Despite doubt, Quad finds renewed purpose in Delhi

The latest Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi marked an important, if carefully calibrated, effort to restore strategic momentum to the grouping at a time when doubts about its cohesion had begun to grow. The scepticism preceding the meeting was substantial. The absence of a Quad leaders’ summit in 2025, uncertainty over the depth of the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific commitment, tensions in India-US ties over tariffs and strategic divergences, and signs of a limited US appetite for high-visibility multilateralism had all fuelled speculation that the Quad was stagnating.

Against that backdrop, the New Delhi meeting was significant less for grand rhetoric than for its attempt to institutionalise cooperation in practical sectors. The outcomes demonstrated that the Quad is evolving from a politically symbolic coalition into a functional strategic mechanism focused on supply chains, maritime security, infrastructure, energy resilience and critical technologies.

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The most notable feature of the meeting was the shift towards economic-security integration. The Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework represented perhaps the clearest acknowledgement yet that Indo-Pacific competition is no longer merely military or naval, but increasingly industrial and technological. The four countries committed themselves to cooperation across mining, processing, recycling and supply-chain resilience for critical minerals. This is particularly consequential because China dominates global processing capacities for rare earths and several critical mineral inputs essential for semiconductors, batteries, renewable energy systems and defence technologies.

For India, this initiative carries major strategic implications. New Delhi has long worried that, despite its ambitions in electronics manufacturing, clean energy and defence production, it remains dependent on Chinese-controlled mineral supply chains. The framework potentially enables India to connect Australian mineral resources, Japanese technological expertise, and American financing and industrial capabilities into a more diversified ecosystem. In effect, the Quad is beginning to function as a geo-economic balancing mechanism against Chinese industrial leverage.

Similarly, the Quad Statement on Indo-Pacific Energy Security reflected the impact of the worsening global geopolitical climate, especially the disruptions linked to the Iran conflict and maritime insecurity around key chokepoints. Discussions reportedly focused heavily on energy flows, fertiliser availability, supply-chain vulnerabilities and connectivity bottlenecks. The emphasis on energy resilience signalled that the Quad increasingly sees economic stability and maritime security as inseparable.

This was also visible in the maritime initiatives announced in New Delhi. The proposal for an Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Initiative and efforts towards a “Common Operating Picture” indicate that the Quad is steadily deepening operational coordination at sea. Rather than forming a formal military alliance, the grouping appears to be pursuing interoperability through information-sharing, maritime domain awareness, logistics cooperation, undersea cable protection and humanitarian assistance coordination. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar himself highlighted the expansion of cooperation in surveillance, logistics networks, HADR and undersea infrastructure.

Importantly, the Quad’s first joint infrastructure project, a port development project in Fiji, may prove strategically more consequential than it initially appears. The Pacific Islands have become an arena of intense geopolitical competition, especially between China and Western-aligned powers. By jointly supporting port infrastructure, the Quad is attempting to demonstrate that it can provide tangible regional public goods rather than merely acting as a security dialogue. This helps counter persistent ASEAN and Pacific concerns that the Quad is overly militarised or anti-China in orientation.

Yet despite these achievements, the meeting also exposed the Quad’s continuing limitations.

First, the grouping still struggles with strategic asymmetry among its members. India sees the Quad primarily as a flexible strategic platform that enhances its leverage while preserving strategic autonomy. Japan and Australia, by contrast, are treaty allies of the United States and often view the Quad through a more alliance-oriented lens. The United States itself oscillates between treating the Quad as a central Indo-Pacific instrument and subordinating it to bilateral priorities or domestic political calculations.

This inconsistency partly explains the scepticism surrounding the meeting. Even though Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed the Quad’s importance, doubts persist about whether Washington is prepared to sustain the long-term diplomatic and economic investments required for Indo-Pacific coalition-building. The absence of a leaders’ summit in 2025 created the impression that the Quad’s political momentum had weakened. In strategic diplomacy, symbolism matters. Summits signal prioritisation, and their absence inevitably fed perceptions of drift.

Second, the Quad continues to avoid explicit institutionalisation. While this flexibility allows members to cooperate without treaty obligations, it also limits coherence. The New Delhi meeting produced frameworks, initiatives and statements, but implementation remains the crucial test. Previous Quad announcements on vaccines, infrastructure and emerging technologies often struggled to achieve transformative impact because of funding constraints, bureaucratic fragmentation and differing national priorities.

Third, the Quad’s balancing act regarding China remains delicate. The joint statement strongly criticised coercive behaviour, militarisation and threats to maritime stability without directly naming Beijing. This ambiguity reflects both strategic caution and internal divergence. India remains wary of turning the Quad into an overt anti-China alliance, partly because it simultaneously seeks stabilisation in its bilateral relationship with Beijing after years of border tensions. Australia and Japan also remain deeply economically interconnected with China despite their security concerns. The US is now less interested in baiting China as it seeks adjustment with it.

Consequently, the Quad is evolving less into an “Asian NATO” and more into a networked strategic coalition focused on selective balancing. Its strength lies precisely in this ambiguity: it can expand cooperation in critical sectors without triggering the formal alliance anxieties that dominate Asian geopolitics.

Another important aspect of the meeting was India’s increasingly central role within the Quad architecture. Hosting the ministerial in New Delhi amid broader geopolitical turbulence allowed India to project itself as a stabilising Indo-Pacific actor capable of convening major powers. Jaishankar’s framing of the Quad as four “maritime democracies” located at different ends of the Indo-Pacific was deliberate. It reinforced India’s vision of the grouping as geographically expansive, multipolar and not merely an extension of US alliance structures.

India also appears to be steering the Quad towards issues where it can exercise leadership: supply-chain resilience, trusted technologies, maritime security, energy stability and Global South engagement. This broadening agenda is politically useful because it makes the Quad more acceptable to regional states that are uncomfortable with hard military blocs.

Ultimately, the New Delhi Foreign Ministers’ Meeting did not eliminate doubts about the Quad’s future. Questions about US strategic consistency, differing threat perceptions among members and the absence of formal institutional structures remain valid. However, the meeting demonstratedt the Quad retains considerable adaptive capacity. Rather than collapsing under geopolitical strain, it is slowly transforming into a practical coalition centred on economic security, maritime resilience and technological cooperation.

That may, in fact, be the Quad’s most sustainable form. Instead of seeking a dramatic military identity, it is evolving into a flexible strategic network designed to reduce vulnerabilities across the Indo-Pacific. The New Delhi meeting showed that even amid scepticism, the Quad can still produce substantive outcomes when its members focus on converging interests rather than ideological grandstanding.

(The writer is a former ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN, and the African Union. His recent book is ‘The Durian Flavour on India and the Act East Policy’. Views expressed are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)