Tag: Quad Meet 2020

The Quad is set to gain more strength amid heightened India-China tensions

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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US Deputy Secretary of State, Stephen E Biegun on Tuesday said that Quad should become more regularised and formalised. Biegun’s statement comes after India amid the Sino-India border row announced Australia’s participation in the upcoming Malabar exercise along with the US and Japan, effectively making it the first military-level engagement between the four-member nation grouping — the Quad.

The Malabar exercise was started in 1992 as a bilateral drill between the Indian Navy and the US Navy in the Indian Ocean. This annual exercise was conducted off the coast of Guam in the Philippine Sea in 2018 and off the coast of Japan in 2019. Japan joined the drill in 2015 as a permanent member, now with Australia joining the group, the message sent to China is evident.

China has been suspicious about the purpose of the Malabar exercise as it feels that the annual war game is an effort to contain its influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Responding to this development, China said it had taken note of the recent developments while underlining that military cooperation should be conducive to regional peace and stability.

Biegun in his telephonic briefing with journalists from India and Afghanistan said that it is our view, over time, the Quad should become more regularised and at some point, formalised as well, as we begin to understand what the parameters of this cooperation are and how we can regularise it.

However, analysts are unsure if the Quad will continue to be strengthened if a change of guard happens in the US. The Trump regime has on several occasions pointed out how his challenger Joe Biden is soft towards China.

With a foreign policy team largely recruited from Obama’s administration, chances are, Biden might dial America back from Trump’s hawkish’s stance.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India invites Australia to be part of Malabar exercise along with the US and Japan

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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In a significant move that comes amid a Sino-India border row, India on Monday announced Australia’s participation in the upcoming Malabar exercise along with the US and Japan, effectively making it the first military-level engagement between the four member nations grouping — the Quad.

The invitation by India to the Australian Navy for the exercise next month came two weeks after the foreign ministers of the Quad held extensive talks in Tokyo with a focus on enhancing their cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, a region that has been witnessing increasing Chinese military assertiveness.

“As India seeks to increase cooperation with other countries in the maritime security domain and in the light of increased defence cooperation with Australia, Malabar 2020 will see the participation of the Australian Navy,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

It also said the participants of the exercise collectively support free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, remarks which reflecteda subtle change in India’s approach towards the drill as well as larger messaging. The exercise is expected to be held in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

“The participants of Exercise Malabar 2020 are engaging to enhance safety and security in the maritime domain. They collectively support free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific and remain committed to a rules based international order,” the ministry said.

For the last few years, Australia has been showing keen interest in participating in the exercise and India’s decision to heed to Australia’s request to be part of the mega naval drill comes in the midst of growing strain in ties with China over the border row in eastern Ladakh.

The evolving situation in the Indo-Pacific region in the wake of China’s increasing military muscle flexing has become a major talking point among leading global powers.

The US has been favouring making Quad a security architecture to check China’s growing assertiveness.

In her reaction, Australian Defence Minister Linda Reynolds CSC termed the participation of her country in the exercise a “milestone opportunity” and said it will showcase the “deep trust” between four major Indo-Pacific democracies and their shared will to work together on common security interests.

“High-end military exercises like Malabar are key to enhancing Australia’s maritime capabilities, building interoperability with our close partners, and demonstrating our collective resolve to support an open and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Reynolds said.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the announcement was another important step in Australia’s deepening relationship with India.

“It will bolster the ability of India, Australia, Japan and the United States to work together to uphold peace and stability across our region,” she said.

The Malabar exercise started in 1992 as a bilateral drill between the Indian Navy and the US Navy in the Indian Ocean. Japan became a permanent member of the exercise in 2015. This annual exercise was conducted off the coast of Guam in the Philippine Sea in 2018 and off the coast of Japan in 2019.

“This year, the exercise has been planned on a non-contact – at sea’ format,” the defence ministry said, adding that the exercise will strengthen the coordination between the Navies of the participating countries. Defence and security ties between India and Australia have been on an upswing in the last few years.

In June, India and Australia elevated their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership and signed a landmark deal for reciprocal access to military bases for logistics support during an online summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison. India has already inked mutual logistics support deal with the other two Quad members. The Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) allows militaries of the two countries to use each other”s bases for repair and replenishment of supplies besides facilitating scaling up of overall defence cooperation.

Last month, the navies of India and Australian carried out a two-day mega exercise in the Indian Ocean region that featured a range of complex naval manoeuvres, anti-aircraft drills and helicopter operations.

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China is disliked globally, now more than ever, says study

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Views of China have grown negative in recent years across many advanced economies and over the past year unfavourable opinions for the country have soared, a new 14-country Pew Research Center survey showed.

Advanced economies surveyed were Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, the US, South Korea, Spain, and Canada. Since the survey began a decade ago, the public’s views against China have reached their highest levels.

Negative views on China in Australia have seen a significant increase of 24 percentage points in recent months, around 81 percent Australians had a gloomy outlook on the Asian country.

The numbers in the UK show a similar increase; 75 percent of people now harbour negative feelings for China. The US has seen an increase of 20 percentage points in the rating since President Donald Trump took office, of which 13 points have increased in the past year.

This sudden rise in the unfavourable views within the past year or so is attributed to its poor handling of COVID-19 pandemic.

