Can 'the Quad' challenge China in the Indo-Pacific?

President Biden hosted the leaders of Australia, Japan, and India for a Quadrilateral Summit at his home in Delaware over the weekend, to reiterate the primacy of the geopolitical challenge from China. "The Quad,” as it has become known, has evolved into America’s major mechanism for facing China’s increasingly assertive posture in the Indo-Pacific.

Together, the four Quad democracies comprise 2 billion people and more than one-third of global GDP. The Biden administration elevated the Quad from a foreign ministerial dialogue to a leaders-level format, and Biden hosted the first leaders-level summit in 2021. Since then, the leaders have met on six occasions, including twice virtually.

Forged in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and conceived by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007, the Quad was resuscitated under Trump in 2017. In its initial years, its focus was on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, COVID-19 vaccination, climate change, critical and emerging technologies, cybersecurity, space and education. Over the last two years, the focus has broadened to reflect the four countries’ deeper strategic alignment.

But the Quad has a long way to go in becoming a viable alternative ally and partner for the many smaller Indo-Pacific countries currently accepting or considering Chinese assistance.

Although the Quad identified infrastructure-building, debt management and maritime domain awareness as key areas of interest in May 2022, none of its participating countries have put enough resources on the table to match China’s funding of its Belt-and-Road Initiative. The summit in Delaware did not break new ground here.

The Quad Debt Management Resource Portal aims to provide access to bilateral and multilateral capacity building across the vast region and help countries find resources and support to tackle debt sustainability. But a portal is a poor response to China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which has a capitalization of $100 billion. At some point, the Quad leaders will have to go beyond statements to develop a serious action plan.

In the maritime realm, the key Quad project is the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness initiative, which has done better in fulfilling its aim. Countries across the Pacific islands, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region often lack the capacity to monitor illegal fishing, track Chinese ships and respond to humanitarian disasters. The initiative tracks commercially available data and shares this information through fusion centers located in India, Singapore, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Over the last two years, the initiative helped over two dozen countries in accessing this data. At the recent summit, a new regional Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific was announced that would provide training to partner countries on how to use this data “to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws, and deter unlawful behavior.”

The Quad is not a security alliance, and India does not want it to become one. But the three security allies — U.S., Japan and Australia — continue to work with India in organizing bilateral and multilateral military exercises, including the Malabar exercise. But at some point, the Quad will have to fully embrace its security dimension or accept its insufficient effectiveness.

At last weekend’s summit, the Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission was announced, which would start in 2025. Initially, the U.S. Coast Guard will host officers from the Japan Coast Guard, Australian Border Force and Indian Coast Guard. Then, each country will take turns hosting the others, with the aim of improving coast guard interoperability across the Indo-Pacific.

Additionally, the Quad Indo-Pacific Logistics Network aims to create similar interoperability in logistics between the four countries with the initial aim of supporting civilian response to natural disasters. Americans hope that it can build up into something bigger over time. A similar approach has been adopted for quality infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific.

In 2022, the Quad Infrastructure Coordination Group was established and the recent summit announced the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership. The plan is for Quad countries to harness their expertise for “sustainable and resilient” port infrastructure development. Another initiative focuses on strengthening the “capacity, durability and reliability” of the undersea cable networks.

Quad joint statements have become better at listing each Quad member’s specific security concerns, in addition to the shared concern about China. But the references in Quad statements — to South China Sea, the war in Ukraine, North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons, the Middle East, Myanmar’s crisis and condemnation of cross border terrorism — do not reflect a shared commitment to dealing with each of the issues together.

The Quadrilateral dialogue has survived changes in leadership in America, Japan and Australia, and is likely to continue irrespective of the upcoming elections in Japan and the U.S. Bipartisan support for this mini-lateral was demonstrated when Congress passed the Strengthening the Quad Act in February of this year, and the establishment of the bipartisan Quad Caucus in September.

But despite frequency of summit meetings and the proliferation of formats in which the leaders of the four countries interact, the Quad is still not the vehicle the U.S. wants it be in confronting China — Foreign Minister Wang Yi derisively dismissed it as “sea foam.”

Husain Haqqani, former ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S., is diplomat-in-residence at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Aparna Pande is director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute.