Leaders of the four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or "Quad") will meet in the U.S. state of Delaware for their fourth leader's summit on Saturday. To learn more about what to expect from the latest summit, TaiwanPlus spoke to Arzan Tarapore, a research scholar at Stanford University.
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00:00What's the significance of the 4th Quad Leaders In-Person Summit?
00:05I think what we're about to see in Delaware on Saturday is the 4th in-person summit,
00:11but it's the 6th leader level meeting, the 6th summit of the Quad since 2021.
00:17I think, in my reading, what that represents is a pretty consistent,
00:22enduring political will from all the four countries to keep meeting.
00:28So when they first met in early 2021, that was a bit of a surprise
00:33that they had taken it to the summit level.
00:35Even when it began at the foreign ministers level in 2019,
00:38there was always some uncertainty about how regularly or if indeed they would keep meeting.
00:45The leaders of the US and Japan will soon step down from office.
00:49What does this mean for the future of the quadrilateral security dialogue?
00:53I think what we've seen in all four countries
00:57is a relatively broad base of political support for the Quad.
01:03Since the Quad was restarted in 2017, we've seen changes of government occur
01:10and the Quad has continued and only grown despite those changes of government.
01:15So even in the US, where we went from the notoriously unpredictable President Trump
01:22to President Biden, we saw the Quad not only survive but actually grow and deepen
01:27thanks to President Biden.
01:29And in fact, if we do see a return to President Trump,
01:33we shouldn't forget the fact that it was under his administration in 2019
01:39that we saw the first Quad foreign ministers meeting.
01:43And then it was repeated in 2020, I believe.
01:45One of the initiatives of Quad is the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness.
01:50How are the Quad countries coordinating the efforts through this initiative
01:54to counter China's coercive activities in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean?
01:59I think the importance of IPMDA, and I would really caution
02:04that we shouldn't take IPMDA in isolation.
02:07It is part of a broader strategy, including other initiatives
02:13that are being pursued by the Quad foreign ministers track, not the leaders track,
02:19which try to build the capacity of regional states to be able to know
02:24what is happening in the waters that they care about
02:28and to be able to take action on them.
02:31And again, the idea fundamentally is to expose wrongdoing so that,
02:36as we see in the South China Sea, when you expose what is happening,
02:40that acts as a deterrent to further action or to escalation.
02:46Can we expect any new initiatives from the latest Quad summit?
02:50I really hope that the Quad instead focuses on consolidation and delivery
02:56because its long-term effectiveness and political acceptance in the region
03:02will depend on its ability to deliver.
03:05And so from my point of view, we shouldn't be looking for,
03:10we shouldn't be hoping for the Quad to announce some new, brand new project.
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