The Quad, or the Quadrilateral, is a mechanism by which four countries—the United States, India, Japan, and Australia—coordinate their diplomatic partnership in the larger Indo-Pacific region. For India, the Indo-Pacific stretches from the east coast of Africa to the West Coast of the US. It is NOT centered on China. The Quad is neither an alliance, a military grouping, nor a plurilateral organization. It has no organization or secretariat. It’s a mechanism by which the four democracies of the Indo-Pacific region can coordinate on specific issue areas. EAM Jaishankar calls them issue-based coalitions.[1] Yet the Quad has remained a subject of intense hype and discussion, but it is essential to scrutinize it more closely.
The origins of the Quad lie in the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when the four countries formed the “Tsunami Core Group” to coordinate the emergency response and humanitarian assistance.[2] In the subsequent years, there were efforts to institutionalize the Quad, spearheaded by Shinzo Abe during his first term as prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007.[3] Abe’s rationale for the Quad was to defend the so-called “international rules-based order”, implying that China had become a threat to that order. China on its part argued that the international rules-based order was a decoy to protect a system which perpetuates US primacy. The International Order should be centred instead on International Law and the UN Charter.[4] The Quad remained dormant until 2017 when Quad 2.0 in its current form started taking shape. It was raised to foreign minister level and later head of state level in 2021.[5] In 2023, President Biden hosted the other three leaders in the United States in Wilmington. However, under Trump 2.0, the Quad has been downgraded to foreign minister level again by virtue of the fact that there has been no leaders’ summit.[6]
While the US and its treaty allies Australia and Japan often tout it as a group to contain China, evidence shows that all three countries maintain robust bilateral relations with China. The presence of India as a fourth member adds further complexity to the mechanism. While India relies on the Quad as a hedging bet with respect to the rise of China, it is the only non-treaty partner in the mechanism. This is clearly shown in diplomatic language. While the US and Japan often invoke a “free” and “open” Indo-Pacific, India has always added “inclusive” to the language to avoid antagonizing Beijing.[7] Beijing considers the Quad as a means of “bloc confrontation” and an “exclusive clique” targeting China. At the same time, Chinese FM Wang Yi has described the Quad as “foam in the sea” which is bound to wither away with time.[8] India, on its part, has further clarified that the Quad is primarily a mechanism to deliver public goods and economic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region and not directed at any country. The four countries often insist that the Quad exists to provide an alternative model to China in the Indo-Pacific region. However, that requires rigorous planning and joint implementation which is yet to materialize. On the other hand, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has progressed in the Asia-Pacific region with loans, projects, connectivity, digital, infrastructure, and development projects.[9] The Quad lacks substance in comparison.
THE POLITCS OF THE QUAD MEETING IN NEW DELHI
The Quad held its latest foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi on May 26, 2026. The meeting was held in the backdrop of the US-Iran War and the 20-year India-US strategic partnership in crisis.[10] Since January 2024, India has been the target of US’ policies on trade, sanctions, immigration, and regional politics. Therefore, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was dispatched to New Delhi to reassure New Delhi. [11] While the Quad managed to issue a joint statement, India was far from reassured as Mr. Rubio defended American policies as a fundamental change in the American system. India has so far resisted countering and balancing the United States, but the bilateral strategic partnership has reached breaking point on several occasions since Trump’s 1st term. There are serious question marks regarding Indian independence, sovereign decision-making, and strategic autonomy in its handling of the US relationship.
The language of the Quad joint statement was fiercely debated up until the final hours, revealing the differing geopolitical pressures and localized security anxieties facing each capital. While the word “China” did not appear once in the text, the political messaging remained watered down as the ministers managed to address “critical mineral export restrictions,” a clear nod to Beijing’s monopoly on rare earth elements.[12] To ensure the document reflected specific domestic concerns, a compromise was also struck on counter-terrorism language; the final text explicitly condemned recent regional terror attacks—including the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam, India, and the December 2025 Bondi Beach attack in Australia—effectively balancing India’s focus on cross-border terrorism with Australia’s domestic security priorities.[13]
Simultaneously, ongoing volatility in West Asia forced an unexpected expansion of the Quad’s traditional geographic scope during the closed-door sessions. The ministers spent significant time debating the wording surrounding global shipping lanes, given the high stakes for net-energy importers like India and Japan. This friction ultimately resulted in the insertion of sharp language condemning “attacks on commercial shipping” and the “imposition of tolls” in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea primarily under American pressure, even though the US is the aggressor in the Iran War.[14]
UNITED STATES – THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE QUAD
Furthermore, the United States under Trump 2.0 has declared a partnership of the G2 or the “Group of 2” with China, further undermining the Quad as the primary mechanism in the Indo-Pacific region. This was evident during Trump’s much-touted trip to Beijing where the US and China agreed on a framework for a “new partnership of strategic stability”.[15] Therefore, the latest foreign ministers meeting under the leadership of India in New Delhi focused on specific issue areas rather than broad strategy. The Quad announced the maritime surveillance and security initiative, energy security initiative, critical minerals initiative, and the Port infrastructure initiative. But there is a common problem among all four initiatives.
