The Quad's crucible

India and the US have had a chequered relationship over the decades primarily due to divergent security compulsions and, paradoxically, the maritime domain is one area where there has been the highest degree of endorsement and bilateral cooperation.

A brief recap of the trajectory of the bilateral is instructive. The world’s oldest democracy, the US, celebrated its 250th anniversary of independence in early July and the largest but a much younger democracy, India, marked its 75th in August 2021.

Paradoxically, while the US was very empathetic to the Indian freedom struggle and prevailed upon the United Kingdom to lift the colonial yoke in August 1947, the two democracies had an estranged relationship for the first six decades. The primary reason for this estrangement is described by Dennis Kux (author of the seminal volume Estranged Democracies: India and the United States 1941-1991 as “Washington and New Delhi fell out because they disagreed on national security issues of fundamental importance to each.”

The rapprochement began in the late 1990s after India declared itself a state with nuclear weapons (May 1998), and the Kargil war (May 1999), and a modus-vivendi was reached to square the nuclear nettle in late 2008. Deeply entrenched estrangement led to cautious engagement and due credit for this improved texture must go to then US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. 

Naval ties

It merits recall that the Indian Navy (IN) came of age in the 1971 war for Bangladesh with the audacious missile boat attacks on Karachi and the projection of sea-based air power from the INS Vikrant. Here the attempted intervention by a US Navy carrier task force left a bitter aftertaste.

However, during the Cold War, this tactical ingenuity did not immediately translate into professional recognition by the US strategic community in the public domain, which was heavily influenced by geopolitical alignments rather than purely military assessments.

The foundation for the current India-US naval cooperation goes back to earlier key milestones. The 1988 Operation Cactus, where India, with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at the helm, successfully thwarted a coup attempt in the Maldives and showcased the IN’s growing regional reach and operational capability. It is averred anecdotally that then US President Ronald Reagan, when informed about the Indian success, queried “is India the new sheriff in the Indian Ocean?”

The Cold War ended in 1991 with the IN being heralded as a modest but credible navy that had two aircraft carriers and a nuclear-powered submarine (on lease from the former Soviet Union) and a visible presence in the Indian Ocean.

The US was cognizant of India’s profile in the maritime domain, and a tentative military cooperation programme was initiated. The institutionalisation of the India-US Malabar naval exercises in 1992 began this engagement, laying the foundation for greater cooperation.

The major turning point, however, came in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, where India’s swift and efficient humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations burnished its reputation as a reliable and capable partner. The Quad was born (when the US, Japan and Australia joined the relief effort) but not christened as such. These milestones provided the practical operational foundation required to foster the deeper, more comprehensive strategic cooperation that eventually led to the envisioning of the Quad as a preliminary dialogue among the four nations. Since the formal inception of the Quad in 2007, when senior officials of the four nations met in Manila for the first time, it has waxed and waned with the priority accorded to this group by the US and the White House incumbent in particular.

While soft containment of China in the Indo-Pacific was the unstated aim for these four nations to group together, this was not a formal military alliance or a close-knit political block, but a relatively elastic maritime cluster of democracies committed to freedom of navigation as framed under the UN law of the seas (UNCLOS  1982). China, which was seen to be in blatant transgression of these norms in relation to the South China Sea, with its creeping maritime assertiveness, has been wary of the Quad since it was born and has issued demarches to individual nations, including India, to caution them against “ganging up” against China.

The tangible outcomes of the New Delhi meeting in May were modest and prudent. The signal conveyed was that the US, Japan, India and Australia remained committed to this Indo-Pacific maritime grouping, but it was not turning into a potent military cluster anytime soon.  The most significant takeaway is that despite the pre-meeting scepticism which seemed to suggest that the Quad was comatose and veering towards rigor mortis, there was no sign of a death-knell in the deliberations. 

The four ministers held a brief meeting, and the joint statement gave operational form to some of the earlier security- related initiatives, including maritime domain awareness, maritime surveillance cooperation and enhanced coastguard interaction.

