(2/3) Is an Asian NATO possible? : the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the challenges of strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific area

The previous article dealt with how the Quad was formed and on which principles. However, what methods shall be used to achieve its objectives is the subject of significant debates between member countries who want to make it a real military and strategic alliance in the face of the rise of China and those who wish to maintain it in its current form and limit the risks of confrontation as much as possible. These are the trends the present article will analyse by considering the point of view of the various actors involved in this debate.

First, let's look at the stance of the United States, the Quad's main military power and unique in that it is relatively distant geographically from the other members. According to the White House memo [1] mentioned in the previous article, the US has so far cautiously avoided mentioning the Quad in its plan to strengthen the security of the Indo-Pacific area. Indeed, it is only mentioned in the "building connections within and beyond the region" section of the report, which focuses on the Quad’s role in combating epidemiological risks, helping to develop infrastructure and promoting education through the new Quad Fellowship programme[2]. In comparison, the "Bolstering Indo-pacific security" section solely touched on the bilateral alliances forged by the United States with other States in the region and on the new trilateral alliance AUKUS announced on 15 September 2021 between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. However, the fact that this report opens with a quote from Joe Biden at the Quad summit, held only a few days after the AUKUS announcement, reflects the special place it occupies in the US vision of the indopacific. In fact, a survey conducted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank based in Washington DC, among representatives of the national elites of the Quad member countries and published in March 2020 shows that the United States is ready to support an institutionalization of the Quad and would not be opposed to a real military cooperation policy. Indeed, to the question "to what extent would you support the creation of a permanent Quad secretariat, with a presidency that rotates every three years among the members?" American respondents answered overwhelmingly positively. Responses were more mixed when asked about the creation of a standing armed force made up of the armies of Quad members, but the crisis in Ukraine is likely to tip the balance in favour of this proposal in the United States. This is even more likely as the struggle for influence between China and the United States in the region has long been theorised by US elites and keeps gaining credence among its "democratic bloc" allies. To quote Richard Hass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the magazine Foreign Affairs in 2021: "the rise of authoritarian states challenges the power and leadership of the US". This goes to show that, as the competition between the PRC and the US is intensifying, American elites are more and more outspoken about pushing for a strong containement policy towards China. A competition that also prompts other indopacific states to enter the fray, as Yan Xuetong, researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, pointed out in the Chinese Journal of International Politics in 2020, asserting that "the Sino-American competition creates pressure on the other regional powers [forcing them] to take sides either with the United States or with China". However, this aspiration to create a real democratic bloc in the Asia-Pacific must be qualified: Indeed, although China has been critical of a potential "Asian NATO"... in the run-up to the NATO forum in Madrid in June 2022, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, dismissed these accusations with a rhetorical question insisting that such a project was never on the agenda. Yet while the United States still has many bilateral and trilateral alliances in the region, the need for a full-fledged military alliance may potentially arise in the near future.

Now regarding Japan : As the country that initiated the Quad, it attaches particular importance to it and, according to the survey mentioned above, is also in favour of institutionalising it. However, it has never mentioned making it a military alliance, and while its position on this subject is certainly less clear-cut than in the case of India, the Japanese elites seemed to rule out such a development at the time of the survey. However, there is an important commonality between the Japanese position and the US position, which is the idea of establishing a united front against China. Indeed, at the Quad summit in Tokyo in May 2022, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa supported the increasingly assertive US position on Taiwan. This earned him a warning from his Chinese counterpart, followed by a Sino-Russian show of force with the deployment of 6 strategic bombers that flew over Japanese territory. These worries about an increasingly troublesome Chinese neighbour also punctuated Joe Biden's visit to Tokyo in May this year, as highlighted by Jean Yves Colin, member of the board of directors of the French think tank Asia Center and expert on North Asia. Apart from Taiwan, Jean Yves Colin put the emphasis on more pressing issues for Japan notably its "territorial security concerns" over the Senkaku Islands and the Yonaguni Island. Thus, in this very tense context, Japan intends for the Quad to play a major role in ensuring States sovereignty on their territory, both on land and at sea. Fact is, at the May 2022 Quad Summit, the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida did not hesitate to, in the words of Jean Yves Colin, "draw a parallel between the situation in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific"[3]. This position thus seems consistent with the concept of the "democratic security diamond" enunciated by Shinzo Abe in 2006 and reflects the vision of a strong group capable of imposing these values in the Indo-Pacific space. Yet it remains vague regarding the nature of the means to be used to achieve this objective. In fact, most of the military cooperation campaign undertaken by Japan is carried out in the framework of its alliance with the United States, and vice versa. For example, the National Security Strategy report published by the US Department of Defense in 2013 explicitly states that "the US-Japan Security Treaty is the cornerstone of Japan's security". A strategic partnership that the two states have sought to develop with, for example, the Legislation for Peace and Security in 2015. It should also be noted that Japan does not only see its own security through this alliance but also that of its interests in the entire Indo-Pacific area. Shinzo Abe has indeed called the EU-Japan Security Treaty an "indestructible and immovable pillar" that helps "preserve peace in Asia, the Indo- Pacific and the world"[4]. However, Japan is also seeking to diversify its partnerships in Asia,