The weakest link in the QUAD in its latest form is the United States. On the critical minerals’ initiative, it is notable that the United States had already agreed to a rare earths/critical minerals truce with China before the Quad meeting.[16] As we know, China controls 90% of rare earth processing—a capability it has developed over decades since the 1970s. Even if the US and Japan were to expedite the process, for the United States and Japan to attain the same comprehensive capability as China in rare earth processing—spanning extraction, multi-stage chemical separation, and heavy rare earth metallization—it will take a decade or two to develop the same capability in addition to billions of dollars of investments. If the goal is to secure military independence, the U.S. and Japan are on track to achieve basic self-sufficiency within the next 2 to 3 years. However, if the goal is to match China’s commercial dominance, total output volume, and processing efficiency across all 17 rare earth elements, it will take until the mid-2030s of sustained, aggressive capital investment to truly draw level.[17] India on its part will provide the rare earths and will expect technology transfer of the processing capability and processing plants within the borders of India. The initiative by itself is important but requires herculean and sustained effort to bear fruit. Similar Quad initiatives on vaccines and the cancer moon shot did not see the light of day.[18]
On energy security, the United States is part of the problem rather than the solution. Since January 2024, the US has pressured India into reducing purchases of Russian and Iranian oil with the threat of sanctions and has insisted India buy more expensive oil from the US and Venezuela.[19] While the US has granted sanctions waivers to India, the instability has thrown Indian energy policy into disarray. Furthermore, a full-scale military attack on Iran has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has led to an increase in oil prices, a supply shock, and a further reduction of offshore oil supply in the face of intense buyer competition. This energy shock has hit India hard, which could precipitate a reduction of 1% in Indian GDP growth.[20] Therefore, India’s energy security is in crisis unless a solution is found to Hormuz, and the Quad initiative is a case of too little too late. Alternatively, India might have to pay a toll or “fees” to Iran to secure its energy interests.
On maritime surveillance and security, it is ironic that on March 4th, 2026, USS Charlotte, a US submarine returning from an AUKUS military exercise, loitered in the Indian Ocean, which is considered the strategic backyard of the Indian Navy. On the same day, USS Charlotte torpedoed an Iranian ship, IRIS Dena, which was unarmed and returning from an international naval conference hosted by India.[21] All the Iranian sailors on board barring a few were killed. To further aggravate the situation, the US announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz while declaring that it would interdict every ship including Indian-flagged ships. Therefore, the credibility of the US in ensuring India’s maritime security is questionable in the present circumstances.
On Infrastructure, the Quad announced an initiative to develop port infrastructure in Fiji. This is a welcome development but still lags behind Chinese infrastructure initiatives in the region.[22] Therefore, the Quad will really have to scale up its infrastructure investment and project delivery to make a sizable dent in the Chinese model in the region.
Overall, the Quad is a mechanism which often indicates the individual priorities of its members. It is a different entity to each of its members. The US sees it as a way of keeping India invested in containing China while preparing the Philippines as the militarist alternative to India in the alternative Quad.[23] Japan sees it as a bulwark against China in the first and second island chains in the East and South China seas. Australia sees it as a way of improving relations with India and Japan while keeping a parallel track with the great powers, the US and China. India sees it as a mechanism to enhance its status and diplomatic standing as a democracy without getting into the nitty-gritty of democracy promotion or antagonizing China through military balancing.
When the Quad was reformulated in 2017, it was clear that the Quad did not have the power or capabilities to change Chinese behaviour, but it was going to focus on changing China’s strategic environment.[24] To achieve that objective, the US and Japan would have to do the heavy lifting in terms of economic investment and implementing a positive vision of the Quad within the Indo-Pacific region. But domestic politics in both countries has gone awry with ultra-nationalist populist leaders at the helm such as Trump and Takaichi.[25] The US is recalling investment back to American shores, and Takaichi is focused on changing Japan’s pacifist constitution to enable re-armament and military modernization. For the Quad to succeed, it must remain focused on delivering public goods and economic development. Only then can it proceed to higher goals such as democratization, a new functional multipolar Asian order, and a regional alternative to China. Militarization will only add to further instability and force countries to hedge against the US presence in the region.
