Reconciling interests a challenge for Quad

JAPAN’S Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi saw a meaningful coincidence in the timing of the 13-hour joint air patrol by Chinese and Russian nuclear capable strategic bombers in the waters over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea on the same day as the Quad summit in Tokyo. Kishi unwittingly reminded the Indian leadership how close it has reached the inferno sweeping through the world order.

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India fancies Quad as an effort to contain China but its partners have Russia also in its sights, a great power that has been a pillar of strength for India, whose rise critically serves manifold Indian interests, who doesn’t even have a border with India, and doesn’t complicate life with the residue of the subcontinent’s painful colonial history.

The summit’s communique tactfully dwelt on topics such as infrastructure construction, climate change, the pandemic fight and supply chains, giving a deceptive look that Quad is morphing as a benign provider of development in the Indo-Pacific. Yet, traces of Mission Creep remain. The Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness must be Quad’s most profound initiative so far in the security sphere. It purportedly focuses on the monitoring of ‘illegal fishing’ or tracking ‘dark shipping’ in the distant seas. But satellites that monitor trawlers can as well track warships. This is aimed at attracting more regional countries to the Quad’s fold.

Again, the so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) unveiled on the eve of the summit makes up for Quad’s deficiency that it lacks a coherent economic template, which renders the Indo-Pacific strategy unattractive. Also, it is in tactical terms, the first concerted attempt to replace the existing development-oriented mechanisms in the region (eg., APEC, ASEAN, RCEP, etc.) with a US-led club. Time will tell whether the IPEF gains traction beyond 2024. For, the Asia-Pacific region subscribes to real multilateralism, insists on cooperation, eschews zero-sum rivalries and seeks ‘win-win’. The IPEF lacks credibility unless Washington is willing to open its market to the 12 countries and lower tariffs. Kyodo reported that a Japanese government opinion poll released on Wednesday showed nearly half of those surveyed in Southeast Asia picking China as the region’s most important partner in the future, surpassing Japan for the first time.

The recent US-ASEAN summit in Washington showed that regional states are in no mood to decouple from China. Therefore, the Biden administration is tactfully front-loading Quad with non-confrontational issues to shed its image as a four-nation clique. Surely, any clique’s future would lie in attracting more participants. The US understands that while its regional allies will rely on it for their security, they have to align with China on trade and economy. The IPEF hopes to correct this systemic imbalance by isolating China from the global supply chain! India’s enthusiasm for the IPEF is self-evident.

Ironically, the Quad statement never once directly mentioned China but it took a forceful stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. By doing so, the US is stealthily leaving footprints of its increasing presence on the Asian soil, and creating precedent to use Quad as a geopolitical tool to meddle in regional affairs selectively. An ostrich-like approach on India’s part is unwise. The Quad is not yet iron-clad, but the US intends to use it to maintain its hegemony and hopes to mould India steadily into an obedient partner like Japan or Australia while pampering its vanities. Any leniency at the Tokyo summit can only be regarded as temporary reprieve, since Washington remains confident about firming up India’s ‘shaky’ stance.

Some Indian analysts blithely assume India can now have the best of both worlds in these extraordinary times of polarisation in the world order by tiptoeing to the brim of the boiling inferno and looking in but avoiding getting incinerated. But that is naïveté as there is no foreign policy issue that is so central to the US’ global strategy as ‘erasing Russia’.

India’s presence in Quad gives the grouping the much-needed legitimacy, something that Japan or Australia can never substitute. But India remains an outlier. The US, Japan and Australia privately coordinate, align, and reach consensus and India is persuaded to tag along. Of course, India’s motivations are self-centred too — to maximise interests by leveraging itself against China to extract funds, technology, and aid from its Quad partners. True, Quad is but one of India’s foreign policy tools to engage in international affairs and expand geopolitical interests. But this dangerous gambit ignores the gathering storms in the Indo-Pacific. There will be a high price to pay since the epochal struggle for the preservation of the West’s five-century-old global hegemony is bound to inflict collateral damages on all Asian countries. And India’s history shows that the febrile Chanakyan mind is no match for Anglo-Saxon guile and tenacity.

We will be delusional in any estimation that Quad is a pragmatic format. The Quad’s agenda is divisive and destructive to regional security and stability. Fundamentally, India’s great-power ambition introduces a contradiction in the US-Indian relationship and will create disharmony within Quad as time passes.

This contradiction may lie submerged because the endogenous motivation draws India ever closer to the US in a near term. But the US is determined to maintain its hegemonic status. The great mistake Russia committed has been that it is growing into an influential, independent global power capable of challenging America’s leadership of the world order. The US decided that Russia needed to be cut down to size — or, preferably, dismembered.