Opinion | Why Biden’s plans to turn the Quad into an anti-China Asian Nato are far from assured

There are doubts over long-term US foreign policy direction and what Washington could offer economically against China’s trade and investment inducements

An Asian Nato is becoming more likely, but the future of the Asian order is still up for grabs

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Published: 1:30am, 17 Mar 2021Updated: 2:28am, 17 Mar 2021

“The more things change, the more they remain the same,” French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once observed. In many ways, a similar dynamic governs US policy in Asia, especially on China.

Despite the rhetoric of change and avowed rejection of Trumpian populism, the Biden administration is largely building on its predecessor’s superpower rivalry with China.

If anything, the fresh commitment to multilateralism and alliance-driven foreign policy could accelerate the crystallisation of a de facto Asian Nato with profound implications for 21st-century geopolitics.

It is within the context of what US President Joe Biden calls “extreme competition” with China that one should understand the first-ever formal Quad summit, which brought together the leaders of Japan, Australia, India and the US in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.

Biden aims to create a robust coalition of deterrence to constrain China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. But despite shared anxieties over China’s rise, the success of this burgeoning Asian Nato is far from assured.

Over the past two decades, the Quad has transformed from an ad hoc response to the 2004 Asian tsunami to an increasingly institutionalised alliance resembling former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s vision of a “democratic security diamond”.

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