The C’s Of The QUAD

Context: QUAD is an important pivot in reconfiguring the Asian order, but it needs to focus on its three C’s, i.e., Critical Temperature, Covid and Climate Change.

Challenges before QUAD grouping

• Ideological question: QUAD has staked its claim on shared values, but it has to acknowledge the deep crisis of democracy including plutocracy, ethnic division and dysfunction.
  • The US: It nominally acknowledged that its own democracy is not out of the woods.
  • India: Struggling democracy, being accused as pseudo-democracy, electoral autocracy etc.
  • Australia: Virtual abandonment of its stranded citizens during Covid hardly burnished its credentials for a democratic humanitarianism.
• Quad not yet a security alliance. It needs to assure security to member countries where it really matters.
  • Australia may be the biggest beneficiary of the Quad. Japan has always been under the umbrella.
  • India’s biggest challenges are going to be its neighbourhood: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and China.
• Chinese dominance in critical technologies and trade: The member nations need more engagement with global trading to reduce dependence on China.
  • It also aimed to create an alternative to One Belt One Road by providing investment and loans.
• Pandemic related challenges: The advanced countries hoarding vaccines and being tepid about ramping up production in global shortages, often signalling, “we come first, the rest of the world be damned,” left a bad taste.
  • Lost opportunity: Perhaps the Quad will learn from its mistakes, but it has lost an opportunity to burnish its humanitarian credentials.
• Side-lining climate change agenda: As Europe, the dominant player is out of ambit of the group.
  • Contradictions: Arguably, the US and India will have sharper contradictions in this area, given the past record of broken commitments and lack of commitment to financing.
  • Marginal gains: The incremental gains from the Quad on the climate change issue will be marginal.
• Effectiveness concern: The Quad is an important political signal, whose effectiveness can be derailed by its material tepidity and institutional contradictions.

Conclusion: The Quad is consolidating at a moment when its grade on the three “Cs”, Climate, Covid and Critical Technologies is, from the point of view of the rest of the world, already a “C”.