Don’t give up on the Quad. The current tensions between its four members won’t overcome the underlying strengths of their relationships and lead to permanent breakdowns.
The common challenges of the Quad members—above all the need to compete with China—form a powerful binding force. The Quad provides the mechanism through which that force can operate.
It is too easily forgotten that the Quad seemed dead after 2007. The motivation for its resurrection in 2017, Beijing’s malign behaviour, has only intensified.
Differences among the Quad nations are insignificant short-term irritants compared with the structural security threats posed by China’s military power, cyberattacks, foreign interference and ambition to supplant the US as the globe’s technological powerhouse. Quad members’ task is to overcome those differences, perhaps by learning to live with them, as smoothly and quickly as possible, keeping their eye on the main game.
The leaders of the Quad’s members—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—are due to meet in Delhi this year but, if conflicting schedules prevent this, September’s United Nations General Assembly must be seized as the opportunity to show solidarity. India, through private channels, is already seeking a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly.
One of the current problems is on defence spending, as Washington rightly demands that allies take a fair share of the security burden.
In Trump’s first presidential term, the US’s Quad partners faced less pressure than European countries in that regard. But global security is far worse in 2025 than it was in 2017. We see growing and open tension between Washington and Canberra over Australia’s defence spending, which has not risen in step with security threats that the Australian government itself assesses as the worst since World War II. Australia should be less defensive when its security commitment is questioned by its ally, which has its good reasons for concern.
Japan, too, is under growing US pressure to increase defence spending and assume greater security responsibility. It has already agreed to increase its defence spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2027. But Japan’s cancellation of planned 1 July ministerial meetings with the US administration, following a reported US demand for much higher Japanese defence spending, suggests unease is creeping into that Quad relationship, too.
India hasn’t faced this particular pressure because it is not a US ally. But it, too, can expect to feel pressure to pull its weight militarily if there is some serious confrontation over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
Trade is a second troubling issue, with Quad partners affected as much as other countries. Australia and Japan have been hit by Trump’s tariffs, and India has been far more. The US intends to impose tariffs of 50 percent on imports from India. It has complained about India’s purchase of Russian oil since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. India’s purchases of arms from Russia have also been a sore point, though Delhi is quietly shifting to other suppliers.
India helping Russia to earn revenue from oil exports is a real problem, but the US response is incongruous: tariffs on India are higher than those on Russia, and indeed higher than those on China, the main enabler of Moscow’s war effort.
Despite the tensions over this, India’s response has been measured, though Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public description of President Vladimir Putin as a friend will not have gone unnoticed. Wise heads in Washington will know this is a dual track game in which leaders make public statements for domestic and political purposes while saying the opposite in private. Australia is in the same type of disingenuous relationship with China, in which public pronouncements of mutual friendship and respect are said with forked tongue. And here is where the Quad can show its core difference to the relationships with the likes of China and Russia: trust and genuine alignment that doesn’t just survive disagreements but thrives with them.
The US and India have got through rough patches before, sometimes when they were not as strategically aligned. These days they are, and the reason for that alignment, China’s aggression and ambition, won’t go away. The same issue will also concentrate the minds of Australia, Japan and the US in their mutual relations.
The immediate issue, then, becomes navigating this rough patch in internal Quad relations. Quad members will pass through it more quickly if they remember that few things would please China more than each of them dealing with it purely bilaterally rather than with mutual support and coordination.
The Quad partners (and many others, including the Philippines and South Korea) will fear abandonment if Trump cuts a separate deal with China that enables it to create its sphere of influence across the Indo-Pacific. While Quad partners want some stability in US–China ties, they also need the US involved in deterring and balancing China in the Indo-Pacific. The US’s Quad partners are concerned less about a purely economic agreement between Washington and Beijing and more about a deal that involves Chinese economic cooperation in return for US security or technological compromises. The US administration’s attitude towards TikTok and exporting Nvidia chips to China are just two examples of softening that are being keenly watched. Any signs that the US will prioritise Chinese trade over national security will make it that much harder for Quad members to constrain Beijing.
The next Quad leaders summit, whether in Delhi or New York, is an opportunity to strengthen the grouping and reassure observers that the members remain committed to working together. They can also use it to remind each other that they have done a lot together, even this year. Just last month, the Quad foreign ministers met for the second time this year and outlined an ambitious agenda, which included key areas of concern such as maritime domain awareness and critical minerals.
Ahead of the Quad summit, and at it, one can hope Trump and Modi can resolve the immediate tensions—because China, and to some extent Russia, will look to exploit any divisions. China is the major strategic risk to both the US and India, as well as to Australia, Japan and other rule-abiding Indo-Pacific nations, and that’s why we need the Quad and the bilateral relations within it to strengthen.
Most important is that Washington, Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo ensure that they can manage current tensions without forgetting that the permanent security challenge is Beijing. How the Quad nations individually and collectively act towards China is most important. Any return to bygone eras of tolerating Beijing’s security threat in return for economic reward should be resisted. The Quad continues to play an active role in this regard, mainly behind the scenes. In an era of high-profile social media and constant publicity, the Quad now needs to reveal rather than conceal its true identity.