Accidental honesty: The Quad IS all about deterring an aggressive China

It’s great that US President Biden started the Quad Leaders meetings and that there have been four since the first in March 2021.

But this meeting has not produced much in substance. It looks more like a farewell meeting for Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said before the meeting that: “The purpose of the Quad is not to come together around China or any other country. It’s to come together around how to construct a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

That sounds high minded, although the problem with this formulation is that China’s aggressive power is the major threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific where countries can make their own decisions without coercion and where their territory and sovereignty is not threatened.

So, for the Quad to succeed, it must help deter China from aggression – and that means getting practical and helping nations like the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan prevent China’s military and heavily armed Coastguard from controlling and seizing their sovereign territory in the South China Sea.

There can’t be a free and open Indo-Pacific while China is acting this way, getting success and territorial expansion from it, cowing and silencing nations in the region, and showing no sign of slowing any of this down.

The Quad is useful and it’s good that Quad Leader meetings are now a part of the furniture. But we shouldn’t pretend that vaccine production, maritime domain awareness, scholarships and Coastguard sea riders on each other’s ships are really going to do enough to keep the Indo-Pacific “free and open” while Xi Jinping’s China and its military continues on their current path of aggression in the region.

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That’s particularly so when even the Quad nations’ sea riding and coastguard cooperation is happening everywhere but where and when China is engaged in ramming and browbeating its Asian neighbours.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow recently to meet with Vladimir Putin – a leader who faces charges at the International Court of Justice and who’s war of conquest against Ukraine has united much of the democratic world, other than India, against Russia. Modi and Putin pledged closer military cooperation including co-development of weapons during his visit.

Modi has given no indication he is doing anything other than maintaining and deepening India’s dependence on Russian weapons and military equipment. He’s also ensured that India is now the largest buyer of Russian oil, knowing full well that revenue from oil sales is powering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine.

Even when combined with the nastier, obviously undemocratic and repressive elements of Modi’s Hindu nationalist program domestically, India’s partnership with Russia isn’t a strong enough wedge to drive the Quad partners apart.

The Quad’s resilience, given these strains, shows one obvious big thing – Beijing’s growing militarisation and aggression in the Indo-Pacific under Xi Jinping is a force that keeps pushing India, the US, Japan and Australia together despite limitations and differences between the partners.

That makes it even odder that the four Quad leaders can’t bring themselves to tell their populations that the reason they keep meeting and cooperating is to deal with the China challenge, even if what they are doing are things that deliver positive public and social benefits to the wider region like public health initiatives and infrastructure financing, for example.

Not being able to name the problem makes it harder to do much on the security front, particularly anything that might actually change Chinese actions in places that matter, like around the Philippines’ rusting outpost on Second Thomas Shoal.

Thank goodness for Joe Biden’s “hot mic” moment when he accidentally told the truth about why he, Narendra Modi, Fumio Kishida and Anthony Albanese were together, saying: “We believe [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimise the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interest”.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits.”

It seems clear the Quad will be embraced by whoever replaces Japanese Prime Minister Kishida in late September, and if Kamala Harris is the US President in January 2025, she too can be expected to maintain the Quad leaders forum in its current incarnation.

That’s a positive for continuity and predictability, but it still risks the Quad construct being light on real world outcomes and mistaking meetings as outcomes in themselves.

Were Donald Trump to become the US President, the Quad might be one of the things he would shake up. Trump likes meeting counterpart leaders, particularly powerful ones like the leaders of Japan and India, so he might enjoy the idea of a get-together.

But he’s a deeply transactional individual and he has not just a distaste but a contempt for fluffy, vague multilateralism and gatherings (remember him in gatherings with European leaders during his first term). If he sees the readouts from this latest Quad meeting, he might do one of two things: kick it out of his schedule or insist on the Quad leaders putting their money where their mouth is and getting practical.

Who knows, Trump might even suggest they describe the China challenge they are working on. He might want to see some connection between what the Quad is doing and what might actually trouble Xi Jinping in his efforts to push America out of Asia and make greater territorial gains in places like the South China Sea and Taiwan at others’ expense.

Michael Shoebridge is director of Strategic Analysis Australia.