Rubio’s India visit puts Quad back in focus as China looms large

The Quad has long been projected as a strategic counterweight to China, but its relevance has often appeared to rise and fall with the state of US-China relations.

When ties between Washington and Beijing deteriorate, the grouping acquires urgency and purpose, but when the two powers seek a reset, the Quad risks slipping down America’s list of priorities. With US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in India and a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting thrown in, familiar questions are resurfacing. Will the delayed summit to be hosted by India be held? Will President Donald Trump show up? More importantly, what does the Quad really deliver for India if its momentum ultimately depends less on the interests of its four members and more on the trajectory of US-China ties?

When the Quad foreign ministers meet in Delhi, the member nations — the US, Australia, India and Japan — will give their standard formulations about a free and open Indo-Pacific, a line that will resonate much more following the blockade and counter-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, which is causing worldwide economic pain. There will be talk of a region anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion. But the truth is that the Quad has very little resonance in the second Trump administration.

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With Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in the process of repairing ties between the world’s two most important economies, the mood is not to rile China just yet. Strategic stability is on the cards for now and, as the cost of tariff wars is harming both economies, Trump is unlikely to provoke China at the moment. The Quad is not a priority for him right now.

When China tensions rise, Quad gets strategic heft

It was Trump who was the first President to call out China during his campaign and also after he took office (2017-2021). He charged China with exploiting the international system through unfair trade practices, stealing technology from Western companies and currency manipulation. He slapped tariffs on Chinese imports to bring it to heel. At the same time, with the resurrection of the Quad in 2017, the then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the platform to hit out constantly at China. He accused the Chinese Communist Party of “exploitation, corruption and coercion”. He also said that the US wanted to institutionalise the Quad into a formal security framework to counter China.

Joe Biden continued Trump’s hard line on China. One of his first acts was to raise the Quad to summit level and hold the first virtual meeting in 2021, paving the way for the in-person heads of state summit later in September.

The Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) began initially as a security alliance against China. It suited India as a counterweight against Beijing. With India-China ties reaching a low point since the 2020 intrusion of the PLA into Ladakh, and Pompeo constantly railing against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “incredibly aggressive actions” and asserting that Beijing was bullying its neighbours, China dubbed the Quad the Asian NATO. The military arm is the AUKUS, which is a trilateral grouping of Australia, the UK and the US, aimed at guarding the waterways around the Indo-Pacific.

India is fine with that. New Delhi may be a strategic partner of the US, but it is not a military ally. For that matter, New Delhi is not part of any military bloc. The Quad is more focused on health, the environment, sustainable living and such issues. In fact, it has gone back to its original purpose. The Quad came into existence after the 2004 tsunami, when the four countries joined together to provide humanitarian and disaster assistance. It was formalised as a strategic dialogue by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007, but remained dormant as members were not keen to take on China. It was resurrected in 2017.

What does India gain from Quad?

Critics argue that, as India’s main threat comes from the unresolved land boundary issue, the Quad can be of little help during a border conflict. New Delhi would gain much more by focusing on repairing ties with China and ramping up the Indian economy than by being part of a perceived anti-China grouping.

The Quad may not always be America’s priority. But for India, walking away makes little sense. It remains a useful platform, even if not a security guarantee. New Delhi’s challenge is to engage with the Quad while having no illusion that it will solve India’s China problem.

(Seema Guha is a journalist who has extensively covered foreign policy and geopolitics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)