The remarks were seen as sour Chinese grapes at the time, and subsequent events, for a period, made Mr Wang look like he had made an error of judgment. But could Mr Wang have been right after all?
On the face of it, Quad – short for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – is inching towards being a regional security arrangement, which really was the late Japanese premier Shinzo Abe’s vision when he began promoting the concept in 2007.
On July 2, 2025, Quad nation coast guard officers completed their first joint sail on board Stratton, a US Coast Guard cutter, which pulled into Guam’s Apra Harbour five days after departing Palau, Micronesia. It was the first time that officers from all four nations – the US, Australia, India and Japan – had drilled together on a single vessel and the most significant security development within Quad since 2020, the year navies of the four had participated in a joint exercise as part of Exercise Malabar, the annual US-India naval wargame.
Subsequently, official-level meetings grew into leaders’ summits over video link in 2021, then in-person summits, the last held in then President Joe Biden’s home town of Wilmington in September 2024. New Delhi is billed to host the next Quad summit later in 2025.
Notably, the joint sail on the Stratton was completed a day after foreign ministers of the four nations pledged to deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The July 1 foreign ministers statement issued from Washington targeted China in all but name and expressed “serious concern about the situation in the East China Sea and South China Sea”, including what it called unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion, dangerous and provocative actions, including interference with offshore resource development, the repeated obstruction of the freedoms of navigation and overflight, and the dangerous manoeuvres by military aircraft and coast guard and maritime militia vessels.
It was assessed to be a tad more strident on China than the statement that emerged from the previous year’s meeting, held in Tokyo.
Partners hedge their bets
Against that background, the joint drills on board Stratton do take on additional significance.
But here’s the thing. Military, and paramilitary drills are planned months in advance. So, while the Stratton drill may have looked like something of a watershed moment, current events nevertheless suggest a weakening of strategic bonds across the trans-Pacific. Interestingly, this time it is not New Delhi wary of upsetting China but America’s most steadfast treaty allies – Japan and Australia – that have started to signal significant hedging.
Some of the pushback is an immediate reaction to US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby’s demarches to Australia and Japan that they must make clear what role each would play in the security effort, should China invade Taiwan.
Since the US itself practises a policy of strategic ambiguity on whether or not it would defend Taiwan, this demand fell badly upon the two nations. It fell particularly harshly on Australia, given its track record as an uncomplaining participant in past US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In June, the Pentagon announced a review to ensure that the US had enough industrial capacity to construct nuclear submarines for allies without hampering production for the US military. Canberra is now justly worried that Mr Colby, fully aware that it cannot provide cast-iron guarantees on a joint Taiwan effort, will use this as a ruse to kill Aukus, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US that involves the trans-Atlantic allies selling advanced nuclear submarines and technology to Australia.
Japan is watching all this carefully; the previous Biden administration had even spoken of Tokyo as a likely partner in a future Pillar 2 of Aukus. Australia had ditched a contract with France for conventional submarines to sign on to Aukus, hugely upsetting Paris. Having passed over the French subs, it now risks not getting the nuclear submarines as well – at least, not in the anticipated timeframe.
Australian impatience with these perceived dodges was fully in view last week, when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered a lecture in honour of the late prime minister John Curtin and vowed to maintain the Curtin-influenced “confidence and determination to think and act for ourselves. To follow our own course, and shape our own future”.
Earlier, Mr Albanese had firmly said: “My government will continue to cooperate with China where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in our national interest.”
A more assured China
If the US State Department and Pentagon look askance at such developments, the blame lies squarely on President Donald Trump’s America First policy for upending too much around the region. A decade ago, the US was the stable, predictable power and China, the unpredictable one. Today, that has reversed. Optically, Beijing’s cool-headedness in the face of a blow-hot-blow-cold Trump has raised China’s stature, even as the US diminishes itself day by day.
Besides, Mr Trump has often been personally disdainful of allies and partners. Just look at the way he has handled Mr Albanese, who has been recently strengthened at home as only the second Australian prime minister in two decades to win consecutive three-year terms. Yet, he hasn’t secured a summit with Mr Trump.
Meanwhile, the Australian leader has just finished a six-day trip to China whose highlights included being feted with two banquets on a single day by the Chinese leadership – lunch and dinner.
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It wasn’t as though Mr Xi was playing nice with Mr Albanese because he held a weak hand. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“The Chinese are in a confident mood,” Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said recently at an Aspen forum – a reading that conforms with what others have noticed as well. Former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran, who speaks perfect Chinese, recently returned from China to report that there seemed to be “a new geopolitical assurance”, thanks to assumptions about the decline of the US.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Australia and the other Quad members feel a need to trim their sails to the new winds. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba recently told a party meeting that if the US thinks “Japan ought to follow what America says as we depend heavily on them, then we need to work to become more self-sufficient in security, energy and food, and less dependent on America”.
Even if Japan has managed to escape with a 15 per cent US tariff rate, Mr Ishiba would certainly not be pleased that Mr Trump made him look small by shooting him a letter earlier in July announcing a unilateral 25 per cent tariff on goods shipped to the US from Japan. The Asian Development Bank has just cut its growth forecasts for Quad members Japan and India, citing the tariffs. So much for special relationships.
What is more, the recently concluded Upper House election has not only weakened Mr Ishiba – who insists he will stay on in office – but could have long term implications for the US alliance. A good part of the appeal to Japanese voters of Mr Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party stems from it being the political vehicle most trusted by Washington to run Japan.
As for India, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar – once seen as a China hawk – arrived in Beijing more than two days early for a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers held in mid-July. Observers noted that some of his bilateral meetings with China, held in a chamber of the Great Hall of the People, were meaningfully beneath the backdrop of a mural depicting the Himalayas. The undemarcated boundary lines along those mountains are the principal source of tension between the two Asian giants.
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While some Chinese commentators are portraying the Australian and Indian outreaches as capitulation, and a failure of their individual balancing strategies, the reality is that all Quad members are now de-risking from the US, or may need to. It is just that some, like Australia, make their sentiments plain. Others, like India, are careful to not reveal the full extent of their dismay.
New Delhi has tried to limit the dissonance evident in its bilateral ties with Washington. For instance, its Trade Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent jibe that Asean is “China’s B-team” echoes US Trade Adviser Peter Navarro describing Vietnam as “essentially a colony of Communist China”. But Mr Trump’s recklessness has reduced India’s strategic options significantly, and weakened pro-US voices in its government.
The Quad summit in New Delhi will likely take place but the warmth if any that Mr Trump feels on arrival will likely be more from the climate than the goodwill of his host and other Quad partners. Not bad, Wang Yi.
