NEW DELHI: China’s reaction to the Quad—involving the U.S., India, Japan and Australia—has wavered from being dismissive to calling the grouping ‘Asian NATO’ and a security threat. There can never be a NATO in the Indo-Pacific; such an arrangement is just not suitable there, says James Carafano, who heads the defence and security vertical at The Heritage Foundation in the United States. The Indo-Pacific has the smartest and most advanced security architecture on the planet—Quad, trilaterals, bilaterals, 2+2, he told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale on ‘The Gist’. Jeff Smith, Research Fellow, South Asia at The Heritage Foundation, who was part of the discussion, said when it comes to the Quad, China is stuck. “If it pushes too hard, India will come closer to the grouping and if it doesn’t say anything, the grouping would develop organically anyway.”
