21. The Quad's Next Chapter
- Author:
- Karl Friedhoff
- Publication Date:
- 09-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Chicago Council on Global Affairs
- Abstract:
- Advancing the group's pillars of prosperity and development will be at the very heart of competition with China in the coming decade. The Quad—the country grouping including the United States, Japan, Australia, and India—now stands at a crossroads as it enters its third phase. The Quad 3.0 comes as the grouping has established the dialogue as a meeting place for leaders of the four countries but must now decide what shape competition with China will take and how to best address that competition. Thus far the Quad has struggled to find function for its form. Statements issued by Quad leaders stress the importance of “development, stability, and prosperity” in an effort to roll back China’s influence across the Indo-Pacific. However, its most high-profile activities focus on stability via high-profile military exercises. Closer internal coordination along the security axis serves to highlight the lack of visible progress on the external delivery of development and prosperity to countries outside the Quad. Efforts to deliver development and prosperity are hemmed in by the Quad itself. Neither the United States or India are party to either of the major regional trade agreements—the CPTPP and RCEP. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), held up by the Biden administration as America’s economic engagement with Asia, remains a mirage. Meanwhile, as the United States de-risks its economic relationship with China, it is effectively warning that doing business with Beijing may come at a cost to relations with Washington—an unpopular message across much of the Indo-Pacific. Additionally, any hint of security cooperation with China by smaller countries in the region creates a flurry of diplomatic reaction from the United States. To move forward, the Quad needs to better balance its portfolio and how it messages that portfolio. The overt promotion of the security agenda is actively undermining perceptions of the Quad’s ability to engage on development and prosperity. A first corrective step is to balance the group’s internal goal of improved security coordination and cohesion with the Quad’s external goal of delivering development and prosperity to countries in the region. Committing to an agenda that brings the people of the region, not its seas, to the fore of the Quad mission should be a top priority. This means rejecting the dogma that every China initiative in the region needs a Quad alternative. Instead, advancing Quad goals requires identifying China’s activities that can be co-opted for Quad purposes. This will mean working around, and sometimes with, China’s initiatives to better serve not only the Quad’s goals in prosperity and development but also the people of the region.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Development, Geopolitics, Trade, Strategic Competition, and Quad Alliance
- Political Geography:
- Japan, China, South Asia, India, East Asia, Australia, North America, United States of America, and Oceania