Quad going to stay and grow; others cannot have 'veto' on our choices: Jaishankar

New Delhi: New Delhi: Quad is a statement that no one can have a veto on the choices of others, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, sending out a message to Russia and China, which frowned upon the coalition India forged with Australia, Japan and the United States.

“One, the Quad is here to stay. Two, the Quad is here to grow. And three, the Quad is here to contribute,” Jaishankar said, stressing the need to counter the “negative propaganda” about the coalition the four nations forged to counter the hegemonic moves by China in the Indo-Pacific region. He was speaking at the inaugural Quad Think Tank Forum held in New Delhi where the next summit of the four-nation coalition would be held later this year.

Moscow has been accusing the US of trying to use the Quad and using it to escalate tension between India and China.

New Delhi, however, resisted the US bid to turn the Quad into an ‘Indo-Pacific NATO’ and rather made the coalition pursue benign non-military initiatives instead of turning overtly adversarial to China.

The Quad had been first conceived in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. Then Japanese President Shinzo Abe in 2006-07 had envisaged the Quad as a coalition of democracies to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Quad 1.0 had a rather short life. Just after it took shape with a low-key meeting of the diplomats of India, Australia, Japan, and the US in Manila on May 24, 2007, and the four nations had the war drill with Singapore a few months later, China served démarches to the five nations, accusing them of ganging up against it. The four-nation initiative soon fizzled out.

The Quad 2.0 was born in November 2017, just a few months after the Indian Army had a 72-day-long stand-off with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan. New Delhi was then trying to mend its ties with Beijing. While the US referred to the “shared democratic values and principles” of the four nations in its readout issued from Washington D.C., New Delhi carefully avoided referring to the Quad as an alliance of democracies against communist China.

President Joe Biden’s administration elevated the Quad to the level of the Head of Government with a virtual summit followed by an in-person one in 2021.

“So, let us look at why the Quad? The answer is very simple. It is there for global good and it is there for the global commons. It is facilitated by the emergence of the Indo-Pacific. And it is propelled by a change in the global order that requires more, not less, collaboration among the like-minded,” Jaishankar said on Saturday.

“What does Quad stand for? I believe it has five messages. One, it reflects the growth of a multi-polar order. Two, it is a post-alliance and post-cold-war thinking. Three, it is against spheres of influence. Four, it expresses the democratizing of the global space and a collaborative, not unilateral, approach. And five, it is a statement that in this day and age, others cannot have a veto on our choices,” added the external affairs minister.