China is a challenge that must be met, but not with Trumpian belligerence. By setting up working groups in areas such as innovation, climate change and health, Biden is obviously prepared to pay a high price in both time and effort to convince Beijing that he is serious about challenging and competing with China while avoiding confrontation.
It is just over a week since Joe Biden picked up the phone to congratulate scientists at NASA for their sheer perseverance in the successful landing of the Rover on Mars, 55 million kilometres away. This weekend, the United States president was engaged in another exercise in perseverance closer to home. In a different sense it was also a first small step for mankind. His mission was to put flesh on the bare bones of the Quad – a quadu-lateral ‘talking shop’ for senior officials from Australia, India, Japan and the United States, formed in 2017.
Upgraded 18 months ago to be led by foreign ministers concerned about China’s military expansion in the Indian-Pacific region, the Quad trod with caution until the election of the Biden administration. Now top foreign policy officials – like Biden himself, all with hands-on involvement in president Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia – seek to restore American influence in the world’s fastest growing region.
On Thursday March 18, secretary of state Tony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet will in Anchorage with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and State Councillor Wang Yi. It will be the first person to person high-level meeting between the Biden administration and the Chinese government since the election. It takes place following Blinken’s first overseas trip to Japan and South Korea, key US allies.
In anticipation of that meeting, last week Biden called together the first ever leaders meeting of the Quad. It was held by video link from Washington and included Scott Morrison, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, and his Japanese counterpart Yoshihide Suga. They signed off on a joint declaration supporting a shared vision for the Indo-Pacific region. It was clear that China was the elephant in the room, although there was no mention of the upcoming Anchorage meeting. The tone was set by the statement, “we strive for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion”.
Until now, the Quad has operated – to the extent that it has operated at all – in the ambience of security and military strategy. There has been no suggestion of a binding alliance like ANZUS or military partnership, but plenty of thoughts about cooperation, including joint exercises.
When Biden called the summit there was some anxiety in Delhi and Tokyo that what the Americans had in mind might involve joint military action of some kind. Indeed, three daysbefore the meeting, Modi and Suga held a 40-minute phone conversation to agree their approach. Suga expressed serious concerns about China’s actions in the area ranging from Hong Kong to East China Sea. After discussing a range of issues, including defence and security, economics and health, they appear to have reassured each other that their countries were not about to be drawn into an armed conflict with China.
They also happily signed up to the principal commitment from the Quad declaration – the provision of 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to be manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. Under the deal the vaccines would be manufactured in India, financed by Japan and the United States, with Australia providing the logistics to ensure distribution to where it was most needed, starting with South East Asia and the Pacific islands.
Sullivan, who had taken part in the meeting along with Blinken, said the four countries had taken the Quad to a new level, describing the summit as a “big deal” for President Biden and for the country. Sullivan credited Kurt Campbell, the top White House official for the Indo-Pacific, and its point person with Australia, with developing the vaccine plan, which does not involve impinging on America’s own emergency roll-out.
It will be seen as a sensible if belated response to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s announcement at Davos 2021 of a scheme to provide vaccines for developing countries, but it is nonetheless substantive evidence that the region’s large democracies can work together in a non-military sense, just as they did in 2004 when a Pacific tsunami devastated parts of Indonesia and the wider region.
Sullivan, whose early work in the White House was as national security and global affairs advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, later, on the Iran nuclear deal for deal for President Obama, tells us that Biden is keen that the Quad should also put together projects involving technology and climate change. Along with leaders from the other three countries, he insists that the administration is not building the organisation to be anti-China. ”Today was not fundamentally about China”, he claimed after the meeting. India’s foreign secretary Vardhan Shringla agreed, telling reporters the Quad does not stand against something but rather “in the realm of doing things for others”.
The events of the last few days represent the most significant policy initiative of the Biden administration to date. They come after a rethink of the Democrats’ pre-election stated goals of restoring American leadership, rebuilding multilateralism, and creating a consensus of the democracies with shared values and adherence to a rules-based system. These goals remain in place, but the reality of the real world made a more nuanced approach essential. Being a global superpower has limitations, as Biden quickly discovered in dealing with Saudi Arabia.
China is a challenge that must be met, but not with Trumpian belligerence. By setting up working groups in areas such as innovation, climate change and health, Biden is obviously prepared to pay a high price in both time and effort to convince Beijing that he is serious about challenging and competing with China while avoiding confrontation.
But there’s the rub. The United States is not ready for a military confrontation. The Asian littoral is a long way from US bases like Guam, let alone the American West Coast. The US Navy may control the oceans, but there are sophisticated missiles on the Chinese mainland. The US is short of bases to service and replenish its warships, but also to house and train forward troops. The other nations of the QUAD can provide only limited help, but there is unlikely to be any shortage of requests.
If the one billion promised jabs are injected into one billion arms on time, it’s likely the QUAD will go on to become the main feature of the Biden Indo-Pacific strategy. But it will be a long haul, one requiring focus and perseverance.
Colin Chapman is a writer, broadcaster and public speaker, who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He is a former president of AIIA NSW and was appointed a fellow of the AIIA in 2017.
Comments
5 responses to “What was QUAD about?”
China is a partner for making the world a better place, not a “challenge that must be met”. The framing matters.
‘The tone was set by the statement, “we strive for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion”.’
Laughable. Who on Earth do they think they are kidding? Quad is only about coercion, it is its entire raison d’être. There can be only one bully on the block and that is the US and its vassal state Australia both with ailing democracies that are more about cronyism and helping big business these days. Nowadays Australia and the US are one and the same. So much for Australian sovereignty and democracy. India and Japan? They appear to be more worried about a war the US can’t currently win as you correctly state, but you can also see what a stitch up this is concerning vaccines. American company with India making the vaccines paid for by US and Japanese taxpayers? Who really gains here? Funny how the media in Australia made out that we were a big player helping in the Pacific region, but it turns out to be just el cheapo logistical support. I mean we are having enough trouble rolling out the vaccine here, but we are much better at rolling out press releases. How on Earth are we going to do a better job for the Indo-Pacific? How are we going to show concern for climate change in these regions when we found it funny in the past that their nations would go under water and they were lucky to get a chance to pick fruit in this country?
Pivot to Asia is a euphemism for the US’s China Containment Policy which is about kneeling on the throat of China’s economy to cut off its air for which Australia and the US are the most vocal players. Only one bully can dominate, and it isn’t China.
For the record, here’s the Dutton-Abbot-Morrison joke: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2015/sep/11/peter-dutton-overheard-joke-rising-sea-levels-tony-abbott-video . I am sure these fellas also make not dissimilar jokes about their own Australian women.
Thanks Man Lee
A case in point only five years ago:
“Peter Dutton says sorry for sending ‘mad witch’ text to journalist Samantha Maiden over Jamie Briggs case”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-04/dutton-apologises-after-sending-text/7065546
What a load of pointless, mealy-mouthed waffle. Of course the Quad is being set up as an anti-China alliance; any fool can see that, and it is certainly how the Chinese perceive it. It is an instrument of diplomatic, economic and military containment as blatant as any seen since 1945, and without the US pushing it, it would not exist. The US will not attack China militarily for the same reason that it has never done so since the Communist revolution in 1949: it does not dare. For all the boasting, US power is limited, and becoming more so as time goes on. And as I have said before, to include Japan in any military alliance directed against China is an act of such stupidity (or sheer depravity) that it beggars belief. Do these people know nothing about history?