Carriers and warships from the U.S., Japan, India and Australia participating in the Malabar Naval Exercise in November 2020.
The leaders of the United States, Japan, Australia and India met Friday (March 12) for the first summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) mechanism. The summit agreed on the production and supply of vaccines, rare earth supply chains and cooperation in key emerging technologies. Although the U.S. national security adviser said the summit was not focused on China, some analysts said it was an important part of the Biden administration’s “combination” of allies and partners against China. They also said the quadripartite dialogue mechanism was upgraded to summit level thanks to China’s increasingly aggressive moves in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Quartet Summit Agrees on New Crown Vaccine and Rare Earth Cooperation
President Biden held a quadripartite security dialogue with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister John Morrison via video Friday morning Washington Time. The summit discussed a number of topics including the production and supply of vaccines for the CCP, climate change, key emerging technologies and more. The summit was held at the request of the United States.
Biden began his remarks by saying that the four countries of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue are working together to promote the production of new vaccines for the benefit of the Indo-Pacific countries. The latest effort by the four countries in vaccine production and supply is seen as an important measure to counter the influence of China’s “vaccine diplomacy” in the Asia-Pacific region. China has pledged to provide free vaccines to developing countries in order to expand its influence.
They have pledged to put their resources together to provide a billion doses of vaccines to Southeast Asian countries as well as the Asia-Pacific region, essentially pushing back against China’s aggressive war-wolf vaccine diplomacy,” Michael Green, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Friday. “
Together, Greene believes, these four countries are the perfect combination. The U.S. has the biotech and vaccine patents and technology, India has the capacity and technology to produce Medicine quickly on a large scale, Japan has the deep pockets, and Australia can provide the distribution and funding for the vaccines. He said this is a cooperation between major powers that Southeast Asian countries would be particularly pleased to see.
Prior to the summit, a senior U.S. official said the four countries, the United States, Japan, India and Australia, have set up a financial vehicle to finance the promotion of large-scale production of the CCP virus vaccine in India in order to address the lack of supply of the CCP virus vaccine in Southeast Asian countries.
The summit was preceded by reports that the quadrilateral summit also reached an agreement on the mining, production and supply of rare earths in order to reduce dependence on China to counter China’s dominance in the field. According to a report in Nikkei Asia, the U.S., Japan, India and Australia will join forces to build a rare earth supply chain and develop low-cost, low radioactive waste emission rare earth refining technologies, and also plan to have government-owned financial institutions provide bank loans to companies that mine and refine rare earths. In addition, the four countries are expected to draft international rules related to rare earth exports.
China is the world’s top producer of rare earths in terms of reserves and production. Beijing once cut off supplies of rare earths to Japan because of a territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands. During the U.S.-China trade war, it was also suggested that China cut off its supply of rare earths to the U.S. to counter the Trump administration’s trade war. In January, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology drafted regulations on the management of rare earths (draft for public comment), a move seen by many countries as a way for China to increasingly use rare earths as “leverage.
The summit’s statement mentioned that the four countries will cooperate in key emerging technologies in the future. The statement did not specifically mention cooperation among the four countries in the supply of rare earths, which play an indispensable role in smartphones, electric vehicles, semiconductors, new energy, space and other cutting-edge fields.
According to a joint statement following the summit, the four-nation summit also agreed to establish working groups on cooperation on the CCP’s viral vaccine, emerging and critical technologies, and climate change, and experts from these groups will meet frequently.
Summit is a “powerful combination” against the Chinese Communist Party
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said at a briefing after the summit that the four leaders did discuss the challenges posed by China, but that China was not the focus of the meeting.
The four leaders did discuss the challenges posed by China,” he said. They also made clear that they have no illusions about China. But China was not the main concern of this meeting.” He said the four countries face more pressing issues, such as climate change, the Epidemic crisis and so on.
He hinted that the meeting discussed China’s coercion of Australia, its harassment of the Senkaku Islands and its assertive actions on the India-China border. He said this in response to the upcoming U.S.-China talks in Alaska. Sullivan said the talks are an effort by the United States to communicate directly with the Chinese government. The United States will then raise concerns about China’s practices in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, as well as China’s practices toward Australia, Japan and India.
On March 18, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet in Alaska with Yang Jiechi, secretary-general of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
In response to the four-nation summit, at a regular press conference on March 12, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said he hoped the countries would not “target or harm the interests of third parties” and would not engage in closed and exclusive “small circles.
Nevertheless, Victor Cha, director of Korean studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees the summit as the first of a powerful combination of punches that the Biden Administration has united with its allies against China.
