Quad: The New Toolkit

For India this could be another Y2K moment – which put it on the path of being a tech power

- Indrani Bagchi

“The four leaders did discuss the challenge posed by China, and they made clear that none of them have any illusions about China.

But today was not fundamentally about China.” Jake Sullivan’s succinct remarks after the first-ever Quad summit on Friday showed clearly what the Quad is and what it could become.

There’s no doubt a resurgent, aggressive and hegemonistic China is the wind beneath the Quad’s wings. From deadly clashes in eastern Ladakh to rampaging through the South and East China Seas; coercive trade practices, tech theft, and cyberattacks; threatening Taiwan and annexing Hong Kong’s politics; unleashing a fishing militia and a trigger-happy coastguard; banning pineapples and wine imports; and that coronavirus from Wuhan felling the rest of the world ... we’re confronting a global power like no other.

The Quad’s the thin end of the wedge in what promises to become an expanding “toolkit” of a massive counterbalancing exercise. The “coming of age” party for the Quad now makes it a “force for global good” and a “pillar of stability” as PM Modi put it pithily. A joint oped by the four leaders declared, in what you could call a socially distanced ‘high-five’: “The Quad is a flexible group of like-minded partners dedicated to advancing a common vision and to ensuring peace and prosperity.”