Bangalore, India , 6 , March 2023
The Foreign Ministries of India, Japan, Australia , and the United States are meeting today on Tuesday at New Delhi in a meeting dubbed “The Quad”.
When Yoshimasa Hayashi met his Quad counterparts from the United States, Australia, and India in New Delhi on Friday, the music enthusiast drew comparisons to the Fab Four.
“This is kind of a band like The Beatles.The members are fixed and they always play together 10 years,” Hayashi said
“But this is more kind of a soft group, so that even within The Beatles, Paul McCartney can release an album solo.”
China has characterized the Quad, an alliance of democracies led by the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, as an attempt to encircle it.
They emphasize that they are not a military alliance and deny having any hostile intents, working together instead in fields like vaccine manufacture, and emergency assistance.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a guitarist whose original songs were influenced by classic rock, made a similar point to Hayashi.
Top diplomats from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States declared on Friday that their Indo-Pacific-focused bloc is not intended to challenge China, but they also issued a statement that was replete with buzzwords and expressions that reflect growing unease over China’s influence in the region. The four foreign ministers met in New Delhi, rarely mentioning China by name and insisting that the so-called “Quad” is intended to advance their own national interests and those of others through improved non-military cooperation.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, is not a military alliance and is currently cooperating to assist nations deal with humanitarian issues in the wake of natural catastrophes. At Delhi, Blinken spoke on a panel with the Quad Foreign Ministers under the title “The Quad Squad: Power and Purpose of the Polygon.” “We are working on things that are really critical,” he remarked. The Quad Foreign Ministers meet on the sidelines of the eighth edition of the Raisina Dialogue, the flagship conference on geopolitics and geo-strategy organised by the Ministry of External Affairs of India with the Observer Research Foundation.
The Quad, as a group, is focused more on the upliftment and protection of people than working actively against any body or phenomenon. The participating members agreed on a counter-terrorism working group and SoPs for the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) initiative. All four nations also supported the reform of the UN.
The member parties underlined the Quad’s unwavering dedication to promoting an inclusive, free, and open Indo-Pacific. The Quad’s achievements in pursuing its positive agenda and carrying out actions to address current regional priorities were also examined.
“We strongly support the principles of freedom, rule of law, sovereignty and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes without resorting to threat or use of force and freedom of navigation and overflight, and oppose any unilateral attempt to change the status quo, all of which are essential to the peace, stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region and beyond,” iterated the joint statement of Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
The Quad’s confidence that it will serve as a force for regional and global good, guided by the Indo-Pacific region’s priorities through its positive and constructive agenda, was also reaffirmed in the joint statement.
