News Highlights
QUAD meeting held at the Japanese capital of Tokyo.
Significance of Meetings
- The Summit in Tokyo is the fourth interaction of Quad Leaders since their first virtual meeting in March 2021
Initiatives unveiled in Quad Summit 2022
- The Quad Fellowship–
- This program will allow 100 students from each of the four countries to study for graduate STEM degrees in the US. The application for the fellowship program has started and will close on 30th June 2022.
- The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA)
- It will focus on providing the fastest and clearest Maritime information to the four countries and their regional partners.
- The vaccine Partnership–
- The Quad has provided 257 million Covid-19 vaccines collectively. The bloc will continue to provide vaccine doses and support a $100 million facility to boost the Indian health care sector.
- Space Cooperation–
- The four nations have committed to sharing space-based earth observation data.
- It will include US programs on oceanic and atmospheric Monitoring, flood mapping, and land imaging.
- COVID-19 and Global Health Security:
- To date, the Quad partners have collectively pledged approximately USD $ 5.2 billion to the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC).
- It has delivered over 670 million doses, including at least 265 million doses to the Indo-Pacific.
- The participating leaders expressed their commitment to continue to share quality-assured COVID-19 vaccines where and when they are needed.
- They welcomed the progress on the expansion of J&J vaccine production at the Biological E facility in India under the Quad Vaccine Partnership.
- Infrastructure
- Quad leaders promised to extend more than 50 billion USD of infrastructure assistance and investment in the Indo-Pacific, over the next five years.
- They also decided to promote debt sustainability and transparency through various means
- Climate:
- The summit launched the “Quad Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP)” with mitigation and adaptation as its two themes.
- Cybersecurity:
- The leaders decided to coordinate capacity building programs in the Indo-Pacific region under the Quad Cybersecurity Partnership.
- They also decided to initiate the first-ever Quad Cybersecurity Day to help individual internet users to better protect themselves from cyber threats.
- On China:
- Without naming China, the joint statement called out Beijing and strongly opposed any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions.
- It also emphasised the need for the maintenance of freedom of navigation and overflight, to meet challenges to the maritime rules-based order, including in the East and South China Seas.
Sideline Development
- India and the US launched an initiative spearheaded by their National Security Councils to cooperate on critical technologies, committed to deepen the India-US Major Defence Partnership, and pledged to work jointly for a rules-based international order and a connected and secure world.
About QUAD
- The QUAD Group is an informal strategic dialogue with four members, namely, India, Japan, Australia and the US. The shared objective is to ensure and sustain an open, free and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.
- It is seen as maritime democracies
- Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is credited with coming up with the idea for the QUAD Group in 2007.
- Its roots, however, may be traced back to the 2004 Tsunami, when India, together with Japan, the United States, and Australia, performed relief and rescue operations for themselves and neighbouring countries
- Significance of QUAD grouping
- Quad allows like-minded countries to exchange ideas and engage on projects of mutual interest.
- Members share a vision of an Indo-Pacific that is open and free. Each is active in development and economic projects, as well as maritime domain awareness and security.
- Defence-related spending: In this time of COVID pandemic and fund crunch associated with lockdowns, Quad will provide heavyweight to India’s interests.
- It is just one of many ways for India, Australia, Japan, and the United States to connect, and it should not be viewed as exclusive.
- As trading nations all Quad members share a deep interest in maintaining a maritime order based on the free movement of goods and services across the world’s oceans.
- Challenges of Quad
- Translating intent into action will require a strengthening of ties in existing fields, as well as non-traditional areas such as cyber/information security, energy and climate change, disaster management, etc
- The growing divergences between US political and military opinion on their regional priorities could stymie Quad aspirations.
- Further, poor Indian and Japanese financial and logistical bandwidth to competitively invest in the IPR compounds the Quad’s shortcomings.
- For all Quad members, China is either the first or the second largest trading partner
- Any significant commitment by India to the Indo-Pacific risks overextending critical military assets and de-prioritizing existing Indian Ocean Region commitments.
- Challenges for India
- Non-alignment: India is abandoning its “sacred” tradition of non-alignment.
- No clarity on objectives: India wants to advance the security and economic interests of all countries having legitimate and vital interests in the Asia-Pacific region whereas the US is pitching for mutating the Indo-Pacific Quad into a more formal security grouping modelled on NATO.
- Individual visions of the Indo-Pacific: It would be difficult to align the combined vision of the grouping with that of their individual visions regarding Indo-Pacific.
- Trustworthiness of US: US military alliances with Japan and the Philippines has not provided any challenge to Chinese aggression in the region.
Way Forward
- In the viewpoint of India Quad playing a significant role in the Indo Pacific region to ensure peace and stability and also for countering China’s String of Pearls
- By implementing initiatives like maritime surveillance the grouping also place a check on China’s resource exploitation and illegal fishing in the region
News Source: The Hindu