including India, as demonstrated by its participation in the Malabar exercises in 2017. Therefore, forging a broader, multilateral alliance could help it in the pursuit of this goal.

Australia, on the other hand, has always been very critical of a militarised Quad, and particularly of a Quad that would overtly oppose China. This is largely due to its strong economic ties with the latter. Indeed, in 2020, China was the country's main trading partner, far ahead of Japan and the United States, which greatly undermines its independence when it comes to thinking about the Quad. Australia also played a significant role in the failure of the Quad in the early 2000s by withdrawing from it in 2008 under the Kevin Rudd government. Nevertheless, of all the members of the Quad, the Australian position towards the Quad is probably the one that has evolved the most, even after its return in 2017: As the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), a Japanese think tank, points out, Australia, which has always thought of Oceania as the main area for the exercise of its military and economic power, has had to face increasing competition from China in this same area and has engaged in a struggle for influence with the PRC. Fact is that the Covid 19 crisis, and more particularly the aid provided to the Pacific islands by these two countries, has fueled tensions between the two States. On the one hand, Australia has increased initiatives in cooperation with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Food Program (WFP), adopting a decidedly multilateral model, while, China, on the other hand, has signed many bilateral aid agreements with countries that serve its interests. This major difference in approach has prompted the Australian government to take a much more hostile stance towards China than under Kevin Rudd. In April 2020, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne angered the PRC by demanding greater transparency about the origin of the SARS COV-2 virus and calling for an international enquiry into the issue on Chinese territory. The PRC retaliated by imposing higher taxes on barley imported from Australia and warned Chinese students, the largest international student population in Australia with almost 28% of the international student body, that they could face discrimination while studying in Australia.

All of this took place in a tense political atmosphere within the Australian government itself with the revelation of corruption cases involving several politicians under the Rudd administration and the Chinese Communist Party in 2018. This led to the implementation of a law against foreign interference that same year and has pushed Australia to think about its evolution without China (if not against it for some government officials). It has also joined the Malabar 2020 exercises and strengthened its economic cooperation with the other members of the Quad, notably through expressing its desire to join the new Indo-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF) project, which will bring together ten or so countries in this area [5]. Troy Lee Brown, a researcher in regional and maritime security at the University of Western Australia, said that Australia's goal now would be "to offer an alternative to OBOR" in order to further reduce its attachment to China. Thus, in the CSIS survey, Australia emerged, along with the US and Japan, as one of the driving forces behind the strengthening of the Quad. This change was also accompanied by a change in tone in the Australian press. While the latter was initially critical of a strong Quad, some institutes, including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), are now questioning India's cautious position, which it describes as the Quad's "weak link". It explains this by its important land border with China, which makes it strategically fragile, and stresses that it is the only member of the Quad without any concrete guarantee of security from the other members. Thus, he considers Delhi's attitude to be more trilateral and asserts that it sees the Quad as a mere display case rather than a major project in the face of Chinese hegemonic ambitions. This oddly echoes Australia's position during the Rudd government from the perspective of Japan and the US.

But what about India's position according to Indians? The opinion of Indian elites gathered by the CSIS shows that this country is by far the most hostile to an institutionalisation of the Quad and to its overhaul into a strategic alliance. There are several reasons for this, some of which have already been raised by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute: firstly, India suffers from a major economic dependence on China and Russia, its close partner. An economic dependence that is also reflected at the military level with the massive purchase of Russian and Chinese equipment by the Indian army, although its main partners on the operational level are the United States and Japan with, among other things, the Malabar exercises. At the same time, India is very insistent on avoiding confrontation with China because it is already under heavy pressure from the latter. Conflicts over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) have been growing in intensity since the early 2000s and played a major role in the reintegration of India into the Quad in 2017 as discussed in the previous article. This direct threat to its territorial sovereignty is one of the main elements that distinguishes India from Australia and prevents it from making a strategic pivot as significant as that made by the latter. Thus, at the 4th India-US Summit in New Delhi in October 2020, the US Deputy Secretary of State, Stephen E. Biegun, made a speech echoing this very particular situation of India. He praised India's tradition of 'strategic autonomy' and, while he shared his vision of a 'Pax Indo Pacifica'[6] to protect the prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, he also insisted that the security partnership between India and the United States did not have to involve the presence of US troops in the country. Similarly, although the importance of giving India the means to defend its sovereignty was central to his speech...the Quad was never mentioned as a tool of this security policy. This idea can be also be found in a statement by the Indian Army Chief General M.M. Naravane in the Economic Times in March 2021 who insisted that "there will definitely be bilateral military cooperation”, but that “the Quad is not a military alliance”.

Does this mean that India only envisions its defense policy through its bilateral alliance with the United States and does not have any major project for the Indo-Pacific region in response to China? Clearly, India has shown a real voluntarism on several occasions, including in the way it thinks and structures its opposition to China. On the military front, its efforts to increase military exercises with other Quad members and work on interoperability have undeniably played a significant role in the Quad's progress since 2017. On the economic front, the Indo-Japanese Africa Asia Growth Corridor (AAGC) project launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2017 aims to offer an alternative to the One Belt One Road initiative (OBOR). Finally, India was the first member of the Quad to denounce the "One China policy" led by Beijing in 2010 by demanding the recognition of India's sovereignty over Kashmir.

In short, India is forced to adopt an ambiguous position due to its dependence on China, but it is also the country most sensitive to China's outbursts as they directly threaten its territorial integrity. Thus, the more significant it deems this threat to be, the greater the chances of a change of tone similar to that of Australia, although it remains to be seen exactly how this will be achieved and whether or not it will place the quad at the centre of this change.

To sum up, this article gave a little more detail the situation of the different parties involved and explained how they see the future of the Quad as well as how they perceive their own role in the Indo-Pacific area. Yet, the question of a possible extension of the Quad has yet to be answered. Therefore the next article, which shall conclude this series, will focus on outlining different possible scenarios for the Quad, including that of a 'Quad Bloc' with a role close to that of NAT, and will discuss the probability and, above all, the legitimacy of each of these scenarios in order to better understand their potential.

NOTES

[1]The note in question: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.- Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf

[2]Program launched on September 24, 2021 by U.S. President Joe Biden, together with representatives of the other Quad members, allowing students from Quad countries (except the United States) studying for a master's degree or doctorate in the best American universities in the field of science, engineering, mathematics and technology (STEM) to benefit from a Quad sponsored scholarship.

[3] The full quote given by Jean Yves Colin in his article is: "Russian aggression in Ukraine is a direct threat to the principles of the United Nations. We must not let the same situation happen in the Indo-Pacific.”

[4]Quote from a speech given by Shinzo Abele on 19 January 2020 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. The full speech can be found in a press release from the Japanese Prime Minister's Office via the following link: https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/statement/202001/_00002.html

[5] It is interesting to note that while China will not be part of this initiative, Taiwan will not join either, which shows that there is a willingness not to risk confrontation with the PRC. This more open stance prompts countries usually reluctant to openly oppose China, such as South Korea - a particular case to which we will return in detail in the next article – to join this initiative.

[6] The full quote from Stephen E. Biegun is: "One might call this a vision of a Pax Indo-Pacifica, a region at peace, protected and made prosperous in equal measure by those who comprise the Indo-Pacific.” The speech from which it is taken can be found here: https://2017- 2021.state.gov/remarks-by-deputy-secretary-stephen-e-biegun/index.html