Opinion

Why Joe Biden’s Quad summit is unlikely to find consensus on containing China

Name: Japan-US hold joint military drills including cyberwarfare training as concerns about China grow
Uploaded: 2021-03-11T17:30:14.000Z
Duration: 2 min 14 s
Description: Japan-US hold joint military drills including cyberwarfare training as concerns about China grow

Domestic sociopolitical imperatives and pandemic recovery will blunt Quad members’ larger strategic choices in relation to dealing with the China challenge

Engagement with China in certain domains, while offering resistance in others, requires a policy suppleness that might prove elusive

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C. Uday Bhaskar

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi.

Published: 1:30am, 12 Mar 2021Updated: 12:25pm, 16 Mar 2021

The first virtual summit of the Quad nations will take place on March 12, bringing together the leaders of four democracies: the United States, Japan, India and Australia.

This will also be the first summit meeting for US President Joe Biden, who is less than two months into his term, and indicative of the importance being accorded to the Indo-Pacific by the new White House inhabitant.

Biden will engage with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It is instructive, given the complex geopolitics of the region, that the Quad summit follows China’s annual “two sessions” parliamentary meetings, which began in Beijing on March 4 and ended on March 11.

In the run-up to the meetings, President Xi Jinping asserted that “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States” and added that the US “is the biggest threat to our country’s development and security”.

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Japan-US hold joint military drills including cyberwarfare training as concerns about China grow

Meanwhile, the White House issued an interim national security guidance document in early March which noted that the US must “contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing, creating new threats. China, in particular, has rapidly become more assertive.