as a sign all is well. When the economy shrinks at 8%, as it did in fiscal 2021, any rebound because of the end of lockdown coupled with ordinary growth and some pent up demand can make the subsequent growth numbers look extraordinary. However, the true test of our resilience is not 2021-22 but 2022-23, when the numbers will be more reflective of our actual situation.”
Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, both associated with the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information, write: “The Election Commission of India has announced dates for elections to five Legislative Assemblies. It is a matter of grave concern that the petition challenging the electoral bonds scheme, which deals with the vexed issue of election funding, continues to languish in the Supreme Court. The delay in adjudicating on the case filed in September 2017 is inexplicable in light of the observation by the apex court that the matter gives rise to “weighty issues which have a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process in the country.””
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, foreign editor of the Hindustan Times, argues: “The Narendra Modi government should set up an inter-ministerial task force to begin weighing the implications of the coming Silicon War and how India should respond. If it plays its cards correctly, India could become a major hub for these techno-alliances with benefits in terms of domestic manufacturing, experts as well as cutting-edge research. If it attempts to adhere to either Atmanirbhar Bharat or Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in their purest form, however, it may find itself once again on the margins of the international economic system. Tech-alignment may define geopolitics this century. India should prepare accordingly.”
Thanks for reading this latest edition of Indialogue. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback by emailing me at aman@amanthakker.com.