U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration kicked off its formal foreign policy engagements in discussions with the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. The ministers reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to the format and its goals and indicated their leaders would meet in the coming months.
The grouping of the four countries has been seen by many as an initiative to counter or at least slow the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) increasing assertiveness and aggressiveness in the region, something over which President Trump and his predecessors have all expressed deep concern.
The timing of the January 21 meeting — on President Trump’s first full day in office — suggests it will remain a priority for the U.S. government. In a joint statement released after the meeting, the ministers suggested a new Quad summit would be held this year in India.
“Our four nations maintain our conviction that international law, economic opportunity, peace, stability and security in all domains including the maritime domain underpin the development and prosperity of the peoples of the Indo-Pacific,” they said.
“We also strongly oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion,” they said in a not-so-subtle reference to the PRC.
The two-paragraph joint statement was the only indication of how the meeting unfolded as none of the ministers — Rubio, Australia’s Penny Wong, India’s S. Jaishankar or Japan’s Iwaya Takeshi — spoke as they opened their meeting at the U.S. State Department.
The Quad was established in 2007 to bring together countries that had worked together in response to the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Its members stress its diplomatic nature and broad focus on regional issues, including infrastructure, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, climate change and maritime security.
Even though security is only part of the mix, the Quad is a major component of Washington’s strategy to counter Beijing’s growing assertiveness and vast territorial claims in the region, including virtually all of the strategically important South China Sea and the democratic self-governing island of Taiwan.
The strategic element to the Quad has prompted Beijing to accuse the four countries of attempting to form an “Asian NATO,” though it is a very different construction and has no mutual-defense pact, a key component to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Alliance.