Across all the 14 nations surveyed, an average of 61 percent of people believed that China had done a lousy job in dealing with the pandemic. On the other hand, an average of 73 percent of people believes their governments have done a better job in handling the outbreak.

In exception to the US though, an average of 84 percent Americans believe their government has handled the outbreak poorly, even worse than China.

Perception of the Presidents

Disapproval of outbreak handling has also coloured the confidence in the Chinese President Xi Jinping in a negative light, the highest – 91 percent – being in Japan.

Seventy-eight percent of the people surveyed said that they don’t trust the Chinese President to do the right thing in regards to world affairs. This number has grown in double digits since last year.

Then again, as the Chinese President is losing confidence across the world, so is the American President.

While 78 percent Germans don’t trust Prez Xi, some 89 percent do not trust Prez Trump.

This shows Prez Xi’s world image is somewhat better than Prez Trump’s but significantly worse than other world leaders like German Chancellor Angela Markel, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The distrust in China and its leaders are at historic highs; this distrust has led to countries bringing about policy changes on different levels.

The Quad meeting held in Tokyo on Tuesday is an example of one such changes led by the foreign ministers of the US, India, Japan, and Australia.

The Quad countries held a dialogue on Tuesday with China at its epicentre since their points of friction with the government has been growing tremendously—like India-China border standoff, trade war, territorial disputes, cybersecurity concerns, and diplomatic stalemate, along with poor handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Quad Meet 2020: The platform is all set to become firm; sends message to China

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The second foreign ministers’ meeting of the Quadrilateral, or ‘Quad’, took place on Tuesday in Tokyo. Foreign ministers of India, the US, Australia, and Japan met for the second time to hold a security dialogue in Tokyo to build a “true security framework” that could counter the challenge posed by an aggressive China.

During his opening remarks on Tuesday, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said the events of this year had demonstrated the importance of the like-minded countries to coordinate responses to the challenges that the pandemic has brought by.

The ministers had taken the first step to revive the security dialogue last year and upgrade it form secretarial level to the ministerial level on sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

In recent times, no other multilateral framework has received such intense global attention.

The Quad was born in 2006 after Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the vision of an “arc of freedom and prosperity” for the countries bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The group had been a significant success when they came together for humanitarian purposes in the relief work on the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The idea was revived again by our former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he pledged the support for a dialogue that would bring India, Japan, and “other like the -minded countries in Asia Pacific” together.

Following this, the senior officials from the Quad countries came together for an exploratory meeting, once again on the sidelines, but this time during the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila in 2007.

However, days before the first official security consultations could be held, China issued formal diplomatic notes to each country asking for the objectives of the meeting.

The structurally weak group fell apart when the countries realized they could not upset China.

However, after the first Quad meeting in 2019, each country released statements that cleared that they had their reasons for staking claims in the region.

Followed by Trump’s confrontational tone towards China in 2017 and the importance of the Indo-Pacific rather than Asia-Pacific complemented by Modi’s India vision of the Indo-Pacific, the concept fell in place once again.

Now in its second avatar, significantly abetted by China’s combative behaviour, the Quad seems to have grown in purpose, intention, shape, and structure. Now that Chinese motivations are increasingly clear, the Quad has added new dimensions to its agenda, regular assemblies to its schedule, and upgraded the framework even as it remains under intense scrutiny and frequently subjected to criticism that spills over from the failure of its past, writes Firstpost.

Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, backed this formalizing of the informal group to build a true security framework.

This came in when China’s relations with the other three members of the Quad has lapsed in the past year. Not only is China blamed for letting the coronavirus outbreak get out of hands, but its aggressive behaviour in other cases does not help it either.

Speaking to Nikkei Asia in an interview, Pompeo said, “this is the Chinese using coercive power. This isn’t how great nations operate. So our mission is to reduce that.”

“As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the Chinese Communist Party’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion,” he added

The countries are wary of China’s activities in the South China Sea, direct territorial conflict along India’s borders, and a trade war with the US.

“As vibrant and pluralistic democracies with shared values, our nations have collectively affirmed the importance of maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. We remain committed to upholding the rules-based international order, underpinned by the rule of law, transparency, freedom of navigation in the international seas, respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty and peaceful resolution of disputes,” Jaishankar said at the meeting.

Australian Foreign Minister Payne said, “it was vital that states work to ease tensions and avoid exacerbating long-standing disputes, work to counter disinformation, and refrain from malicious cyberspace activity”.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said the Ministers welcomed “proactive efforts by other countries including those in Europe toward a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.

In the statement issued after Tuesday’s Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the Indian external affairs ministry said that the foreign ministers would continue to hold the consultations regularly.

“The Foreign Ministers exchanged views about regional issues of mutual interest, and issues related to connecting counter-terrorism assistance and disaster relief; maritime safety and security; health security, and counter terrorism. They reaffirmed their collective vision of maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. They reiterated their firm support to ASEAN centrality and highlighted their readiness to work towards realizing a common vision for the Indo-Pacific. Appreciating the value of these consultations, they agreed to hold them regularly,” the statement said.

The four foreign ministers—Australia’s Marise Payne, India’s S Jaishankar, Japan’s Toshimitsu Motegi, and America’s Mike Pompeo met with the newly appointed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow