(1/3) Is an Asian NATO possible? : the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the challenges of strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific area

Romain Fernex
May 13, 2024
8 min read

Updated: Jun 29, 2024

On the 29th of June, the first NATO summit attended by the organization’s partners in the Indo-Pacific area was held in Madrid. The Indo-Pacific region is a strategic area of vital importance for the United States, which defines it as stretching from the west coast of the United States to the Indian Ocean[1]. It accounts for more than two-thirds of the world's economy and encompasses more than 50% of the world's population. Its importance is all the greater as tensions in Europe have accelerated the shift of the "centre of the world" towards this area, though this shift was already well underway since 1985. Thus, on the occasion of this summit, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, mentioned the challenge posed by the war in Ukraine and its destabilising effects, but he also took advantage of this opportunity to emphasise the increasingly worrying tensions in the South Pacific area. He underlined, in a more or less veiled manner, the risk posed to international security by the rise of China. While this position is not historically surprising, given that it largely echoes the strategic vision defended by the United States for several decades, the fact that it addresses this issue outside the traditional framework of bilateral and trilateral alliances that still dominate relations in the Asia-Pacific is not insignificant. Indeed, for the United States and its allies, the issue of China's "containment" [2] is usually addressed through agreements such as the US-Japan Mutual Cooperation and Security Treaty adopted on 16 May 1960, which remains one of the pillars of the US presence in the Indo-Pacific. However, this does not mean that these countries should join NATO, as John Kirby[3], Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the Security Council in the White House, pointed out. Therefore, one may wonder whether, in the absence of an extension of NATO, a similar alliance structure is still possible in Asia outside the strictly economic domain.

In this respect, some political analysts stress the importance of informal groupings that already exist and that could potentially, especially in the current geopolitical context, lead to the creation of real alliances whose role and nature would be similar to NATO. Among these groupings, one appears more promising than others, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad). This initiative launched in 2007 and revitalized in 2017, which brings together Japan, Australia, India and the United States, also made headlines recently with its fourth summit held on 24 May 2022 in Tokyo, just over a year after the previous summit in March 2021. The acceleration of the Quad has thus promptly come under criticism, particularly from China, which has described it as "a clique that could start a new Cold War", in the words of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in March 2021. Yet the Quad in its current form has no military dimension and its security component remains relatively anecdotal due the differences of opinion between Quad members, notably between India and the US, on what the Quad should be aiming for.

Therefore, what is the Quad at present, what are the dynamics that drive its evolution, and which are facing each other, and is there any reason to see the Quad, as the PRC and some of its partners have called it, as a future Indo-Pacific NATO? These are the questions that this series of three separate articles will try to answer. The first one will deal specifically with the origins of the Quad and its current form. Then, another will try to describe the current position of Quad members and clarify why they may differ from one another. Finally, the last article will be aimed at questioning the feasibility and relevance of making the Quad the "NATO of Asia" by proposing and dissecting different scenarios for its evolution.

First of all, before looking at the creation of the Quad, it is important to emphasize that it is far from being the first multilateral initiative in the Indo Pacific. In the economic field, one can mention the ASEAN, founded on August 8 1967 by the Bangkok declaration, which already has about ten members. Besides, its regional forum which has been taking place every year since 1994, already gathers 27 countries, the majority of which are not ASEAN members[4], such as Japan, South Korea, China, India and the United States. In the strategic area, which is the one this article focuses on, the SEATO, founded on September 8 1954 in the midst of the Cold War by the United States and joined by 7 other states, was intended to be a real Asian NATO. It was later dismantled on June 30 1977. But if SEATO disappeared with the warming of relations between Asian countries despite the Cold War, the ever-growing tensions in the region inevitably raise the question of the return of similar forms of cooperation.

