The Quad Returns - But What's Changed?

The Quad Returns - But What's Changed?

- Veerle Nouwens

The end of 2017 saw the reinvigoration of the ‘Quad’, an informal alliance between Australia, Japan, the United States and India that was first conceptualised by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2006-2007. As maritime democracies, the four nations gathered under the title of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in an effort to continue to shape the regional order in the face of a rising China. The original Quad fell apart in 2008 with the election of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who decided that a formalised Quad too provocative at time when he had interest in a closer engagement with China. The question is now whether and what a new Quad will achieve in tangible terms this time around?

Its return marks a renewed concern over a rising and increasingly assertive China whose growing maritime power and increased assertiveness in the South and East China Seas– from island building to stand-offs over maritime territory – have led to speculation over whether it has a ‘grand strategy’ for regional dominance.