Attention must be refocused squarely on pressing Indo-Pacific challenges

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

What can a Quad summit hosted by a lame-duck American president achieve? Will the summit essentially mark the swan song of President Joe Biden?

The odd timing of the Sept. 21 summit has also been underscored by the fact Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will leave office just days after returning from his U.S. visit.

It was India’s turn to host the Quad summit. But Biden, eager to hold the event in his Delaware hometown of Wilmington, persuaded India to defer its hosting until next year. The summit date was also dictated by Kishida’s decision in August to resign just before the Sept. 27 leadership contest in Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party.

The Quad coalition (the U.S., Japan, India and Australia) is essential to realize the vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” introduced by late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2016 and affirmed by the U.S. in 2017 as a shorthand for a rules-based, liberal order. But with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East distracting the U.S. from security challenges in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. has yet to genuinely pivot to this critical region that will shape the next global order.

Biden’s overriding focus on weakening Russia is sapping the Quad’s main strategic purpose, which is to act as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism and ensure a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The deepening proxy war with Russia has made America increasingly wary of taking on China simultaneously, which may explain why Biden prioritizes diplomacy over deterrence with Beijing.

The Quad leaders, in fact, will meet amid rising U.S.-Russia tensions over Anglo-French-American moves to allow Ukraine to use long-range cruise missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia — an action Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned would mean direct Western involvement in the war, placing his country and NATO “at war.” Such missiles would rely on U.S. navigational data and other technology, including satellite reconnaissance, giving NATO, according to Putin, effective control over targeting.

Jarringly, the specter of escalation has emerged just when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stepped up efforts to broker a cease-fire in the war. After his visits to Moscow and Kyiv, Modi, on the sidelines of the Quad summit, will brief Biden on his peacemaking effort and then meet with Putin again next month during a BRICS leaders’ meeting in Kazan, Russia. Modi’s initiative can make little headway without full support from the U.S.

The Biden administration backed Modi’s Kyiv visit, but at the same time it has deepened U.S. involvement in the war. This has not only stymied U.S. efforts to position the Indo-Pacific at the “heart” of its grand strategy but also crimped America’s strategic options against its main challenger at the global level, China, which is seeking to supplant the U.S. as the world’s preeminent power.

In an effort to dissuade Beijing from directly aiding the Kremlin’s war machine or cementing an anti-U.S. strategic axis with Moscow, Biden has pursued a more conciliatory approach toward China. But his overtures have yielded few positive results.

China and Russia today appear closely aligned, with Beijing providing substantial support for the Russian military-industrial complex. In Asia, China has upped the ante, including intensifying coercive pressures on Taiwan, stepping up provocations in the South China Sea and staying locked in a border military standoff with India.

Yet, after the Quad summit, Biden plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone and then possibly meet him in person before the year-end. Biden wants to steady the U.S.-China relationship by smoothing over bilateral tensions. “I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said last September while visiting Vietnam. “We’re not trying to hurt China.”

Placating China and strengthening the Quad seem basically incompatible. Today, in the absence of a clear strategic mission, the Quad seems adrift.

Under Biden’s leadership, the Quad’s agenda has shifted from a strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific to global challenges. But the Quad, as a grouping of just four democracies, is in no position to deal with universal challenges. It is thus scarcely a surprise that little concrete progress has been made in the six Quad working groups covering critical and emerging technologies, climate change, cybersecurity, infrastructure, vaccines and outer space.

While saddling the Quad with an overly ambitious global agenda, the Biden administration has flaunted a new quadrilateral grouping, the so-called Squad, made up of America, Australia, Japan and the Philippines. It has also showcased the new AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) alliance, although that initiative will be able to play an important role in the Indo-Pacific only in the next decade after the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra.

To safeguard Indo-Pacific security, there is no substitute for a Quad with clear strategic direction and resolve.

The Quad leaders’ joint statement at their last summit in Hiroshima in May 2023 said the group would be “a global force for good” through a “positive, practical agenda,” identifying their top priorities as climate security, clean energy supply chains, health security and resilient infrastructure. The Wilmington summit statement could also emphasize the global agenda while making passing references to the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China seas.

But if the Quad is to play a meaningful role, its attention must be refocused squarely on the pressing Indo-Pacific challenges. It is not too late to ensure the Quad realizes its strategic promise, rather than gradually drifting into irrelevance or being reduced to a mere instrument of leverage for the U.S. in its fraught relationship with China.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”