Other flagged baskets included economic prosperity and security; critical and emerging technologies; and humanitarian assistance/disaster response. Yes, there was no announcement regarding the summit meeting of the four leaders, and this has been attributed to US President Donald Trump’s indifference to the potential of the Quad. This is in sharp contrast to the Joe Biden presidency when a summit was held in Delaware in the US in 2024, reflecting the priority accorded to this grouping.

Despite the Trump ambivalence about the Quad, it is instructive that the joint statement included the commitment to freedom of navigation with pointed references to China without naming it. An unstated reference to China in the operative paragraph noted: “We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. We reiterate our strong opposition to any destabilising or unilateral actions, including by force or coercion that threaten peace and stability in the region.” It further added: “We express our serious concerns regarding dangerous and coercive actions, 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, especially the unsafe use of water cannons and flares, and ramming or blocking actions in the South China Sea. We are seriously concerned by the militarisation of disputed features.” 

China’s response

China has viewed the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting warily, responding with its standard criticism of the grouping as potentially divisive.

China’s official reaction followed soon after the joint statement was released and was a standard formulation that remained concerned with  the Quad and its potential to undermine Chinese interests. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson observed: “Cooperation between countries should contribute to regional peace, stability, and prosperity, and should not target any third party. China opposes the formation of exclusive cliques or bloc confrontation. No cooperation should undermine mutual trust and cooperation among regional countries.”

It is evident that this was in direct response to the Quad’s new initiatives, particularly the IPMSC (Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration) and other collective maritime/security measures and the concerns expressed over the East and South China Seas.

The IPMSC builds on but differs from earlier efforts like the 2022 IPMDA (Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness) and the key features include Quad-internal coordination and real-time information sharing by leveraging each member’s existing maritime surveillance capabilities (satellite, aerial, surface) for near real-time Common Operating Picture of vessel activity. This includes sharing data on vessel movements, illegal/unreported/unregulated fishing, suspicious behaviour, and other threats via dedicated platforms, liaison officers, expert exchanges, and tabletop exercises.

A distinctive feature is that this maritime surveillance collaboration initiative was proposed by India and it prioritises the IOR (Indian Ocean Region), where India is a major stakeholder even while the Quad covers the broader Indo-Pacific region.

The Quad gained traction in the US strategic calculus during Trump 1.0 (2017-21) when the earlier Obama policy of prioritising engagement with China was reordered with a focus on security and strategic compulsions. 

The 2018 US NDS (National Defense Strategy) document noted   that “long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities” for the Department of Defense.

It highlighted China’s pursuit of Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near term and global preeminence in the longer term through military modernisation, influence operations and predatory economics as the new priorities. For the US, interstate strategic competition became the primary concern and in 2020, then US secretary of defence Mark Esper explicitly called China the “pacing threat” and directed the military to treat the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) as such in training, education, and planning. The Pentagon was re-oriented towards high-end competition with China.

India has been cautious in emphasising that the Quad is not directed against China and that the collective effort is towards 

upholding fundamental principles related to maritime governance and human security. 

For China, this allusion to a rules-based order and freedom of navigation has a subtext that is irksome. China has long chafed at what it perceives to be the US interest couched in normative terms and cast as the furtherance of the global “good” that is being imposed on the rest of the world.

The US has now acted in a unilateral manner in the Hormuz to further its own security interests and the transgression of humanitarian law and convention (the 1994 San Remo Manual) is at variance with the principles underpinning the Quad.

Whether the Quad will meet at summit level during the Trump presidency is moot and, in an unexpected development, the US decided in June to rename the US Indo-Pacific Command  to its original US Pacific Command, thereby suggesting a dilution of the salience of the Indian Ocean in the US maritime lexicon. 

However, a change in nomenclature does not detract from the imperative of upholding the sanctity of law at sea. The degree to which major powers are non-compliant is a core issue that must be addressed in an objective and consensual manner. 

Despite the turbulence in bilateral relations with the US, India ought to remain invested in the Quad and seek to resolve such contentious matters from within the tent as a committed stakeholder.