QUAD’S FUNDAMENTAL WEAKNESS – LACK OF DELIVERY AND DEMOCRACY PROMOTION
While the Quad frequently promotes its commitment to delivering “regional public goods,” its actual record in critical social sectors like global health, education, and climate adaptation is defined by a glaring gap between rhetoric and execution. By treating soft-power development initiatives as tools for public diplomacy without backing them up with sustained funding or coherent implementation, the grouping has repeatedly failed to address the region’s human development needs. The most prominent example was the Quad’s pandemic response, which grandly pledged to distribute 1.2 billion vaccine doses across the Indo-Pacific but managed only a fraction of that goal due to domestic export restrictions and supply chain bottlenecks, allowing outside geopolitical competitors to easily fill the vacuum.[26]
A close look at the Quad’s specific social pillars reveals a consistent pattern of small-scale tokenism rather than structural regional aid. For instance, the Quad Health Security Partnership’s collective public health emergency outlays amounted to just $50 million, while the prestigious Quad Fellowship program funded a mere 50 graduate STEM students with a negligible $1 million outlay.^[27] Similarly, in the climate sector, the Clean Energy Supply Chain Diversification Program has largely retreated to high-level policy workshops and modest $25 million allocations for energy supply chains, leaving vulnerable Pacific Island nations without the heavy infrastructure financing they desperately require. This structural failure stems directly from the Quad’s architecture, as it lacks a formal secretariat, a joint charter, or a dedicated, centralized budget, making its projects highly vulnerable to the domestic political and budgetary cycles of Washington, Canberra, New Delhi, and Tokyo.[28]
While the Quad was originally envisioned by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an ideological “Arc of Democracy” to protect the liberal international order, its actual record in promoting democratic governance across the Indo-Pacific is practically non-existent. When faced with a choice between values and realpolitik, the grouping has repeatedly prioritized hard security and economic survival over human rights. This friction is most evident in the Quad’s paralyzed response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, where India maintained active ties with the junta to guard its borders and counter outside influence, and in the US’ active hostility towards Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh.[29] The US was also alleged to have been involved in the ouster of Imran Khan in Pakistan and has refrained from reacting to his incarceration as an internal matter of Pakistan.[30]
Furthermore, the Quad has intentionally buried its democracy-promotion rhetoric because it alienated the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose member states feared an ideological “democracy vs. authoritarianism” divide would spark a Cold War-style conflict.[31] There was a compromise middle path available where democracy promotion could have been decoupled from strategic competition, but the Quad has shown no appetite for solving difficult problems. This strategic reality, combined with the bloc’s own internal challenges—ranging from Western political populism and polarization, Japan’s tilt to the far-right, to scrutiny over India’s domestic politics—has forced a total pivot in the Quad’s original agenda. The gap between aspiration and reality remains vast.
ENDNOTES
[1] External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has repeatedly emphasized the concept of “issue-based coalitions” or plurilateral in contemporary Indian foreign policy, arguing that rigid, Cold War-style alliances are poorly suited to today’s multipolar reality. See S. Jaishankar, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World (HarperCollins, 2020).
[2] The Tsunami Core Group, consisting of senior diplomats and military commanders from the US, India, Japan, and Australia, was hastily assembled in late December 2004. It is widely recognized by diplomatic historians as the functional and structural blueprint for what would later become the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
[3] Prime Minister Shinzo Abe formalized this vision in his historic August 2007 address to the Indian Parliament, titled “Confluence of the Two Seas,” which expanded the geopolitical framework of Asia to encompass the broader Indo-Pacific maritime continuum.
[4] Beijing’s official position has long critiqued the phrase “rules-based international order” as a Western construct designed to bypass established legal frameworks under United Nations frameworks. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, The Fallacy of the ‘Rules-Based International Order’, Regular Press Briefings.
[5] Following a decade-long hiatus prompted by Australian and Indian reservations about antagonizing China, the Quad was revived on the side-lines of the ASEAN Summit in Manila in November 2017 (Quad 2.0). It was subsequently elevated to the leader-level via a virtual summit hosted by US President Joe Biden in March 2021.
[6] The September 2023 Wilmington Summit in Delaware was seen as a high-water mark for leader-level institutionalization. The subsequent transition to the second Trump administration (“Trump 2.0”) marked an institutional shift, returning the mechanism to an executive ministerial forum due to a renewed focus on bilateral transactional diplomacy.
[7] While American and Japanese National Security Strategies routinely employ the phrase “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP), India’s Ministry of External Affairs strictly appends “Inclusive,” explicitly signalling that the geography remains open to all regional states, including China, provided international maritime norms are observed.
[8] State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi famously dismissed the initial iteration of the Quad during a March 2018 press conference, stating that such “sea foam” headlines capture attention but quickly dissipate.
