Today’s joint statement from the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington is short and sweet, particularly for those who have been arguing that the grouping should overtly embrace security cooperation.
The statement’s emphasis on ‘security in all domains’ is a noteworthy and welcome shift from the previous, awkward position that the Quad was not a security partnership, despite working together in health security, cybersecurity and maritime security.
This inherent contradiction was unnecessarily self-limiting and confusing but persisted because Quad members, including Australia, saw this self-constraint as necessary to assuage Southeast Asian sensitivities about counterbalancing or containing China.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should update its official description of the Quad, which is currently a ‘a diplomatic, not security, partnership’.
Also absent from the statement is any reference to ‘ASEAN centrality’. This is notable because past Quad statements have all dutifully replicated this diplomatic deference to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This ellipsis is an early indication that the Trump administration does not intend to pursue cooperation through the Quad only at a pace that is comfortable for Southeast Asian countries. In fact, ASEAN doesn’t appear to register at all as a policy concern among some members of Trump’s cabinet line-up.
While China is not named either, a joint commitment to ‘oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion’ leaves little doubt that Beijing is the Quad’s common challenge. A subsequent reference to ‘strengthening regional maritime, economic and technology security in the face of increasing threats’ should remove any remaining doubt. Beijing will inevitably react to such bluntness. But the Quad’s belated embrace of security cooperation is welcome. After all, security is a public good just like other elements of the Quad’s agenda, and something which the four countries should openly aspire to strengthen, without fear of offending others in the region.
Defence cooperation is not mentioned directly in the joint statement as part of the Quad’s security agenda. But it is strongly hinted in the commitment that ‘rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity’ should be ‘upheld and defended’ in the Indo-Pacific. (Note ‘defended’.) The Quad navies already exercise together in the annual Malabar drills. It is likely that a military dimension to four-way cooperation will now develop within the Quad, not only in unwarlike activities as disaster relief but also focused on deterrence. This should not dilute the Quad’s collaborative agenda in other policy fields, such as supply chain resilience and maritime domain awareness, but rather complement it.
The fact that the Quad foreign ministers meeting was virtually Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first official activity will be read as a sign of President Trump’s willingness to back the quartet, which after all was revived in 2017 during his first term in office. This will come as a relief to Australia, India and Japan. And it underlines the Quad’s strategic utility not simply as a counterbalance to China but also as a means to anchor the US security role in the Indo-Pacific via a broad-based partnership with three of its most important regional partners, including its closest regional ally, Australia, and its most important one, Japan. India, which offers the heft as the world’s most populous country and democracy, will host the next summit of Quad leaders this year. Trump’s attendance in Delhi will be essential to maintaining the momentum.
This is a promising turn in the Quad’s fluctuating fortunes. It is tempting to inversely correlate the impact of joint statements with their length. The commendable brevity of this two-paragraph statement packs policy punches that were patently missing from some of the Quad’s recent, prolix pronouncements. When it comes to drafting joint statements, concision should be best practice: less means more.