INDIA IN US’S QUAD PARADIGM

The US sees India as the critical component of the Quad grouping, although it would sometimes like India to align somewhat closer with US positions on various global issues. My remarks address three questions:

1)   What does the US want from the Quad?

2)  What does the US want from India in the Quad?

3)  What are the opportunities and challenges for the Quad arising from US-India relations?

Additionally, the insights of Mr. Daniel Russell, Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs are incorporated.

What the US wants from the Quad often depends on who is the US president at the time. When the Quad was revived at the working and then ministerial levels in 2017 and 2019, it was during the presidency of Donald Trump. The Trump administration adopted a confrontational approach to China and sought to frame the Quad primarily as an instrument to blunt China’s influence in the region.

The Biden administration, which took office in 2021, has continued and indeed deepened US commitment to strategic competition with China, but has prioritized collective action with allies and partners, and has been prepared to adjust its diplomacy and its rhetoric to bring them along. The Biden administration has thus changed the US approach to the Quad, which helped to further elevate it to the leadership level in 2021. The Biden administration wants the Quad to be a mechanism for partnership between major democracies in the Indo-Pacific that delivers public goods and other concrete benefits to the region and has shifted away from framing the Quad explicitly as an antiChina tool. Examples of this would include cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines, cooperation on maritime domain awareness (MDA), and the recent commitment to work with Palau to upgrade its telecommunications infrastructure. 

The rationale for this US vision of the Quad is to prove to other Quad countries, but more importantly to the broader Indo-Pacific, that the US and its allies are more than just a security presence in the region. That the US and other democracies can deliver tangible programs that meet the needs of regional countries, and in a way that is more transparent and beneficial than China.

The US wants to leverage India’s rising geo-economic power and democratic values to help counter China’s growing strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific. The US sees the Quad as a key vehicle for further integrating India into the US-led collective effort to meet the China challenge. Washington wants to encourage New Delhi’s geopolitical shift away from China, especially following the SinoIndian border incidents in 2017 and the deadly border clashes of 2020. Washington wants to strengthen cooperation between its allies and partners in the region, such as by encouraging deeper ties between India and Australia and between India and Japan, and the Quad is a great way to do this. Washington wants to encourage India to continue enhancing its diplomatic and strategic profile in the region.

The Quad is a way for the US to do this in a way that emphasizes the open communications and robust collaboration that characterizes US relations with both Australia and Japan. There is a lot of alignment between the US and India on these objectives, but it’s also true that, from Washington’s perspective, in an ideal world, India would be more willing to allow the Quad to take a stand on global issues of concern to the US such as Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But these issues are not a major impediment to deeper US-India relations or Quad cooperation—at least not yet. The US wants India’s power to grow, India’s economy to boom, and India’s democracy to thrive. The US knows India is crucial for the Quad to be more than just a group of US allies.

Technology cooperation in the region is one of the most promising opportunities for the Quad, especially as technology was a major – if not the major - theme of Modi’s recent trip to the United States. This visit saw big deals related to electric vehicles (EVs), renewable energy, and semiconductor manufacturing, plus new agreements on space exploration, quantum computing, and critical minerals supply chains. These are some fertile areas of cooperation, which could be driven by the US and India within the Quad, that could be of immense value to countries across the Indo-Pacific, especially the developing countries where China has a head start. The Quad could use its resources to help the region access such technologies.

In terms of challenges, there is a presidential election in November 2024 in the US and a change in administration could bring unpredictability to US foreign policy. For example, a new administration could lean heavily into the “America First” approach and reduce the diplomatic attention given to structures like the Quad. Additionally, it could reframe the Quad as an explicitly anti-China alliance, and deemphasize the focus on positive-sum collaboration for the region, which could pose challenges to India’s desire for multi-alignment and strategic autonomy.

A more long-term risk is what would happen in the event of a US-China security crisis, such as a Chinese quarantine/blockade of Taiwan or a military confrontation in the South China Sea. Such an event could lay bare the differences in how the US and India want to approach security challenges from China, which could cool enthusiasm for deeper US-India ties in Washington.

Politics aside, the Quad must commit resources to make its programs succeed. Otherwise, there is a risk that other countries, or even Quad members themselves, see the grouping as nothing more than empty talk that cannot compete with Chinese action. Delivery is key.

These remarks were presented by Mr. Neil Thomas at Global Conference for New Sinology (GCNS), 2023