India’s Quad strategy

What is the issue?

A low-key meeting between officials of quadrilateral nations is drawing so much attention across the globe.

Click here to know about Quad’s official discussion

How Quad strategy is different from other multilaterals?

• India has joined so many mini-lateral forums since the end of the Cold War, the quad comes amidst the growing Chinese unilateralism in Asia.
• India did much the same when it sought to hedge against America’s unipolar moment by forming a political triad with Russia and China that later became the BRICS to include Brazil and South Africa.
• If the explicit purpose of the triad was to promote a “multipolar world”, the quad has the big task of preventing the emergence of a “Unipolar Asia” dominated by China.
• But compared to the BRICS, which convenes annual summits and makes such big moves as creating new international financial institutions, the quad has a long way to go.
• BRICS issues long joint statements on all contemporary issues. After their meeting in Manila, the quad officials did not put out a collective version of the deliberations.
• They issued separate national statements, there are nuanced variation in the emphases.
• All the renewed quad is to identify shared interests on promoting connectivity, countering terrorism, addressing proliferation of nuclear weapons, and encourage respect for international law.

How India will use Quad partnership?

• None of the four countries are interested in containment, in fact the US, Japan and Australia have much deeper economic and political ties with China than India.
• The foreign ministers of India, China and Russia are gathering in Delhi in December 2017, this is expected to rule out much of the apprehensions of the quad as an “alliance to contain China”.
• India by various multilateral ties, now appears ready to expand cooperation with the West or East on the basis of enlightened self-interest.
• If the quad helps India improve its ability to defeat terrorism, improve regional connectivity and extend its naval reach, India is happy receiving it.
• If China is ready to cooperate on terrorism and stop blocking India’s rise, India will be happy explore the multiple possibilities with Beijing.

Source: The Indian Express