Map showing the extent of SEATO before its dissolution in 1977

Source: The institute of world politics, reviving SEATO, August 2020

The Quad did not, however, originally appear as a response to these new tensions: Indeed, the operational bases of the Quad were laid with the humanitarian aid campaign conducted jointly by the future members of the Quad during the boxing day tsunami that hit the coasts of the Asian Pacific countries in 2004. The goal was for these 4 countries to coordinate their efforts to provide help to disaster-stricken countries in the region. This is consistent with an important objective of the Quad, especially in its current form, which is to contribute to the development of the countries of the South Pacific by providing a multilateral alternative to the mainly bilateral aid offered by China. The ideological basis of the Quad is to be found in a speech, known as the "confluence of the two seas speech", given by Shinzo Abe in 2006, when he was a candidate for the post of prime minister in Japan. During this speech, he called for the constitution of a "network of states united around the principle of freedom and around the rule of law (international law in this case) which would extend from one end of the Eurasian continent to the other". This vision, also shared by the Japanese Foreign Minister at the time, Taro Aso, was supported by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then by US Vice President Dick Cheney, which led to a first meeting of the members of the quad in May 2007 on the sidelines of the ASEAN forum in Manila. However, shortly after this meaningful step forward, the newly born Quad faced important challenges which led to its "dissolution" less than a year later. Indeed, China's opposition to the project was a cause for concern for several members of the Quad which were still economically dependent on it, notably Australia, whose Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected in 2007, refused to attend the January 2008 Quad summit. South Korea, another strategic ally of the United States in the region, also voiced its skepticism regarding the Quad, which it considered too openly confrontational with China.

Photo taken along the coast of Sumatra following the Boxing Day tsunami,

the deadliest tsunami ever recorded, in 2004

author: Philip A. McDaniel, US Navy officer

However, despite this failure, the members of the Quad continued to strengthen their cooperation through several bilateral and trilateral agreements: One example is the Communication, Compatibility and Security Agreement signed between India and the United States in 2015. As regards military initiatives, the Malabar exercises, launched in 1992 between India and the United States, saw the participation of Japan for the first time in 2015. Similarly, the air defense exercise of the Australian forces Pitch Black in 2019 took place in cooperation with the Indian army. These cooperative ventures all benefited from a favorable context with the escalation of tensions between China and India, which led to an armed confrontation between the two countries at the Doklam Tripoint along the LAC in the summer of 2017. Naturally, The return of Shinzo Abe to the position of Prime Minister of Japan in 2012 also played a key role in this widespread effort to bring former Quad members together. Thus the second Quad Summit took place, again in Manila, on November 12, 2017. On the agenda was the importance of denuclearizing North Korea, maintaining freedom of navigation in the Indo Pacific and the emergence of the "free and open Indo Pacific" concept that is central to the Quad's objectives. This return of the Quad aroused, to no surprise, the ire of China and Russia, whose Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov joined Wang Yi's criticism of NATO and the Quad. The resolutely provocative stance towards China of the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under the Trump administration also contributed to give credence to Chinese claims of the Quad being “anti-China” among other states in the region outside the Quad.

Photo of the 2020 Malabar exercises in the Bay of Bengal

Source: Dnaindia.com, Ravi Dubey

Despite this, the Quad remains, nowadays, an informal grouping, focused on adherence to common values and still lacks any real military or institutional ambitions. This "democratic security diamond", as described by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which was intended to oppose the authoritarian powers on the rise in the region, seems paradoxically devoid of a security component. Fact is that the Quad 2021 joint statement, which specifies the main objectives and working groups set up within the framework of the Quad, mostly mentions groups dedicated to the vaccination effort in the face of Covid 2019, technology sharing etc... Though it also reaffirms the willingness of its members to guarantee a maritime order based on international law, it does not directly mention China as a threat to this order neither does it call for stepping up military efforts to contain it. However, this current state should not be considered immutable and the differences in perspective that exist between the members of this organization might lead to a total overhaul of the Quad depending on which one ends up dominating its development. This is what the next article will try to clarify by analyzing in detail the different realities faced by Quad members, what conceptions of the latter they defend and how their positions could possibly change in the face of the major crises of the last 5 years.

NOTES

[1] I am relying on the definition given in a White House memo on US Indo-Pacific strategy published in February 2022, which in many respects is similar to the definition of "Broader Asia" referred to by Shinzo Abe in his Confluence of the Two Seas speech.

The document in question is the following : https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf

[2] The term used here is in quotation marks because it is used in a deliberately anachronistic way. It was originally coined by the American diplomat George F. Kennan in 1946, who used it to describe the strategy of the United States against the communist world during the Cold War. One goal of this article series is, indeed, also to question the relevance of a bipolar vision of Indo-Pacific rivalries opposing a Sino-Russian bloc to a democratic bloc embodied by the Qaud. But this particular issue shall be dealt with in more details in the last article of this series.

[3] Full quote from John Kirby: "[...] And this isn't about an Asian version of NATO. NATO is a transatlantic security alliance, the most effective, the most viable one in the world, the most successful one in the world.”

It is taken from the following document: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/23/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-council-coordinator-for-strategic-communications-john-kirby/

[4] It should be noted that China, Japan and South Korea are members of ASEAN+3, an initiative to expand ASEAN led by Singapore, whose first meeting was held in 1997 at the Singapore Summit.