The Future of QUAD: From an underdog to becoming a Disruptive minilateral 

• It’s almost a no-brainer that the principal adversary for all four countries of the Quad happens to be China and specifically the CCP but the QUAD is reluctant to pin down the strategic and tactical challenges which are emanating from the Chinese.
• India’s newly adopted policy of strategic autonomy to foster a peaceful global multipolarity and democratic consensus must be recognized by the QUAD.
• Though there has been some success in coming out of this conservative 20th-century worldview, the QUAD is nowhere close to even conceptualizing a loose military alliance.
• For QUAD to navigate through a challenging strategic future, it needs to incorporate the principle of “calculated aggression” in its charter.

The ambitious minilateral, QUAD consisting of the USA, India, Japan and Australia is emerging as a significant international body, wherein the confluence of the interests of the Indo pacific, the rising Chinese dominance and the global need to tackle climate change are finding definitive expression on the negotiating table. But the disruptive nature of geopolitical and strategic challenges, with the Russia- Ukraine conflict and the Chinese assertive actions with several countries, is posing a challenge in the form of a strategic dilemma of foreign policy choices by each country, which has become a hurdle in drafting a common framework or a charter in the QUAD. This factor puts the future of Quad at bay, by not just posing a set of geopolitical uncertainties, but also by affirming strategic ambiguity. Although India’s foreign minister S.Jaishankar has said that the QUAD countries have developed stable partnerships and collaborations to address the three Cs, which happen to be Covid, Conflict and Climate change, the priorities and approaches of each country are quite diversified, which are operating with a spin of dwindling smock-screens.

The Elephant in the Room

It’s almost a no-brainer that the principal adversary for all four countries of Quad happens to be China and specifically the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). But the QUAD is reluctant to pin down the strategic and tactical challenges which are emanating from the Chinese. The reason for this is the American, and the larger western obsession with Putin and Russia, as their principal enemy number one.  Although they realize the dramatic perils of dealing with an aggressive Chinese regime, which is determined to break the shackles of the international rules, based on order with its autocratic tendencies, none of the counties in the QUAD is raising this issue inside the QUAD framework. Although on the sidelines of the QUAD meetings there have been some diplomatic rumblings about Chinese aggression, a concrete and properly directed channel of communication on China is far from even being conceptualized.

The Chinese aggression in the South China Sea is a well-known fact. Their debt trap diplomacy, in the form of the Belt and Road (BRI) initiative, China Pakistan Economic Corridor, ports in the middle eastern countries and Sri Lanka, and their investments in Africa etc are now visible to the naked eye of everyone in the world. But, India’s recent experience in the past two years, has opened the eyes of several analysts and even the policymakers, towards the realization that China, is India’s primary, perennial and hegemonic security challenge and Pakistan is just a nuisance factor in India’s security paradigm. As ORF (Observer Research Foundation) Chairman, Mr Samir Saran once said “ China is on our heels, as a security challenge”. Indian establishment is now of the view that though there have been several attempts towards peaceful negotiations, the Chinese do not have faith in the whole negotiation process, and come up with preplanned excuses to stall and often jeopardize the negotiation and communication channels. India has reached a stage, where they believe that muscular pushback, both diplomatically and militarily is the sole way forward in dealing with the Chinese. The QUAD must identify the areas of common concern and need to work out a diplomacy strategy to engage with the Chinese on the front foot. This method would be both a boon and a bane. Boon, because of a commitment to the dialogue process, through sustained and continued channels of communication. And a bane, because of the limited and painful policy options which are often contradictory.

If we take a look at the Chinese tech industry and the disruptive changes they are trying to bring in, in the form of 5G technology or their surge in electronic warfare and artificial intelligence, there are worrying signs of the imposition of their authoritarian tendencies on the rest of the world. In principle, there are two major problems emerging from this, firstly the tweaking of the nature of the social contract, and secondly is a conscious attempt towards weaponising democracies. The CCP considers its citizens as just its loyal subjects, who would display an unquestioned loyalty towards the party and its ideology and obeys its orders as a divine command. This sounds pretty much like the divine origin theory of social contract, by Thomas Hobbs. Any dissidents or criticism of the state is seen as a perennial crime, which would result in a severe and brutal crackdown on citizens. The values of freedom of speech and expression and democratic consensus in decision-making are absent in China. This has resulted in their unquestioned control of power, authority and legitimacy.

China is causing several disruptions in the democratic world. It is systematically funding and sponsoring the anti-establishment organizations and outfits in the democratic world in order to create internal disturbance and law and order issues. There are some reports from the middle east, central Asian countries, the USA and UK, where the Chinese are financially supporting extremist lunatic fringe organizations like jihadi Islamist networks. Moreover, their wolf warrior diplomacy in the form of social media activism on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has increasingly become polarizing and antagonistic.

Hence it becomes quite clear that the propagation of the motives of the CCP is the primary motivation of China, in vastly expanding its footprints in the political, economic and cultural spheres across the world and restoring the lost historic glory of the Imperialist Chinese Empire.

Impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the QUAD

Except for India, all other countries of the Quad have directly sided with the Ukrainians and have outrightly condemned the Russian invasion. They have also actively supported the sanctions and the US-led resolutions in the United Nations. The Americans are directly involved in providing defence assistance through its supply of arms and ammunition, training the Ukrainian military forces, rebels, and other non-state actors to fuel the armed rebellion against the Russian forces. In fact, the American and NATO support to Ukraine in terms of providing on-ground military intelligence, satellite imagery, and cyber security infrastructure, has enabled them to fight successful electronic warfare. Except for the necessary humanitarian aid, India has not supported the Ukrainians and has refused to take an anti-Russian stand. India’s repeated abstainments at various UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion is seen by the rest of the Quad countries as India’s tacit support of Russian aggression. India has its own reasons for its actions. Primarily India and Russia continue to hold a strong rapport with India despite the institutional paradigm shifts that have taken place over several decades.

The Indo-Russian relationship must not be fractured because of other emerging strategic relationships, as it has been our security guarantor and deterrence mechanism.

As our former foreign secretary Harsh V Shringla said in 2021 “without the supply of Russian spare parts and defence cooperation our ships won’t sail and our planes won’t fly” this indicates the realist strategic importance of India-Russia ties. India intends to sustain and strengthen this relationship as one of the most important ones, in order to make bold attempts for the restoration of the strategic balance of power in the emerging world order. India’s course of even-handed relationships for the promotion of mutual interests with the other Quad countries, in this regard the nuanced bilateral partnerships must be further developed with every QUAD country, on the strategic front. The Indo-Russian relationship must not be fractured because of other emerging strategic relationships, as it has been our security guarantor and deterrence mechanism, which happens to be India’s key instrument of gunboat diplomacy. India’s newly adopted policy of strategic autonomy to foster a peaceful global multipolarity and democratic consensus must be recognized by the QUAD. India completely supports the fundamental and quintessential value systems that the west pitches forward, which are International rules-based order, individual freedoms and a grounded democratic system. The QUAD must accept these common and shared values along with giving credence to every country’s bilateral ties and strategic autonomy.

Dealing with the Challenges

One needs to accept the fact that there is a sharp asymmetry in the power dynamics of the QUAD members, both economically and militarily. We are heading into a tough decade wherein security vulnerabilities are going to be at their peak. There is a necessity to build smart partnerships, which are need-based. The need to recognize the “Heat of the Dragon” is an urgent necessity. Otherwise the failures of both sustaining and countering the threats emanating from the “elephant in the room” would turn into great difficulty. In this regard, the QUAD countries must work on not just individually developing their indigenous military and economic capacities, but also developing a network of seamless technical collaboration, inter-operability and political cooperation. Routine consultations at the high levels of the government and military over time would condition each other so much more deeply understand each other’s concerns and would create a dovetailing of each other’s strategic perceptions and viewpoints. This means we need to stagger ahead of the 2+2 dialogue and the military exercises, and also heavily focus on track two diplomacy initiatives through think tanks, research institutes, universities, NGOs and other people-to-people contacts and collaborations which would open multiple channels of communications, that would be more consistent and sustainable.

For the QUAD to have a promising future, the western centrality towards the EU (European Union) and the USA needs to be diversified. Special focus and attention need to be paid to the Indian Subcontinent within the Indo-Pacific without which, any partnership or initiative would fail to see its fruition. 

As the QUAD is supposed to be the Indo-Pacific-centered alliance, the focus on the freedom of navigation in the IOR (Indian Ocean Region) happens to be a major concern to all the countries. Though there have been several initiatives taken by individual countries to foster strategic partnerships with the IOR island countries, a collective consensus-led approach by the QUAD is totally absent. Just cautioning the IOR islands against China is an incomplete and futile exercise. There needs to be a concrete offer on the table for these countries. The Quad members must attempt to pool economic resources and develop trade and commerce alliances and form institutionalized groupings with these countries. They must be mutually beneficial to each other in creating partnerships which are more viable and practical. An Islands initiative must be taken up wherein collaboration and investments are made in their tech-future, and climate resilience and must openly address the adaptation challenges which would most likely arise. A QUAD development fund must be conceptualized in this regard so that funding these initiatives would become more organized and seamless. The “money on the table” is a strategic compulsion and necessity which has to be operationalized to safeguard the Indian Ocean from the mouth of the dragon.

In contemporary times, in managing international partnerships and alliances, duality and autonomy have become strategic compulsions. For the QUAD to have a promising future, the western centrality towards the EU (European Union) and the USA needs to be diversified. Special focus and attention need to be paid to the Indian Subcontinent within the Indo-Pacific without which, any partnership or initiative would fail to see its fruition. The evolution of QUAD is a result of a developed set of bilateral partnerships between India and the other three countries. The Indo-US partnership has been a dramatic collaboration in the last two decades with its strategic highs and lows. Indo-Japan partnership is an evolved strategic partnership which has successfully worked in fostering bilateral collaborations. And the India-Australia partnership is reaching its fruition after a cold start, which was kick-started a decade ago. But the main challenge is addressing the issues of diversified priorities and approaches of each country. The dilemma of the north-south divide, again and again, surfaces, when attempts are being made to foster deep strategic ties between each country. Though there has been some success in coming out of this conservative 20th-century worldview, the QUAD is nowhere close to even conceptualizing a loose military alliance. For QUAD to navigate through a challenging strategic future, it needs to incorporate the principle of “calculated aggression” in its charter.

_{(The author has an MA in International Relations. Views expressed are author’s own)}

Viswapramod C

Viswapramod is a PhD Scholar at the Department of International Studies and Political Science, Christ University, Bangalore. He has an MA in International Relations. Views expressed are the author’s own.