Quad: The strategic reality check

For India, it is about maintaining a balance and staying relevant while also calibrating on how far it can go while maintaining a good relationship with China

11 min read

Updated On: Jul 10 2026 | 1:45 PM IST

Mohammad Asif Khan

(From left) Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi in May 2026. Phot

The decision by the United States (US) to remove the word “Indo” from its Indo-Pacific Command and revert to Pacific Command may have some strategic signals that would shape the US approach towards China and, therefore, the future of the Quad — a coalition of India, the US, Japan, and Australia, that now faces uncertainty.

Quad is meant to promote cooperation and security in the Indo-Pacific region, and the US move came even as Quad foreign ministers met last month to discuss how to revive the group’s momentum. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the group was “transforming” from a place where people just met and discussed issues to one where they actually took action to solve them. Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar proclaimed that the Indo-Pacific region’s growing importance would increase the Quad’s responsibilities.

One of the key initiatives declared at the foreign minister’s meeting was the announcement of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration (IPMSC), which signals a deliberate shift of the grouping’s operational focus towards the Indian Ocean. Proposed by India, this initiative aims to integrate surveillance capabilities across Quad members and generate a near-real-time maritime picture using satellite tracking and shared data.

“The outcomes of the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting are significant, particularly the launch of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration. This reflects a shift towards more practical and operational cooperation, rather than just declaratory statements. It shows the Quad is trying to build real capabilities on the ground,” said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.

“We are seeing a return to the Quad’s core security relevance, even as cooperation continues in areas like technology and supply chains. The key difference now is a focus on implementation, on doing things, not just talking about them. That functional approach is what will sustain the Quad’s credibility,” she added.

Indo-Pacific push: Modi's 3-nation visit strengthened geostrategic doctrine

Quad's evolution

The IPMSC builds on a previous framework — the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) — which was launched in Tokyo in May-April 2022 during a Quad leaders’ summit. Through the IPMDA, Quad countries have been providing friendly regional countries with technology and training to support shared maritime domain awareness and develop a common operating picture of the Indo-Pacific waters.

At a special press briefing by India’s Ministry of External Affairs in May, Additional Secretary Nagaraj Naidu explained the relationship between the two initiatives: “The additional layer that we have added through the IPMSC is to bring in more technology to bear. So IPMDA will top up with IPMSC, and this will enable us to provide real-time data to partners and give them an enhanced picture of the kind of vessels that are operating in the waters.”

The IPMSC will initially focus on the Indian Ocean region and operate through expert exchanges and tabletop exercises. Its launch reflects a significant step towards integrating surveillance capabilities across all four Quad members, moving beyond the existing IPMDA framework to enable deeper coordination and information sharing among Quad partners.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong explained that the initiative seeks to “involve India more, particularly in the Indian Ocean” in maritime surveillance cooperation, highlighting how such cooperation was already underway among Quad members. India has already operationalised the Indian Ocean region programme of the IPMDA through its Information Fusion Centre in Gurugram making India the operational hub of this effort. The meeting also launched a Critical Minerals Initiative Framework, committed to mobilising up to $20 billion in government and private sector financing for mining, processing and recycling projects. This is in response to China’s suspension of critical mineral exports in November-October 2025, an event that exposed the vulnerability of concentrated supply chains and demonstrated the economic leverage China can wield.

“Single-source dependency, particularly on China, has become a major vulnerability, as we saw during Covid 19. The Quad’s critical minerals initiative is therefore an important step towards reducing that dependence. It signals a more coordinated and strategic economic response among the four countries.” Rajagopalan said. Other initiatives included the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Initiative, and a port infrastructure pilot in Fiji, which marks the Quad’s first-ever joint physical infrastructure project.

Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, 2026: Key takeaways

The formation

The Quad was originally a response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when India, the US, Japan, and Australia formed a consortium of sorts to provide humanitarian relief to the victims.

The idea of a more structured alliance came in 2007 when the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed forming a union of friendly democracies to balance against China in the Indo-Pacific. This was followed by the holding of the first Quad meeting in May 2007, on the sidelines of an Asean Regional Forum gathering in Manila, the Philippines.

However, Abe stepped down from office in September 2007 and Australia, under then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, was more concerned about developing economic ties with China than participating in the Quad. In fact, Rudd announced that Australia would boycott the next scheduled Quad meeting to be held in February 2008. Rudd, who devoted nearly two pages of his memoir to explaining his decision, denied he was appeasing China, instead pointing to deeper strategic concerns. He questioned why Australia would “consign the future of its bilateral relationship with China to the future health of the China-Japan relationship, where there were centuries of mutual toxicity”.

India, which was apprehensive of offending China, was very guarded. The US, too, which was mired in recession, was interested in an economic partnership with China.

A Philippine boat near a Chinese Coast Guard ship in the South China Sea in 2023. Photo: Reuters

The Quad went into deep freeze in 2008, where it stayed for nearly a decade. The grouping was revived in 2017 under the first Trump administration that had embraced the Indo-Pacific construct. This came at a time when the West was extremely apprehensive of China’s actions in the South China Sea and the wider Indo-Pacific. China’s declaration of an air defence identification zone in the East China Sea in 2013 and the 2017 Doklam standoff with India all fuelled anxieties. But then came the Covid-19 lockdown. The grouping began to focus heavily on vaccines, health initiatives, and technology cooperation. While important, this dilution of the security agenda created confusion about the Quad’s core purpose.

