IT WAS SUPPOSED to be the big moment, with leaders of four important countries in the Indo-Pacific getting together for their first in-person meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in the US. So it took people by surprise that just a week before the summit, three Anglo-Saxon countries announced the formation of AUKUS (a trilateral of Australia, the UK and the US). Now, there are questions about whether the US is dumping the Quad for this new club.
The Quad is a club into which India was wooed ardently. Yet, it remained circumspect. It is largely because of India that the Quad remains a non-military club of regional democracies with a “shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific”. AUKUS, on the other hand, is an unabashed security pact; the announcement of its formation came with the news that the UK and the US would help Australia develop and deploy nuclear-powered submarines. The message of taking on China is unambiguous.
Since 1993, when India made its first bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council (UNSC), the country has embraced club culture in a big way. It joined a veritable alphabet soup of new groupings including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), G-20, BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and managed a toehold even in the Djibouti Code of Conduct. India is now part of over 70 such groupings.
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