China Threat: ‘Firm Establishment Of Quad’ In ‘Most Productive Summit’; But Need For Security Teeth?

NEW DELHI: On #TalkingPoint, in Tokyo, Dr. Tomohiko Taniguchi, Former Special Advisor to Ex-Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s Cabinet, Professor on International political economy and Japan’s strategic diplomacy, Keio University Graduate School of System Design and Management, Senior Fellow, GRIPS Alliance and in Washington, D.C., Seema Sirohi, Columnist, The Economic Times in discussion with StratNews Global Associate Editor Amitabh P. Revi.

The panel discusses U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlining America’s policy towards China at an event hosted by the Asia Society Policy Institute at George Washington University, where he looked to refocus attention on “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”, the fourth Quad(Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.) leaders’ Summit, the second in-person meeting, in Tokyo, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar’s op-ed in the Hindustan Times where he wrote for India, much of the Quad’s evolutionary process has involved “overcoming” the “hesitations of history” and “equally, it has meant not giving other countries a veto on our choices”, his noting “the firm establishment of the Quad” and “the Tokyo Summit is the most productive to date”, whether the grouping needs to develop security teeth to deal with the China threat, the managing of differences over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its global ramifications, the Quad “seek(ing) to extend” more than $50 billion of infrastructure assistance and investment in the Indo-Pacific, over the next five years, the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), a new initiative to respond to humanitarian and natural disasters and combat illegal fishing, which will see cooperation with Indo-Pacific nations and regional information fusion centres in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, India and 13 other countries joining and agreeing to negotiations on President Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), unity in the Quad, Quad+, China’s Pacific island thrust and other ways in which Beijing is reacting, ASEAN and Taiwan.