This quadrilateral summit and the two-plus-two summits with Japan and South Korea that follow next week are, for the Biden administration, a combination of changes in engagement with allies,” he said. …… There have been many previous meetings and statements on the Quadripartite Security Dialogue mechanism, but the biggest difference this time is the deliverables of this summit. The summit agreed on vaccines, rare earths, and regional cooperation. In that sense, I think it’s a very strong set of combinations, starting with Asia, and hopefully that can continue.”
The video summit of the four leaders comes just days after Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin will visit Japan and South Korea. It will be the first foreign trip by a top administration official since President Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20.
James Schwemlein, a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, told VOA that this is “a positive start to maturity” for the Quadripartite Security Dialogue.
Schwemlein and Evan Feigenbaum, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published a joint article on March 11 suggesting that the Quadripartite Security Dialogue should focus on “addressing specific, actionable challenges” rather than “a club that focuses on China. “The two believe that only then will the Quadripartite Security Dialogue be sustainable. In particular, joint action on the new crown vaccine is what they consider to be addressing “concrete and actionable challenges. The two believe that the Quadripartite Security Dialogue does not even need to be a fixed mechanism, but can exist as a core force that can include other countries as necessary, depending on the specific issue.
There are concerns that as a security dialogue mechanism, the Quartet summit is overly focused on non-military cooperation and risks reducing the role of the Quartet dialogue in the security sphere. In response, Schwemling said that the Quadripartite Security Dialogue did not have its own agenda and that the current development is already a step in a positive direction.
Not “Asia’s New NATO,” but Quadripartite Security Dialogue Closer Because of China
However, Sullivan said at a press conference after the meeting that the Quadripartite Security Dialogue is not a military alliance and will not become a new “NATO. He said this when asked if the Quadripartite Security Dialogue would strengthen cooperation with Taiwan and increase the cost of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
He said, “This is how we see the Quadripartite Security Dialogue mechanism. It’s not a military alliance, and it’s not going to be a new NATO. Despite what has been touted.” Sullivan said the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue mechanism provides opportunities for the four countries to work together on economic, technology, climate change and security issues. It is maritime security, humanitarian relief and disaster response that are at the heart of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue’s agenda, he said.
The Quadripartite Security Dialogue began in December 2004. At that time, India, Japan, Australia and the United States accelerated cooperation in a coordinated approach to relief operations in response to the humanitarian disaster caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In response to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region, in 2006, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed the concept of quadripartite cooperation among the U.S., Japan, India and Australia under the name of “a collection of democratic nations,” which was echoed by the other three parties.
In 2017, the Quadripartite Security Dialogue was reactivated after years of silence as China’s military strength and increasingly aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region increased. “The Quadripartite Security Dialogue has received special attention since then, and some have referred to it as an “Asian version of NATO.
The Quadripartite Security Dialogue has taken a number of actions on the Indo-Pacific Strategy in recent years. In September and October last year, the U.S., Japanese, Indian and Australian foreign ministers held two meetings in New York and Tokyo to discuss the “free and open Indo-Pacific” issue; the quartet’s military cooperation is also rapidly increasing, mainly through bilateral agreements and joint military exercises between the four countries. Last November, Australia participated for the first time in the Quartet’s annual Malabar Naval Exercise.
Green, who served on the National Security Council during the Bush administration, believes that it was China’s aggressiveness that brought the Quadripartite Security Dialogue closer together and elevated it to its current summit level.
The Quadripartite Security Dialogue is not a coalition, it’s just a group of countries coming together that essentially want to preserve free navigation and a rules-based order,” he said. It’s now acting in a coordinated way thanks in large part to Beijing.”
Green said India was hesitant to elevate the Quadripartite Security Dialogue to the level of a summit with a broader agenda, but because of the conflict in the India-China Himalayan border region, the Indian government decided to show China that “they have partners and allies, too,” especially the Quadripartite Security Dialogue. India has long pursued a “non-aligned” foreign policy.
The other three parties in the quartet have all experienced tension or friction with China in recent years. Japan and China have been experiencing tensions over the disputed Senkaku Islands.
The U.S. and China have become increasingly tense over geopolitical and all-out rivalry, especially over Taiwan and the South China Sea. President Biden has called China “the biggest competitor,” while Secretary of State Blinken has said that “China is the greatest test the United States faces in the 21st century.
Australia’s relations have fallen to a freezing point after China imposed sweeping trade sanctions last year for demanding an independent international investigation into the source of the initial outbreak of a Communist virus in China.
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