Policy Alert #237 | September 29, 2021
On September 24, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia at the White House for the first-ever in-person Leaders’ Summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. In a joint statement, without naming China, the four leaders renewed their commitment to a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific that is “undaunted by coercion.” The leaders expressed their resolve to “champion adherence to international law, particularly as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to meet challenges…in the East and South China Seas.” It is hard to miss the veiled references to China’s rising influence peppered throughout the joint statement from Quad leaders.
September has seen a number of major summits, including BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), capped off by the Quad, as well as the UN General Assembly. Moreover, the Quad meeting came just over a week after the announcement of AUKUS, a new three-way security pact among the U.S., U.K., and Australia centered on a deal to share highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Canberra. In Beijing, the angry reaction was swift and predictable; however, the agreement also created turbulence in U.S.-France relations, even as France is the only European country with territories and a military presence in the Indo-Pacific.
The Quad leaders have put forth ambitious initiatives that advance practical cooperation on 21st-century challenges: ending the COVID-19 pandemic, including by increasing production and access to safe and effective vaccines; promoting high-standards infrastructure; combatting the climate crisis; partnering on emerging technologies, space, and cybersecurity; and cultivating next-generation talent in the four countries. As Biden declared in his Quad remarks, “we are four major democracies with a long history of cooperation… we know how to get things done, and we are up to the challenge.” Although the Quad, unlike AUKUS, is not a military pact, establishing a unified front amid shared concerns about China is clearly topmost.
In this Policy Alert, we examine the Rising Powers’ response to the Quad Summit amid the announcement of AUKUS the previous week.
