India and the Quad: India needs to be watchful of China - and the US
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. US President Joe Biden convened the leaders of Australia, India and Japan for a Quad summit in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
India affirmed its commitments to both the grouping and bilateral ties, joining several Quad initiatives. While the elephant in the room is surely China and the concern is counterbalancing, the Wilmington Declaration is not rooted in the language of conventional security indicators like military alliances but crafted in the language of non-traditional security indicators like health, climate change, sustainability and democratisation of global governance - in short, building a framework for global goods in the Indo-Pacific.
So, is this language of engagement that is short of entanglements ‘small beer,’ as sceptics point out, or is this an innovative script for regional cooperation with a difference? What do we read for India in this expanding canvass of engagement in the Quad? Has India precariously, or rather boldly, managed to stay on the path of engagement rather than entanglements? Is this a moment to be read as a moment when India’s script of strategic autonomy has greater takers in the US or is this a moment of strategic placating as the US needs India, given its converging interest on China? Can the Quad be a leveraging canvass for India to tease out its interests in areas of global governance, for instance in areas of reform of the United Nations Security Council and India’s pitch for a permanent seat? Since the Quad’s inception in 2007 and its resurgence in 2017, there has been a persistent debate on India’s role within the grouping. India is the only country, which, as sceptics argue, is not formally aligned and in many ways is the weakest link
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