US Secretary of State Antony Blinken heading to Melbourne for meeting of Quad Foreign Ministers
US Secretary of State and foreign ministers of India, Japan to visit Australia for a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Australia in mid-February for a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue foreign ministers, with China’s threat to stability in the Indo-Pacific a major focus of the talks.
The foreign ministers of India and Japan will join their US and Australian counterparts in Melbourne for the two-day summit, which will also discuss the crisis in Ukraine, and threats to national and regional security.
Maritime security, territorial integrity and cyber threats will also be discussed, as well as issues raised by working groups.
These working groups have focused on vaccine distribution, countering disinformation (mainly from China and Russia), cyber and critical technology, infrastructure and space.
The highest level visit yet to Australia by a member of the Biden administration underlines the importance the US places on the Australian relationship and sends a clear message that even with the Ukraine crisis, concern over China and the maintenance of stability in the Indo-Pacific remains one of the most important challenges Washington faces.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne, who will host the Melbourne meeting, said t
he talks were a strategic coup for Australia. “I look forward to welcoming Quad foreign minister counterparts to Australia,” she said.
“We are a vital network of liberal democracies co-operating to give our region strategic choices, with a focus on practical steps to build the resilience and sovereignty of all states.
“This is a further demonstration of the Morrison government’s efforts to actively shape and influence our region and world by deepening partnerships at a time of strategic competition, threats to liberal international order and increasing uncertainty.”
India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, is scheduled to attend, as is Japan’s Foreign Minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi. Given all the difficulties Covid places on international travel and the many issues running hot in the international system, the summit is a sign of the importance that all four nations place on the Quad and on the strategic challenge of China. The ministers will also have separate meetings with Scott Morrison.
As The Australian revealed last year, the Quad has also established a formal intelligence dialogue at the top of each nation’s intelligence establishment, called the Quadrilateral Strategic Intelligence Forum.
The timing of the meeting is complicated by Mr Jaishankar testing positive for Covid some days ago.
It is hoped he will have recovered in time and be able to record a negative Covid test result, which would enable him to travel to Australia for the meeting.
Senator Payne has developed a close working personal relationship with Mr Jaishankar, which was crucial in getting the Quad re-established as a formal group in 2019.
Senator Payne and Mr Blinken will talk to their counterparts about the evolving AUKUS agreement involving the US, Australia and Britain and the ambition for this group to see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Japan and India have been supportive of AUKUS. Both want technology co-operation to be at the beating heart of the Quad.
Tokyo has been especially supportive of AUKUS and helped Canberra neutralise early suspicion of the new body among Southeast Asian nations. This suspicion was exaggerated by intense Chinese and Russian disinformation campaigns against AUKUS.
“Quad partners champion ASEAN centrality and the ASEAN-led architecture in the Indo-Pacific,” Senator Payne said.
The Quad foreign ministers will discuss Russia and Ukraine but their central strategic focus remains China. One of the innovations that makes the Quad such an important institution is that it exists not just for dialogue but for action.
It is not a formal military alliance but it does not, like many strategic dialogues, merely consider and complain about Beijing’s actions. It takes action to build resilience, give substance to strategic solidarity and provide the region with non-Chinese alternatives and choices.
Thus the Quad project to manufacture and distribute Covid vaccines is proceeding, including efforts to offer assistance to the poorest nations in storing and administering the vaccines.
Similarly, Quad nations work together to mobilise infrastructure alternatives to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Co-operation on cyber security, and critical infrastructure security, has been central. When Australia first banned Chinese telco providers from participating in its 5G network, it was unclear whether other nations, apart from the US, would take similar action. It was thought Beijing’s dominance in this technology might be too great for many countries to resist.
Several Western nations have taken similar action to Australia but the decisions of New Delhi and Tokyo to do so were critical. Both nations are extremely strong in this technology, but even more important, both are giant economies so they provide the scale of market for non-Chinese suppliers to be commercially sustainable long-term.
The Quad foreign ministers’ meeting represents a huge diplomatic win for the Morrison government. Despite Beijing’s intense campaign of intimidation against Australia, and efforts by Beijing to isolate Canberra diplomatically, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and Britain’s foreign and defence secretaries, Liz Truss and Ben Wallace, have recently visited Australia.
The Morrison government has also concluded the historic Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan, which enables mutual military co-operation, and secured the elevation of the India relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, with prospects for the difficult free-trade deal to be concluded shortly.
The Quad had a chequered history. It began in 2004 with the rapid, effective response of the four nations to the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. The grouping was fiercely opposed by China, even though Beijing itself has pioneered numerous regional strategic groupings. Those forces in Australia most sympathetic to China were most hostile to the Quad. The Rudd government early in its life declared its opposition to the Quad and the group lapsed.
Its revival in 2019 was a top-down effort led by cabinet-level politicians rather than national bureaucracies. Japan had always been the originator and most creative thinker behind the Quad but it was the personal commitment of Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that got things going.
The Morrison government’s effective relationship with the Trump administration was important, as were the personal dynamics between Senator Payne and Mr Jaishankar.
The Quad passed a critical test when the Biden government came out as even more committed to it than the Trump administration had been. Now Mr Blinken has picked up the Pompeo banner and made the Quad a high priority in Washington’s Indo-Pacific policy.
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