{"id":44991,"date":"2019-01-24T11:20:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T00:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=44991"},"modified":"2019-01-24T11:20:14","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T00:20:14","slug":"why-the-quad-wont-ever-be-an-asian-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-the-quad-wont-ever-be-an-asian-nato\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Quad won\u2019t ever be an Asian NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The most recent meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Singapore last November suggests that the US, India, Japan and Australia regard the initiative as a geostrategic multiplier in the Indo-Pacific. Despite the evident convergence, there have been few signs of a genuine renewal of the Quad\u2019s purpose since it was resuscitated in 2017 after a decade-long hiatus.<\/p>\n

This is underscored by the absence of a unified declaration following the Quad\u2019s meetings in 2017 and 2018. Although individual statements released by the four members after the meetings agreed on the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific, they overlapped on few points of detail<\/a>. And although Quad boosters assert<\/a> that its foundations are stronger today than they were a decade ago, the absence of a single joint statement betrays the inherent limits of the initiative.<\/p>\n

The recent revival of the Quad was triggered by the return of Shinzo Abe as Japanese prime minister in 2012. Shortly after returning to office, Abe wrote an essay<\/a> promoting a \u2018democratic Asian security diamond\u2019 to forestall Chinese \u2018coercion\u2019. \u00a0The proposal endorsed the view that the US, Japan, Australia and India should cooperate to \u2018safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s threat perception vis-\u00e0-vis China has increased in the decade since the Quad was first initiated, pushing it closer to Washington and US allies in Asia like Australia and Japan. The increase in Chinese naval deployments in the Indian Ocean and the rapid modernisation of China\u2019s nuclear weapons program, including its sea-launched ballistic-missile capabilities, have exercised Indian planners and provoked a greater emphasis on the link<\/a> between national strategy and maritime force projection. These concerns have been overlaid by India\u2019s apprehension about the growing reach of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s concerns over China\u2019s strategic posture in the Indo-Pacific and its overt militarisation activities in the South China Sea have been reinforced by revelations of interference by Beijing in Australian domestic affairs. Disclosures of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s influence in Australia have included attempts to bribe high-level officials, pressure for Chinese-language media outlets to toe the line on key issues, monitoring of Chinese students in Australian universities, and recruitment of sympathetic advocates to articulate the CCP\u2019s position in the media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These factors have coalesced to create a more permissive environment for Australia\u2019s participation in the Quad and other minilateral security initiatives. The Quad has the support<\/a> of the opposition Labor Party as well as the Coalition government.<\/p>\n

For the US, returning to the Quad after a 10-year hiatus dovetails with the Trump administration\u2019s preference for a more explicit acknowledgement of competition with Beijing, not just in the strategic arena but also in the economic domain. Washington\u2019s continuation of freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea\u2014notwithstanding the clear risks of military escalation\u2014and the Trump administration\u2019s appetite for zero-sum confrontation with Beijing over trade, signal a renewed determination by the US to contain Chinese great-power ambitions.<\/p>\n

While Trump is less focused than his predecessors on promoting the idea of a concert of democracies in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad aligns with his disdain for large-scale multilateralism and his fixation on burden-sharing with allies and security partners. Perhaps more importantly, the Quad maps closely to the Pentagon\u2019s vision<\/a> of developing America\u2019s Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships \u2018into a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, given the Quad\u2019s history, there are serious doubts about whether it can be sustained. As La Trobe University\u2019s Nick Bisley has argued<\/a>, \u2018there is not a single vital national interest that all four share\u2019. Perhaps tellingly, in contrast to 2007, the resurrection of the Quad in 2017 elicited very little apparent concern on the part of Beijing. This reflects China\u2019s broader reaction<\/a> to US-led minilateral initiatives, as distinct from specific initiatives taken as part of US bilateral security alliances, which tend to attract vociferous condemnation from China.<\/p>\n

Beijing probably feels reasonably confident that underlying divisions between US allies will prevent an Asian NATO from emerging and that most, if not all, American allies in the region (and those not allied to the US, such as India and Indonesia) will avoid formal multilateral security commitments because of their acute dependence on Chinese trade and investment<\/a>. Ultimately, Beijing\u2019s reading of minilateralism\u2019s (and, by extension, the Quad\u2019s) prospects may be close to the mark.<\/p>\n

All four parties have clear incentives to constrain, and in some cases push back against, Beijing\u2019s growing assertiveness, but that won\u2019t necessarily sustain the Quad beyond its recent resurrection. There\u2019s little indication that members are serious about mapping the Quad\u2019s future in detail, and while perspectives within ASEAN are mixed<\/a>, Singaporeans (perhaps surprisingly) remain the most sceptical about Quad.<\/p>\n

One school of thought may be that the Quad parties will discover a renewed purpose only if Beijing uses force in a regional contingency. That may be credible, but it\u2019s more likely that the US, Japan and Australia will focus all their efforts on leveraging existing bilateral security alliances in response to a major uptick in Chinese military activity. And it is difficult to envisage India seriously buying into a conflict in the South China Sea when even Japan and Australia place caveats on how much their alliances with the US formally commit them to do in certain scenarios.<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, we\u2019re likely to look back on the Quad\u2019s resurrection in 2017 as another false dawn for the development of meaningful security arrangements outside formal alliances in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most recent meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Singapore last November suggests that the US, India, Japan and Australia regard the initiative as a geostrategic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":44993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,69,56,135,2328,31],"class_list":["post-44991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-india","tag-indo-pacific","tag-japan","tag-quad","tag-united-states","dinkus-quad-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Quad won\u2019t ever be an Asian NATO | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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