Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, also known as the Quad is a coordinating and cooperative grouping of four countries: Australia, India, Japan, and the United States primarily focused on Intelligence and Technology. Its primary goals include national security, cyber-security, maritime security, counterterrorism and advancement in the IT-Electronics sector. The dialogue is widely viewed by newspapers and think tanks to be a diplomatic arrangement responding to increased Chinese economic and political power.

The grouping was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of Australian prime minister John Howard, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. vice president Dick Cheney. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power.

The Quad ceased in 2008 following the withdrawal of Australia during Kevin Rudd's tenure as prime minister, reflecting ambivalence in Australian policy over the growing tension between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific. Following Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard in 2010, enhanced military cooperation between the United States and Australia was resumed, leading to the placement of U.S. Marines near Darwin, overlooking the Timor Sea and Lombok Strait. Meanwhile, India, Japan, and the United States continued to hold joint naval exercises under Malabar.

During the 2017 ASEAN Summits in Manila, all four former members led by Abe, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and U.S. president Donald Trump agreed to revive the Quad partnership in order to counter China militarily and diplomatically in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the South China Sea. Tensions between Quad members and China have led to fears of what was dubbed by some commentators "a new Cold War" in the region, and the Chinese government responded to the Quad dialogue by issuing formal diplomatic protests to its members, calling it "Asian NATO".

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam were invited to "Quad Plus" meetings to discuss their responses to it.

In the early twenty-first century, the strategic preoccupation of the United States with Iraq and Afghanistan served as a distraction from major power shifts in the Asia-Pacific, brought about by increased Chinese economic power, which undermined America's traditional role in the region. In the long term the United States has sought a policy of "soft containment" of China by organizing strategic partnerships with democracies at its periphery. While US alliances with Japan, Australia and India now form the bulwark of this policy, the development of closer US military ties to India has been a complex process since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Australian commentaries showed mixed attitudes to a Quadrilateral partnership isolating China.

Active US-Indian military cooperation expanded in 1991 following the economic liberalization of India when American Lt. General Claude C. Kicklighter, then commander of the United States Army Pacific, proposed army-to-army cooperation. This cooperation further expanded in the mid-1990s under an early Indian centre-right coalition, and in 2001 India offered the United States military facilities within its territory for offensive operations in Afghanistan. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee signed a "New Framework for India-US Defense" in 2005 under the Indian United Progressive Alliance government, increasing cooperation regarding military relations, defence industry and technology sharing, and the establishment of a "Framework on maritime security cooperation." India and the United States conducted dozens of joint military exercises in the ensuing years before the development of the Quad, interpreted as an effort to "contain" China. Indian political commentator Brahma Chellaney referred to the emerging Quadrilateral partnership between the United States, Japan, Australia and India as part of a new "Great Game" in Asia, and Indian diplomat M. K. Rasgotra has maintained that American efforts to shape security pacts in Asia will result not in an "Asian Century," but rather in an "American Century in Asia."

Some, like US Lt. General Jeffrey B. Kohler, viewed US-India defence agreements as potentially lucrative for American defence industries and oversaw the subsequent sale of American military systems to India. Nevertheless, some Indian commentators opposed increased American military cooperation with India, citing the American presence in Iraq, hostility to Iran and "attempts at encircling China" as fundamentally destabilizing to Asian peace, and objecting to the presence of American warships with nuclear capabilities off the coast of southern India, or to American calls for the permanent hosting of American naval vessels in Goa or Kochi.