Quad takes crucial steps forward

If only weeks ago, America’s commitment to the Quad seemed to have been weakened by the Ukraine crisis and President Joe Biden’s focus seemed to have shifted away from the Indo-Pacific, this week’s in-person summit of Quad leaders in Japan should allay apprehensions. The summit saw the grouping take several concrete steps forward. It announced a new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness initiative for the Quad partners to respond to natural disasters as well as combat illegal fishing. The latter is particularly important; China is said to be responsible for most of the world’s illegal fishing and, worryingly, uses such fishing and fishing vessels to assert claims over the territorial waters of other countries in the East China and South China Seas. The Quad is slowly beginning to act against Chinese aggression. Additionally, it has committed over $50 billion towards assistance and investment in developing infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific over the next five years. This is aimed at countering the influence China has built in recent years across continents with its Belt and Road Initiative.

That the Quad has held four summits over the past year, two of them in-person, signals a new energy and determination in the grouping to get its act together. If in the last summit India’s separate and different stance on the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscored the limits of cooperation in the Quad, the recent summit indicates that Quad members can cooperate despite differences and will work to find common ground.

On the eve of the Quad summit, Biden announced the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). India is among 13 countries that have joined the initiative, which is built around trade, supply chain resilience, clean energy and decarbonisation, and taxes and anti-corruption measures. While its objectives are geopolitical and aimed at countering China’s economic heft in the Indo-Pacific, it has components that can benefit member-states economically. India could gain from being part of the IPEF’s supply chain arrangement. However, what IPEF is all about is still unclear. American officials have said it is not a not a free trade agreement. A White House statement says that it will enable “American workers, small businesses, and ranchers compete in the Indo-Pacific.” Will it intensify US protectionism? Earlier US efforts to strengthen economic engagement with the Indo-Pacific failed to take off. Will this happen to IPEF? It is the outcome of a presidential order. Will future administrations discard it? Negotiations on IPEF have only just begun. Delhi must seek clarifications and ensure that it is signing up to an inclusive and mutually beneficial platform.