With the ASEAN summit scheduled to be held in Vientiane next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to spell out his future road-map for QUAD grouping with focus on resolute supply chains, critical infrastructure, maritime domain awareness and above all cybersecurity.
The challenge to the QUAD summit on September 21 in Wilmington, Delaware is that the leaders keep focus on Indo-Pacific and PLA Navy aggression in Indo-Pacific rather than get bogged down in on-going Gaza, Ukraine wars and saying goodbyes to outgoing President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Apart from attending the fourth QUAD in person summit, PM Modi will be holding bilateral conversations with President Biden, PM Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. With PM Modi hard pressed for time, the bilateral engagements in New York are work in progress but there is little possibility of him meeting allies like French President Emmanuel Macron or Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. No call has been taken as yet on PM Modi meeting Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
While the focus of QUAD summit will be how to make critical infrastructure protected from cyberattacks by state and non -state actors, recent aggression by China against Philippines and Iran backed Houthi missile attacks on international shipping have generated a lot of heat in the Indo-Pacific. Already the QUAD countries have decided to go for HawkEye 360 software from a US company for maritime domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific which includes dark shipping and those ships will deliberately switch off their transponders.
Even though Australia and Japan are alliance partners of the US, India sits at the center of the Indo-Pacific with a two carrier task force Navy to enforce international law in the region. The Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness was created by QUAD in May 2022 as the region is one of the most trafficked in the world with endless vessel activity, piracy, drug-running, arms running and illegal fishing.
Since the 2006 Tsunami, India has been a first responder in the region to provide disaster relief in case of natural calamity. Even during Covid-19 pandemic, India supplied free vaccines in the region without any political or diplomatic quid pro quo.
While China and its supporters believe that QUAD is aimed to challenge the rise of the Middle-Kingdom, fact is that QUAD is much beyond China as it is a grouping that provides global stability with all the four major powers keeping in constant touch with each other.