The Quad appears to have completed a full circle in January, 2025, after having been revived by President Trump in his first term in 2017, writes Ashok Sajjanhar
The first Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad Meeting of the Trump Administration was held between the foreign ministers of the four member countries viz. Australia, India, Japan, and the US on January 21, 2025– one day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of America, and a few hours after Senator Marco Rubio was confirmed as the Secretary of State of the US. This signalled the steadfast resolve of the four governments, particularly of the US to strengthen cooperation under the Quad platform between the four countries.
This message, reaffirming the commitment of the four constituents, was extremely important because till then it was unknown how President Trump would react in taking this initiative forward.
Quad foreign ministers meet
With the change of government from Joe Biden to Donald Trump, the fate of the Quad hung in a balance. It was not known whether Trump will strive for greater engagement and collaboration, or show disinterest and neglect.
Trump has been known to reject many initiatives taken by his predecessors. He did this in 2017 by moving out of the Paris Climate Change Accord, by disassociating the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, by abrogating the Iran nuclear Deal, and several more.
In 2025, he signed several Executive Orders annulling several initiatives of the Biden government. It was thought that looking at the conflicting signals he has been sending on China and, also because of the high priority given by Biden to the Quad, Trump might not provide it the same pre-eminence that it received under Biden.
This has clearly not happened. One of the important reasons for this could be that Trump considers the Quad to be his own baby, having resurrected it from the ashes in 2017. The more plausible reason is that Trump continues to believe that China is the most potent threat to the dominant position of the US in the world. And the Quad is the only effective instrument to deal with it.
As in the past meetings, the China factor loomed large over deliberations at the Washington foreign ministers meet.
Although the name of China has not been mentioned explicitly in any of the Documents issued by the Quad so far, most significant decisions point a finger at China’s expansionist activities in the Indo-Pacific region.
In the brief Statement issued at the end of the Washington meeting, the four ministers restated their “shared commitment to strengthening a Free and Open Indo-Pacific where the rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity are upheld and defended.”
The body language of the four ministers exuded a great deal of optimism about the opportunities ahead. China, as in the past, denounced the Quad as a Cold War construct.
Evolution of the Quad
The Quad marked the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2024. The four countries had come together voluntarily to provide humanitarian relief and succour to countries devastated by the catastrophic tsunami that hit several South and Southeast Asian countries on December 26, 2004.
The idea of Quad received a further fillip with the seminal Address by the then Japanese PM Shinzo Abe on the “Confluence of the Two Seas” to the Joint Session of the Indian Parliament in August, 2007.
However, both the idea of the Quad and the Indo-Pacific received a huge setback with the change of governments in Australia and Japan in late 2007.
With the advent of Xi Jinping as the leader in Beijing in 2012 and the expansionist policies pursued by China in the South and East China Seas, the dormant idea of the Quad witnessed a resurrection in 2017 by President Donald Trump, who had identified China as a strategic threat to his country and the world.
The Quad has made significant progress since it was revived in November 2017. Initially the Quad meetings took place at Senior Official level till September 2019, when the first foreign minister level meeting was held followed by a self-standing meeting in Tokyo in 2020.
A significant impetus was provided soon after President Biden assumed office in January 2021 with a virtual summit amongst the four leaders in March 2021, followed by the first in-person summit in Washington, DC, in September 2021.
These were followed by in-person summits in Tokyo in May 2022 and Hiroshima in May 2023 with a virtual Summit thrown in in March, 2022 in the wake of the unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine. The final Summit, 6th overall and 4th in person, was organized in Wilmington, Delaware, the home-town of President Joe Biden, in September, 2024.
It is unprecedented that 6 Summits of an intergovernmental Organization are held over a short period of about 44 months. This is indicative of the seriousness with which these countries take the growing security and economic challenges emanating out of China through its actions in the South and East China Seas and its Belt and Road Initiative.
Results thus far
The raison d’etre of the launch of the Quad in 2007 and its subsequent revival in 2017 was the assertive rise of China in the South and East China Seas and its growing influence, particularly in the developing countries, through its Belt and Road Initiative. The latter led to huge problems like debt traps, economically unviable and environmentally unsustainable projects, corruption, non-transfer of technology, non-creation of jobs etc. in the infrastructure projects.
Over the past four years the Quad over the past four years has evolved tremendously and widened its Agenda to cover myriad subjects including fighting cancer, and pandemics, bolstering quality infrastructure, maritime domain awareness, STEM education, counter-terrorism efforts, cyber security, connectivity, healthcare, enhancing the resilience of Quad’s semiconductor supply chains, education, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, space, people-to-people initiatives, and many more.
The fundamental objective of the Quad is to ensure a free, open, secure, stable, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific, maintain the rule of law, and safeguard and uphold the freedom of navigation and overflight, and other lawful uses of the sea.
Conclusion
The four ministers declared that the next Summit of the Quad will take place in India in 2025. The Grouping did not miss a step and hit the ground running after the transformative change of government in Washington DC. This sends out a strong message that activities under the Quad will continue to expand in scope and outreach.
The Quad is not an Asian NATO as claimed by China (and Russia). It does not have a military or defence component to it. It is not directed against any third country. It is an instrument to provide the Global Public Goods, as specified in the para above, to countries of the Indo-Pacific. It is designed to ensure that countries of the region do not succumb to coercive tactics against their own interests.
Developments over the last few days in Washington DC give rise to strong hope that the Quad will continue to flourish in the coming years. After having been revived by President Trump in 2017, the Quad appears to have completed a full circle in January, 2025.
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