By Le Shui
A dramatic scene appeared at the summit of the US-Japan-India-Australia quadrilateral mechanism (the QUAD) on September 21. While US National Security Advisor Sullivan claimed that very day that the summit is not targeted at any other country, Biden's behind-closed-doors remarks about the so-called "China threat", which unfortunately became publicly known because the president once again forgot to turn off his mike, were a loud slap in his face. Biden's "frankness" has torn off QUAD's mask and laid bare its intention of containing China in front of the whole world.
The QUAD is a quasi-alliance mechanism. It has never said that it is targeted at any specific country, yet it has taken China as the imaginary enemy on its agenda setting. From March 2021 to now, QUAD has had four online summits and two face-to-face ones, covering a wide range of topics including defense, supply chain, cyber security, and infrastructure, with containing China's influence in Asia Pacific being the unchanging theme every time.
None of the QUAD members is a concerned party in the South China Sea issue, yet they have repeatedly mentioned the issue in their joint statements and constantly organized joint patrols in the region in the name of the so-called "freedom of navigation", which has seriously violated China's sovereign rights and interests. Creating a "de-Sinicization" supply chain is another key topic for QUAD. The four members started the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) in August 2020, trying to form a supply chain alliance among themselves and lure their enterprises in China to move to Southeast Asia in order to guarantee the so-called "supply chain security". Besides, the US, Japan and Australia also launched the Blue Dot Network that advocates green, high-standard connectivity, aiming to hedge against the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.
QUAD is a typical example of the Biden administration's "minilateral" diplomacy. Early in his presidency, Biden made it clear that his China policy is focused on shaping the strategic environment around China, which means forming various cliques and blocs with its Asian Pacific allies and partners to strategically besiege China. Apart from the QUAD, the US has also formed multiple trilateral mechanisms in recent years, respectively with Japan and ROK, with Japan and the Philippines, with Japan and Australia, and with the UK and Australia. These exclusive cliques are heavily overlapped and are actually in an embarrassing position for though they have discussed a variety of topics, the lack of binding force has made their coordinated actions basically impossible, making their deterrence more symbolic than substantial.
The embarrassment of "minilateralism" is rooted in America's declining strengths. Between its increasingly polarized domestic politics, record-breaking debts, and bloating fiscal deficit, the US is barely able to sustain its ambition to maintain the hegemony in the Asia Pacific and has to seek assistance from its allies and partners. Especially after the Ukraine crisis and the new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out, the US is quickly channeling its strategic resources to Ukraine and Israel and squeezing the appropriations for the "Indo-Pacific strategy". Statistics show that the Biden administration allocated only US$1.8 billion to the strategy in 2023, while the rest expenditures were split among its allies and partners.
Washington's plan to have its allies and partners do more with less of its money has predestined QUAD's anti-China topics to be castles in the air, not to mention their not-so-aligned interests as well. Japan, Australia, and India are unable to bear the economic consequences of a complete decoupling from China, which is their largest trading partner. India, in particular, with its non-alliance tradition, has been strategically independent in diplomatic affairs and would not be an obedient follower of America's "Indo-Pacific strategy". With the inadequate resources and the hard-to-bridge interest disparity, the QUAD today is more like a "cheering SQUAD" against China living on ideological rhetoric. It's hard to say how far this loose mechanism will go.
Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
