Less than a month after taking the oath of office, Joe Biden administration has proposed to hold the first meeting of the leaders of the Quad grouping comprising India, Japan and Australia and the United States in a bid to counterbalance China’s rise, reports Economic Times.
Since taking office on 20 January, US President Joe Biden’s administration has shown a lot of eagerness to build on the renewed attention to the grouping of the four major Indo-Pacific democracies.
The new National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had called the Quad grouping as “a foundation upon which to build substantial American policy in the Indo-Pacific.”
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad grouping first created in 2004 in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami and from there the group’s activities were revived in 2017 to move beyond the areas of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and to focus on advancing the efforts to ensure a “free, open and inclusive” Indo-Pacific.
Former US’ Secretary of State Michael Pompeo had called to “institutionalise” the Quad and grouping has the capacity to “push back against the Chinese Communist Party”.
It must be noted that unlike Australia and Japan, India is not a treaty ally of the US.
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