Prime Minister on March 3, 2022 participated today at a virtual summit of Quad leaders, along with US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Outcome
- The meeting reviewed the progress on Quad initiatives since the September 2021 Quad Summit.
- The leaders agreed on accelerating cooperation, with an objective to achieve concrete outcomes by the summit in Japan later this year.
- Prime Minister underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. He called for concrete and practical forms of cooperation within the Quad, in areas like Humanitarian and Disaster Relief, debt sustainability, supply chains, clean energy, connectivity, and capacity-building.
What is QUAD?
- Known as the ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ (QSD), the Quad is an informal strategic forum comprising four countries, namely — USA, India, Australia and Japan.
- It is an alliance of maritime democracies, and the forum is maintained by meetings, semi-regular summits, information exchanges and military drills of all the four member countries.
- It met for the first time in 2007 on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- Then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the first to propose the idea for the formation of Quad in 2007.
- However, its origins can be traced back to the beginning of the Exercise Malabar and the 2004 Tsunami when India conducted relief and rescue operations for itself and effected countries and was later joined by the US, Japan and Australia.
Principals of QUAD
- One of the primary objectives of the Quad is to work for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region.
- The forum aims to keep the strategic maritime routes in the Indo-Pacific free of any military or political influence.
- Indirectly, it is seen as a strategic grouping to reduce assertive Chinese domination in the Indo-Pacific region.
- However the core explicit motive of the Quad is to secure a rules-based global order, freedom of navigation and a liberal trading system.
- The forum also aims to offer alternative debt financing for nations in the Indo-Pacific region.
- The forum leaders exchange views on contemporary global issues such as critical and emerging technologies, connectivity and infrastructure, cyber security, vaccination, maritime security, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, climate change, pandemic and education.
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