Quad 9.9.9.9

[Bazara Benavides]

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), commonly known as the Quad,[3][4] is a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.[5] The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power.

The Quad ceased in 2008 following the withdrawal of Australia during Kevin Rudd's tenure as prime minister, reflecting ambivalence in Australian policy over the growing tension between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific. Following Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard in 2010, enhanced military cooperation between the United States and Australia was resumed, leading to the placement of U.S. Marines near Darwin, Australia, overlooking the Timor Sea and Lombok Strait. Meanwhile, India, Japan, and the United States continued to hold joint naval exercises under Malabar.

In a joint statement in March 2021, "The Spirit of the Quad," the Quad members described "a shared vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific," and a "rules-based maritime order in the East and South China seas," which the Quad members state are needed to counter Chinese maritime claims. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[14] Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam were invited to "Quad Plus" meetings to discuss their responses to it.[14][15][16] As of 2023, Quad countries together have a combined GDP nominal of US$36.7 trillion (34.7% of the gross world product) and a combined GDP PPP of US$48.1 trillion (27.5% of the world's GDP).[17][vague]

In the early twenty-first century, the strategic preoccupation of the United States with Iraq and Afghanistan served as a distraction from major power shifts in the Asia-Pacific, brought about by increased Chinese economic power, which undermined America's traditional role in the region.[18] In the long term the United States has sought a policy of "soft containment" of China by organizing strategic partnerships with democracies at its periphery.[18] While US alliances with Japan, Australia and India now form the bulwark of this policy, the development of closer US military ties to India has been a complex process since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Australian commentaries showed mixed attitudes to a Quadrilateral security arrangement isolating China.[18]

Active US-Indian military cooperation expanded in 1991 following the economic liberalization of India when American Lt. General Claude C. Kicklighter, then commander of the United States Army Pacific, proposed army-to-army cooperation.[19] This cooperation further expanded in the mid-1990s under an early Indian centre-right coalition, and in 2001 India offered the United States military facilities within its territory for offensive operations in Afghanistan. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee signed a "New Framework for India-US Defense" in 2005 under the Indian United Progressive Alliance government, increasing cooperation regarding military relations, defence industry and technology sharing, and the establishment of a "Framework on maritime security cooperation."[19] India and the United States conducted dozens of joint military exercises in the ensuing years before the development of the Quadrilateral dialogue, interpreted as an effort to "contain" China.[19] Indian political commentator Brahma Chellaney referred to the emerging Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the United States, Japan, Australia and India as part of a new "Great Game" in Asia, and Indian diplomat M. K. Rasgotra has maintained that American efforts to shape security pacts in Asia will result not in an "Asian Century," but rather in an "American Century in Asia."[20]

Some, like US Lt. General Jeffrey B. Kohler, viewed US-India defence agreements as potentially lucrative for American defence industries and oversaw the subsequent sale of American military systems to India.[19] Nevertheless, some Indian commentators opposed increased American military cooperation with India, citing the American presence in Iraq, hostility to Iran and "attempts at encircling China" as fundamentally destabilizing to Asian peace, and objecting to the presence of American warships with nuclear capabilities off the coast of southern India, or to American calls for the permanent hosting of American naval vessels in Goa or Kochi.[20]

The Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) was a series of trilateral meetings between the United States, Japan, and Australia. The TSD originally convened at senior officials level in 2002, then was upgraded to ministerial level in 2005. The United States expected regional allies to help facilitate evolving US global strategy to fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation. In return, Japan and Australia expected benefits including continued US strategic involvement and the maintenance of strategic guarantees in the region.[21]

The nine-dash line refers to the ill-defined[24] demarcation line used by the People's Republic of China (China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan), for their claims of the major part of the South China Sea.[25] The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands,[a] the Spratly Islands,[b][26] and various other areas including Pratas Island and the Vereker Banks, the Macclesfield Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. Despite having made the vague claim public in 1947, neither the PRC nor the ROC has (as of 2018[update]) filed a formal and specifically defined claim to the area.[27] An early map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was published in the then-Republic of China on 1 December 1947.[28] Two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later removed at the behest of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, reducing the total to nine. Chinese scholars asserted at the time that the version of the map with nine dashes represented the maximum extent of historical claims to the South China Sea.[29] Subsequent editions added a tenth dash to the east of Taiwan island in 2013, extending it into the East China Sea.[30][31][32]

In early 2007, Prime Minister Abe proposed the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or "Quadrilateral Initiative", under which India would join a formal multilateral dialogue with Japan, the United States and Australia.[33][34]

China sent diplomatic protests to all four members of the Quadrilateral before any formal convention of its members.[38] In May 2007 in Manila, Australian Prime Minister John Howard participated with other members in the inaugural meeting of the Quadrilateral at Cheney's urging, one month after joint naval exercises near Tokyo by India, Japan and the United States. In September 2007 further naval exercises were held in the Bay of Bengal, including Australia.[35] These were followed in October by a further security agreement between Japan and India, ratified during a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Tokyo, to promote sea lane safety and defence collaboration; Japan had previously established such an agreement only with Australia.[35]

Though the Quadrilateral initiative of the Bush administration improved relationships with New Delhi, it gave the impression of "encircling" China.[39] The security agreement between Japan and India furthermore made China conspicuous as absent on the list of Japan's strategic partners in Asia.[40] These moves appeared to "institutionally alienate" China, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and promote a "Washington-centric" ring of alliances in Asia.[39][40]

Fears over Chinese military spending and missile capacities had helped drive Australia towards a defence agreement with the United States, as outlined by the 2007 Canberra Defense Blueprint; Sandy Gordon of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute had recommended the sale of uranium to India on the basis of similar considerations, as it appeared that the United States was backing it as a "counter to a rising China."[43] Chinese anger over the Quadrilateral however caused uneasiness within Australia even before the agreements were initiated.[44]

On becoming Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd visited China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, even before visiting Japan, and subsequently organized a meeting between Yang and the Australian foreign minister, Stephen Smith, in which Australia unilaterally announced it would "not be proposing" a second round of dialogue between the four partners.[45][46][47] Within Australia, this decision was seen as motivated by the uncertainty of China-United States relations and by the fact that Australia's principal economic partner, China, was not its principal strategic partner.[48] Rudd may furthermore have feared regional escalations in conflict and attempted to diffuse these via an "Asia-Pacific Union."[45]

Some US strategic thinkers criticized Rudd's decision to leave Quadrilateral; the former Asia director of the United States National Security Council, Mike Green, said that Rudd had withdrawn in an effort to please China, which had exerted substantial diplomatic effort to achieve that aim.[49] A December 2008 leaked diplomatic cable authored by US ambassador Robert McCallum reveals that Rudd did not consult the United States before leaving the Quadrilateral.[50]

In the years between the cessation and restart of the Quad, Quad members continued to cooperate on a bilateral or trilateral level, sometimes with non-Quad members involved.[52] This was especially the case in joint military exercises: Japan joined for the first time the Australian Kakadu and Nichi Trou Trident naval exercises in respectively 2008 and 2009, Japan and India held for the first time a joint naval exercise in 2012 and Australia and India did the same in 2015, Australia joined the US-Philippines Balikatan exercise for the first time in 2014 and Japan did the same in 2017, Japan joined for the first time the Indian Malabar exercise in 2015, and Japan joined for the first time the Australian-US joint Defence Exercise Talisman Saber in 2015.[52]

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