[9] For comparative data on Chinese infrastructure delivery versus Western initiatives, see the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index, which tracks the deep asymmetric advantage China maintains in economic relationships and physical infrastructure financing across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
[10] Reference to the geopolitical escalation in early 2026 stemming from direct military hostilities between the United States and Iran, which severely strained the foundational assumptions of the 2005 India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement and the broader twenty-year strategic partnership.
[11] The diplomatic mission of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to New Delhi in mid-2026 served as a high-stakes damage-control effort to manage escalating bilateral friction regarding secondary American sanctions and shifting immigration parameters under the new Washington administration.
[12] China’s Ministry of Commerce imposed sweeping export restrictions on gallium, germanium, and refined graphite, leveraging its control over approximately 90% of global rare earth processing capabilities.
[13] The inclusion of localized terror incidents—the Pahalgam resort attack in Jammu & Kashmir and the Bondi Beach stabbing incident—reflects the “issue-based logrolling” required to maintain consensus within the joint communique among actors with divergent domestic threats.
[14] The Strait of Hormuz handles roughly 20-30% of global petroleum consumption daily. The insertion of shipping protection text highlights the critical energy vulnerability of New Delhi and Tokyo, both of whom are historically heavily reliant on Persian Gulf crude.
[15] The surprise bilateral “G2 Strategic Stability Framework” announced during President Trump’s state visit to Beijing fundamentally shocked US treaty allies, reviving fears of a structural “grand bargain” between Washington and Beijing that bypasses multilateral security arrangements.
[16] Financial analysts note that the temporary US-China critical mineral carve-outs allowed American tech sectors continued access to heavy rare earths while undercutting the long-term economic viability of alternative supply chains championed by the Quad.
[17] For an extensive breakdown of the supply-chain bottlenecks in rare earths, see U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries. Developing commercial-grade multi-stage chemical separation and metallization plants requires an estimated 10 to 15 years to match Chinese state-subsidized efficiencies.
[18] The Quad Vaccine Partnership, originally launched in 2021 to produce 1 billion biological doses at India’s Biological E facility with US financing and Japanese logistics, was quietly shelved due to regulatory barriers, intellectual property friction, and domestic American export controls.
[19] India’s oil import choices became a flashpoint following the expiration of prior US CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) waivers, forcing Indian state-run refiners to balance discounted Russian/Iranian blends against high-premium Western crudes.
[20] Macroeconomic modelling by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) indicates that every sustained $10 increase per barrel of Brent crude adds roughly 30-40 basis points to domestic inflation and drags heavily on overall fiscal GDP growth projections.
[21] The USS Charlotte (SSN-766) incident in March 2026 inside international waters of the Indian Ocean represents a critical operational flashpoint, raising serious maritime deconfliction and sovereignty concerns between the Indian Navy and AUKUS-deployed assets.
[22] The Fiji Port Infrastructure Development Initiative was designed to counter China’s regional footprint, such as the upgrade of the Lautoka and Suva port facilities under the Belt and Road framework.
[23] The rapid expansion of the “Squad” grouping (US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines) has led some defence analysts to argue that Washington is actively prioritizing Manila for hard maritime containment, while leaving the Quad for soft-power coordination.
[24] This strategy of altering the geopolitical and economic options available to regional states rather than directly confronting Beijing was a core tenet of the revised 2017 FOIP strategy documents.
[25] Referring to the rise of populist economic nationalism under the second Trump term and the hawkish political pivot under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo, whose administration prioritized revising Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
[26] Out of the grandly targeted 1.2 billion vaccine doses promised by the Quad Vaccine Experts Group, actual deliveries to Southeast Asian and Pacific countries sat below 15% by the conclusion of the program’s active phase.
[27] Financial allocations compiled from the official Joint Statements of the Quad Leaders’ Summits (Tokyo 2022, Hiroshima 2023, and New Delhi Ministerial updates).
[28] For critique on the lack of institutional permanence, see Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Strategic Analysis, The Institutional Constraints of the Quad, noting that without a permanent secretariat, the group operates purely on a rotating, voluntary basis.
[29] India’s engagement with the State Administration Council (SAC) junta in Naypyidaw represents a classic realpolitik imperative driven by the need to counter the Arakan Army and protect the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project.
[30] Allegations surrounding the April 2022 ouster of Imran Khan via a no-confidence motion have been heavily discussed in regional media, with critics pointing to documented diplomatic cables (“cypher”) indicating deep Western dissatisfaction with Islamabad’s neutral stance on major global conflicts.
[31] ASEAN’s official stance, codified in the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), strictly rejects any regional framework that forces member states into binary geopolitical choices or undermines ASEAN centrality.