As Rajagopalan observed, “Initially, when the Quad came up, it was called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Then we tried to dilute it a bit, especially during the Covid period, with a heavy focus on technology, critical technologies, vaccines, and health initiatives. All of those are important, I’m not denying that.”

Yet, despite the push for the revival of the Quad, the US announcement dropping the ‘Indo’ from Indo-Pacific comes as a possible setback for the grouping. Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal described it as “another blow” to the relationship, pointing out that it came just before Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France. Last month Congress member of Parliment Shashi Tharoor described it as “one more nail in the coffin of the Quad”.

“This shift from the ‘Indo-Pacific’ to a more narrowly defined ‘Pacific’ framing is deeply symbolic of how the current US administration views the region and India’s place in it. It signals a move away from the broader, integrated theatre concept. In many ways, it confirms a strategic downgrading of the Indian Ocean in US thinking,” Ken Moriyatsu, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a US-based think-tank, said.

“The Quad is likely to face a tougher phase because the idea of it being bound by shared democratic values is no longer central to Washington’s approach. That earlier glue is weakening. Without that, the grouping risks losing coherence unless it finds a more hard-edged strategic purpose.”

So, where does this leave the Quad? Politically, the grouping has survived. The foreign ministers’ meeting was substantive. Strategically, however, the Quad remains a work in progress. It is not an alliance. It has no mutual defence commitment. Its members have different threat perceptions and different domestic pressures. Its biggest vulnerability is its dependence on American consistency.

“The Quad today lacks a clear, consistent agenda; it tends to oscillate between issues like space, health, supply chains, and technology. That lack of focus weakens its effectiveness. Unless it anchors itself firmly in security cooperation, it will struggle to remain relevant,” Moriyatsu said.

The member states also have different threat perceptions vis-à-vis China. Japan and Australia are already moving towards a quasi-alliance, with Australia’s purchase of Japanese frigates signaling a deepening defence relationship. But India is not ready to follow suit, constrained by its shared border with China.

“India faces a unique dilemma. It shares a border with China and must manage that relationship carefully.

Its approach will therefore remain measured and pragmatic,” Rajagopalan noted.

What China thinks

China has watched the Quad’s actions over the years, and it has been deeply apprehensive over its founding and actions. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi once described the Quad as “ocean foam that will dissipate”, but even behind that dismissive rhetoric, there is scepticism and a counter-strategy.

Within hours of the foreign minister’s meeting in New Delhi on May 26, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning warned against “bloc confrontation”, stating that “cooperation between countries should be conducive to regional peace, stability and prosperity and should not target any third party”. She added that China “opposes forming exclusive groupings or engaging in bloc confrontation”.

Chinese experts and state media have long framed the Quad’s initiatives, particularly the critical minerals framework and maritime surveillance, as attempts to “securitise economic matters and turn development issues into bloc-based competition with clear strategic aims”.

The Quad’s joint statements in the past condemned “dangerous and coercive actions” in the South China Sea, including “interference with offshore resource development, the repeated obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight, and the dangerous manoeuvres by military aircraft and coast guard and maritime militia vessels”.

The statements have also expressed “serious concern” about the militarisation of disputed features and “dangerous manoeuvres” involving unsafe use of water cannons and flares. There is the perception that the Quad is fundamentally a grouping aimed at countering Chinese action.

Commentaries in strategic circles describe it as “a strategic and economic counterweight to China’s growing regional dominance, specifically aiming to preserve a rules-based, free, and open Indo-Pacific”. Analysts argue that for the Quad to stay relevant, its agenda needs to broaden. “If the Quad wants to remain relevant in the White House, it has to incorporate a strong commercial and trade dimension. That is the language this administration responds to. Security alone is unlikely to sustain political attention in the US system right now.” Moriyatsu said.

“One concrete way to deepen Quad ties would be through defence industrial integration — for instance, India acquiring Japanese-designed frigates. That would create interoperability with both Japan and the US. It would also open the door to shared logistics, ports, and maintenance networks,” he added.

“It is not enough to talk about a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific'; we need to think about how to deal with challenges in practice. The Quad’s functional initiatives signal that kind of shift. That is what will ultimately give it credibility,” Rajagopalan said.

However, despite its criticisms, there is no denying that the Quad, as a grouping, is trying to get its act

together and will likely remain relevant in the future amid China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific region. The security threats that animate it are growing. China’s military modernisation and its economic coercion have not abated.

“Given the current security environment, I think the Quad will become more security-focused, particularly in the maritime

domain. There will still be cooperation in technology and other areas, but security will dominate,” Rajagopalan said.

For India, it is about maintaining a balance and staying relevant while also calibrating on how far it can go while maintaining a good relationship with China. “India remains cautious because of its geographic reality; it cannot ignore China as a neighbour. That creates a natural limit to how far it is willing to integrate with US-led security frameworks. Strategic flexibility remains central to India’s approach,” Moriyatsu observed.

For now, the waters are calm, but only just.

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