Quad 2.0 poised for take-off, with India playing a lead role

U.S. President Joe Biden hosts a ‘Quad nations’ meeting at the Leaders’ Summit of the Quadrilateral Framework with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 24, 2021.

WILMINGTON (DELAWARE): The largest city in Delaware is famous for many things, including being home to US President Joe Biden, the iconic DuPont family and Fortune 500 companies, but this weekend it will be in the global spotlight for hosting the Quad summit of the leaders of the four powerful democracies.

For Joe Biden, the Quad summit will have a special emotive resonance as it will be his last major diplomatic outing as he rolls out the red carpet for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese. It will also be a closure of sorts for Biden as he hosted the first in-person summit in Washington, which set the stage for strengthening and deepening of this plurilateral grouping as a preeminent forum for protecting the rules-based international order against unilateral designs of aspiring hegemons.

The very fact that he is hosting the Quad summit in his hometown shows the importance Joe Biden attaches to the role of this concert of democracies in a mutating world order. The Delaware summit will showcase a meeting of minds between the four leading democracies and will usher in a 2.0 phase of Quad, marked by the growing strategic heft of the grouping in a turbulent world.

For PM Modi, who forged special equations with Biden, it will be more than a farewell call. It will not only be about nostalgic looking back, but also looking forward to a more ambitious agenda for the Quad and the India-US partnership. Projecting a positive narrative, PM Modi encapsulated the essence of the Quad as he left New Delhi for Delaware. “The Quad is a key group of like-minded countries working for peace, progress and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

The summit will last barely a few hours, but it is expected to be substantive, culminating in a slew of pioneering initiatives in maritime security, technology, supply chains and innovation. The leaders of Quad countries will also focus on enhancing cooperation in counterterrorism, climate change, infrastructure development, and humanitarian assistance.

Enhancing maritime security

Strengthening maritime security in the Indo-Pacific will top the agenda of the Quad summit. The summit will see the announcement of Indian Coast Guard officials joining U.S. Coast Guard vessels as observers, a major step in joint maritime operations and information sharing, not only among the Quad nations but also with other friendly countries in the region, including South Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand. The leaders of the four countries will focus on bolstering joint initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), which is aimed at tracking activities of Chinese vessels in the broader Indo-Pacific region. One can expect strong collective position on enhancing cooperation to protect freedom of navigation in contested territories such as the South China Sea and East China Sea. With China watching closely, the summit is will solidify joint commitment to freedom of navigation in these contested waters and bolstering maritime security cooperation, said Indian and US officials.

US hails India as a leader in Quad

Ahead of Modi’s arrival in Delaware, the US has hailed India as the leader of the Quad, signalling Washington’s strategic intent to accelerate the rise of India as an emerging global player. “When it comes to the role that we expect India to play, we expect and indeed see India as a leader within the Quad,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, the top National Security Council (NSC) official on Indo-Pacific affairs in Washington DC.

“I think the best encapsulation of the way we think about India’s role is captured in our Indo-Pacific Strategy, where we say that the US seeks an India that is increasingly a leader in the region and increasingly a partner with the US,” she said.

The summit, according to Rapp-Hooper, will result in three significant outcomes. “First, you will see that the Quad is more strategically aligned than ever. Second, you will see that the Quad is delivering real results for our partners in the Indo-Pacific in the areas that they identify as most important to them. And third, you will see signs that the Quad is not just the initiative of any one administration or any one country, but an initiative that is designed to endure for the long term.”

The Road Ahead

China will be the elephant in the room when the leaders of the four Quad countries meet in Delaware, but looking ahead the grouping will entrench its credentials as “a force for global public good,” as PM Modi has described it. It is in this spirit that the four Quad leaders will preside over the launch of “Cancer Moonshot,” an innovative step to combat cancer through cutting-edge research and treatment. This milestone initiative aims to implement innovative strategies to prevent, detect, treat, and alleviate the impact of cancer on patients and their families, said Vikram Mistri, India’s foreign secretary. This intra-Quad collaboration will help in reducing the burden of cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Delaware summit will pave the way for a more ambitious template for enhancing intra-Quad cooperation under India’s leadership as New Delhi will host the next Quad summit in 2025. Initially scheduled to be held in India this year, the summit was moved to the US due to scheduling issues.

(Manish Chand, is CEO, Centre for Global India Insights, a think tank focused on global affairs, and Editor-in-Chief, India Writes Network and India and the World. He is in Wilmington, Delaware to report on and analyse the Quad summit).

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Manish Chand

Manish Chand is Founder-CEO and Editor-in-Chief of India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and India and World, a pioneering magazine focused on international affairs. He is CEO/Director of TGII Media Private Limited, an India-based media, publishing, research and consultancy company.