U.S. Plans In-Person Quad Meeting

The U.S. plans to convene an in-person summit of Quad leaders sometime later this year. President Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator Kurt Campbell was quoted as saying that “We want to look this fall to convene an in person Quad and the hope will be to make a similar kind of arrangement on infrastructure,” adding that “if there are other countries that believe they would like to engage and work with us, the door will be open as we go forward.”

Campbell warned that a period of engagement with China had come to an end and a new set of strategic parameters will come into play. “The dominant paradigm is going to be competition. Our goal is to make that a stable, peaceful competition that brings out the best in us. There will be periods ahead in which there will be moments of concern.”

He warned that the operating system the U.S. had put in place Asia was “under substantial strain” with the rise of China, and there was a need to reinvigorate it with not just the U.S. but also Japan, South Korea, Australia, all countries that used the operating system, including Europe.