EAM S Jaishankar lauds former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe for envisioning QUAD

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday lauded former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe for envisioning the QUAD, and said it was the "only way" the countries concerned could have reacted to the present global situation.

Jaishankar said Abe tried to engage with India with a certain purpose.

"Abe was actually a person who foresaw a world beyond alliances...Japan is a country whose security and prosperity is secured by its alliance institutions. So that is the bedrock on which Japanese policies are based. The genius of Abe was to understand that, and yet to know...look for options, explore possibilities, he said.

He was speaking at the launch of the book, "The Importance of Shinzo Abe, India, Japan and the Indo-Pacific", edited by Sanjaya Baru, who served as the media advisor to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh between 2004 and 2008.

Jaishankar credited Abe for the creation of QUAD, a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

"So, in a sense, when I speak about a world beyond alliances, it is not a world rejecting alliances or a world without alliances. It is a world where alliances coexist with other relationships. It's a much more multipolar world, he said.

And therein lay the importance of his proposal to create the QUAD.

Jaishankar said Abe looked beyond the perception of separate Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific regions, and pushed the idea of Indo-Pacific.

"The QUAD, to my mind, was the only way that the countries concerned could have responded to the contemporary international situation," he said.

Speaking at the event, Japanese Ambassador to India Hiroshi Suzuki said Abe talked about greater Asia, which in later years, finally crystallized as Indo-Pacific.

He said Abe had a "wonderful friendship" with former prime minister Manmohan Singh but he "enjoyed a special friendship with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi".

Abe served as the prime minister of Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, serving for almost nine years in total.

On 8 July 2022, Abe was assassinated while delivering a campaign speech in Japan.