India leader in Quad, says US before big-ticket meet
In Delaware, the PM will attend both the Quad Leaders summit and then a special Quad cancer moonshot event
The US sees India as a leader of Quad, believes that the grouping is more “strategically aligned” than ever, and expects China’s approach to maritime security, economics and technology to figure in the discussions among leaders of the four countries at the summit in President Joe Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday.
Briefing foreign correspondents in Washington DC on Thursday, Mira Rapp-Hooper, the top National Security Council (NSC) official on Indo-Pacific affairs, acknowledged that PM Narendra Modi, who will arrive in the US on Saturday and head straight to Delaware, had “graciously” agreed to swap the opportunity to host the summit. She said that Quad leaders would discuss the next chapter in the group’s cooperation and were committed to institutionalising it.
On India’s role, Rapp-Hooper, who is the senior director for East Asia and Oceania in NSC, said, “When it comes to the role that we expect India to play, we expect and indeed see India as a leader within the Quad. I think the best encapsulation of the way we think about India’s role is captured in our Indo-Pacific Strategy, where we say that the US seeks an India that is increasingly a leader in the region and increasingly a partner with the US.”
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She said that Quad provided an “ideal venue” because it not only allowed “critical exchange of strategic views” where partners were “increasingly aligned” but also helped “identify opportunities and priorities” that mattered not just to the US and its treaty allies such as Australia and Japan but really mattered to India. “So you see that through the Quad we are increasingly working on projects in South Asia, which, of course, is a huge strategic priority for the government in Delhi, and we are grateful for India’s leadership.”
In Delaware, the PM will attend both the Quad Leaders summit and then a special Quad cancer moonshot event. Biden and Modi will also have a bilateral meeting where a substantial set of deliverables, especially related to defence co-production and India’s manufacturing aspirations, are expected. Within the India-US corridor, in both governments and among observers, Modi’s visit to Delaware is being seen as India’s way of acknowledging Biden’s contribution to the deepening of the strategic ties, especially under the framework of the initiative on critical and emerging technologies (iCET). This has paved the way for semiconductor investments in India, a shift in the defence relationship from one based on a “buyer-seller” model to one based on co-production and development, and opened doors for cooperation in AI, quantum, biotech, among other domains. “This is our way of saying, ‘Thank you Joe’, and consolidating the achievements in the relationship before the end of this administration,” an Indian official familiar with the planning of the visit said.
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Modi then heads to New York where he will address a major diaspora event in Long Island on Sunday afternoon that close to 15,000 Indian-Americans are expected to attend. He will address the UN’s Summit of the Future on Monday. Modi will also meet other heads of government, participate in a tech roundtable with top chief executives, and engage with other business leaders. Modi is also likely to meet the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, who announced the meeting, though the Indian side hasn’t offered an official confirmation of this yet. There is no meeting scheduled with Vice President and Democratic nominee for President, Kamala Harris, yet.
But Quad will rank as among the major highlights of the visit, especially given that this is both Biden and Japan’s PM Fumio Kishida’s last summit. The US, while acknowledging that the group predates Biden, has framed it as a key element of the presidential legacy given Biden’s role in elevating the group by hosting the first leaders summit in March 2021, virtually, and then, an in-person summit in Washington DC in September 2021. Leaders met again virtually in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the last two summits were held in Tokyo and Hiroshima. Saturday will be the sixth time leaders will be meeting.
Rapp-Hooper highlighted the personal relationships that have driven the group, and said that Biden had developed personal relationships with three other leaders, “including by hosting each one of them for state visits at the White House in recent years”. “So amongst the four of them, these leaders know each other very well. The strategic discussions are free-flowing, they are candid, they are genuine, and they are discussions amongst friends. And as he looks to his last Quad Summit, the President really did want to leave that personal mark on the summit.”
Rapp-Hooper said that the summit will yield three outcomes. “First, you will see that the Quad is more strategically aligned than ever. Second, you will see that the Quad is delivering real results for our partners in the Indo-Pacific in the areas that they identify as most important to them. And third, you will see signs that the Quad is not just the initiative of any one administration or any one country, but an initiative that is designed to endure for the long term.”
While all four countries have repeatedly emphasised that Quad is meant to offer an affirmative vision to the region, and isn’t geared against any other country, the strategic subtext is hard to miss. China’s belligerence across the Indo-Pacific is widely recognised as the key impetus for the momentum behind the group.
Asked whether China’s actions vis a vis Philippines will come up during the discussions, Rapp-Hooper said, “Quad leaders, as four leading maritime democracies, always discuss maritime security issues when they meet behind closed doors. And they have a fully aligned view of the importance of international law, freedom of navigation, and much, much more when it comes to the South China Sea. I do expect that the South China Sea will be a subject of discussion for the Quad, and I also expect that you will see some strong language on it in the Quad’s joint statement given our commonality of views.”
Responding to another question on how China will figure in the discussions, the NSC official said, “A substantial portion of every Quad Summit has always been discussing the strategic issues of the Indo-Pacific. And I would expect the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the PRC’s various approaches to economics, to technology, to the maritime domain to be discussed, but I won’t get ahead, of course, of those leaders’ discussions.”
The US was however keen to the project the positive agenda that Quad has offered to the region, with the NSC official listing the set of deliverables over the last few years: “400 million COVID vaccines to the Indo-Pacific; a landmark maritime domain awareness initiative across the Indo-Pacific to allow partners to fully monitor their waters; humanitarian assistance response to natural disasters, including over $5 million in response to a tragic landslide that occurred in Papua New Guinea this spring; natural disaster early warning data for Pacific Island countries to help them better respond to climate change; a fellowship for leading STEM students from Quad countries and ASEAN countries to build the next generation of likeminded innovators; infrastructure training programs for well over a thousand experts in the Indo-Pacific; and cyber trainings for over 85,000 people in the region, and much, much more”.
While pointing to the annual leaders summits and frequent interactions among foreign ministers and in working groups across bureaucracies, Rapp-Hopper said that all four leaders had agreed that the priority over the next few years was “institutionalising the Quad and making sure it is strongly rooted in the Indo-Pacific”. This meant, she said, that leaders at the summit wanted to focus on refining and expanding the type of cooperative projects Quad works on. “They will spend a good portion of their discussion not only talking about the deliverables that we announce at this summit but where the Quad should be headed next. For example, given the great work that the Quad has already done to deliver COVID vaccines or improved maritime domain awareness architecture to the Indo-Pacific region, what should be its direction of travel in its next chapter?“ The cancer moonshot event that Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri announced at his press briefing on Thursday in Delhi is one element of this next chapter.
Separately, in a bipartisan move, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, and Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator from Arkansas, introduced a resolution on Friday recognising the importance of Quad and welcoming the leaders to the US. Besides laying out the tangible achievements of the group, the resolution said that Quad is the “centrepiece of US foreign policy” in the Indo Pacific. It said that the Senate recognises Quad’s contribution to “global health security, climate resilience, maritime security, technological cooperation and economic development” and offered the Senate’s support for the group’s various initiatives.