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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wave for a photo during the Quad summit held in Tokyo on May 24. (AFP/Yonhap News)

“We’re navigating a dark hour in our shared history. The Russian brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe[. . . .] This is more than just a European issue. It’s a global issue.”

US President Joe Biden was the last leader to take the microphone in introductory remarks for the second Quad summit in Tokyo on Tuesday morning. In his remarks, he mentioned the war in Ukraine as one of the reasons that the leaders of four major countries in the Indo-Pacific region had gathered.

His message was a call for the four powers supporting the shared value of democracy to come together and stop unilateral attempts by “authoritarian” countries such as China and Russia to alter the status quo, as with the war in Ukraine.

The key focus of the latest Quad summit — the first to take place in person since the war in Ukraine erupted in late February — was the question of how to establish a place for India within the cooperative framework as a major power that has so far maintained a “strategic balance” between the US and China and between the US and Russia. The joint statement issued after the summit that day indicated that some headway had been made.

“We strongly support the principles of freedom, rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes without resorting to threat or use of force, [or] any unilateral attempt to change the status quo,” the leaders of the four countries said in the document.

“We will continue to act decisively together to advance these principles in the [Indo-Pacific] region and beyond,” they asserted.

This marked the first time a Quad summit statement had used the phrase “act decisively.” India also announced its intent to take part in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which was launched Monday as a framework for containing China.

Even without mentioning them explicitly, the joint statement sent a strong message about keeping Beijing and Moscow in check. In the case of Russia, the Quad leaders referred to the tragedy in Ukraine while expressing their support for the “settlement of disputes without resorting to threat or the use of force [or] any unilateral attempt to change the status quo.”

In the case of China, they affirmed their commitment to “champion[ing] adherence to international law [. . .] to meet challenges to the maritime rules-based order, including in the East and South China Seas,” while stressing that they “strongly oppose any coercive, provocative or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo and increase tensions in the area.”

With no collective security framework operating in the region along the lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the US has been channeling its diplomatic capabilities into the establishment of the Quad as a framework for democracies to come together and counter China’s rise.

The first meeting of Quad foreign ministers was held during the Donald Trump presidency in September 2019. Two months after taking office, the Biden administration upgraded it in March 2021 to the level of a summit via video link.

The meeting Tuesday was the fourth overall and the second in person, with a previous in-person meeting in September 2021 and videoconference in March of this year. In his remarks Tuesday, Biden clearly identified the nature of the Quad as a forum for discussing how to resist autocracy and achieve democracy.

In another gesture toward China, the four leaders announced plans for increasing their cooperation on economic security, including areas such as 5G communications, semiconductor supply chains, and cybersecurity. They also made plans for US$50 billion in infrastructure investments in the Indo-Pacific region over a five-year period, along with activities to combat illegal fishing.

Commenting in the past on the prospect of South Korea joining, the US had signaled its opposition, stressing the Quad would “remain the Quad.” A joint statement issued after a South Korea-US summit on May 21 mentioned only that Biden “welcomes President [Yoon Suk-yeol’s] interest in the Quad.”

The question of admitting new members was not discussed during the summit Tuesday. The next meeting is to take place in Australia.

As expected, China responded by blasting the leaders for “stoking bloc confrontation.”

In a regular briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin stressed that China “actively upholds the UN-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.”

“We hope certain countries would not see China through tinted glasses and make unwarranted accusations,” he added.

“Building small cliques and stoking bloc confrontation is the real threat to a peaceful, stable and cooperative maritime order,” he continued.

By Kim So-youn, Tokyo correspondent; Choi Hyun-june, Beijing correspondent

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