India cautious about US proposal for meeting of Quad leaders

Modi govt may take a call after carefully studying the proposal – factoring in its implication on India’s relations with Russia as well as its negotiations with China

India is cautiously studying a proposal from the new United States President Joe Biden’s administration for a virtual meeting of the leaders of the ‘Quad’ – a coalition the two nations have been building along with two other Indo-Pacific democracies, Japan and Australia, over the past few years to counter China.

The Biden Administration has informally conveyed its proposal to New Delhi, Tokyo and Canberra. If the virtual meeting among Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian and Japanese counterparts, Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga, happens, it will mark elevation of the hitherto informal coalition to the level of the leaders – a significant diplomatic move by the four democracies, which is sure to rile up China.

The Modi government is likely to take a call after carefully studying the proposal – factoring in its implication on India’s relations with Russia as well as its negotiations with China to resolve the 10-month-long military stand-off along the disputed boundary between two nations in eastern Ladakh, a source in New Delhi told DH.

The source also said that New Delhi would support or join any move to strengthen the ‘Quad’, only if it was consistent to its own vision of Indo-Pacific, which remained inclusive in nature, not targeted at any country, but supportive of freedom of navigation and overflight and peaceful settlement of territorial disputes, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

India, US, Australia and Japan had first launched the 'quad' in 2007, but the initiative had fizzled out very soon. The four nations, however, re-launched the 'quad' in Manila in November 2017 – ostensibly to create a bulwark of democratic nations to counter expansionist moves of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The senior diplomats of the four nations had several meetings ever since the quad was re-launched. It was elevated to the level of Foreign Ministers when the then US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, hosted his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India on the side-line of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019.

Pompeo and the foreign ministers of the three other nations – S Jaishankar of India, Maris Payne of Australia and Toshimitsu Motegi of Japan – had another meeting in Tokyo on October 6 last year.

The second ministerial meeting was held amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing belligerence of China, not only along its Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India, but also in the disputed waters of South China Sea, East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

But the Trump Administration’s move to formalize and expand the ‘Quad’ and turn it into a NATO-like bloc for the Indo-Pacific region did not succeed as not only India, but Australia and Japan too were not yet ready to go the whole hog and overtly gang up with the US against China.

The source in New Delhi also told the DH that the Modi Government would like to have a clear understanding about the Biden Administration’s approach on the Indo-Pacific region, before responding to any US-led move to elevate the ‘Quad’.

India over the past few years added a military heft to its partnerships with the members of the ‘Quad’, inking military logistics sharing pacts with the US, Australia and Japan. But it last year also broad-based its Indo-Pacific engagements with France and Germany, which remained outside the ‘Quad’.

What also added to New Delhi’s dilemma over ‘Quad’ was Russia’s unease over India’s participation in the US-led move against China in Indo-Pacific.