Quad, Aukus: how Washington isolates China in the Indo-Pacific zone

It is the top of the gang against China. Joe Biden, the American President, receives in Washington Friday, September 24 Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese Prime Minister, and Scott Morrison, the Australian head of government, for the first face-to-face meeting of the members of the “Quad” (Quadrilateral security dialogue).

Days after the successful debut of the Aukus – the new military alliance in the Pacific between the US, UK and Australia, which cost a $ 56 billion contract to deliver submarines to France – Washington returns to stress how seriously it takes competition with China in this region of the globe.

Much more than military cooperation

But facing the Aukus, difficult, at first glance, to understand what the role of the Quad will be. Originally, in 2007, it was a club where the major influential powers in Asia discussed security issues in the Pacific. But, he was never very active … until 2017 when Donald Trump, all in his anti-Chinese obsession, decided to make it another weapon to contain the rise of Beijing in the region.

Which corresponds, more or less, to the goal displayed by the Aukus. “It is up to Joe Biden to specify what he wants to do with the Quad now,” said Maria Rost Rublee, international relations expert at Monash University in Wellington (Australia), interviewed by the Financial Times.

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But with the Quad, the American president has a weapon “which can be perfectly complementary to the Aukus”, estimates Antoine Bondaz, specialist in China and the diplomatic game in Asia at the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) , contacted by France 24.

Indeed, the new American-British-Australian initiative “is defined very precisely and narrowly as a military and security partnership, since it involves collaboration in the fields of submarines, cyberspace, quantum computing and artificial intelligence ”, explains Andrew Small, specialist in American-Chinese relations at the German Marshall Fund, an American think tank based in Europe, contacted by France 24.

Not so with the Quad which does not have such clearly defined goals. With this club, “Washington can achieve much broader goals,” says Andrew Small. During their last meeting with Zoom, in March 2021, the members insisted on the efforts of the four countries – the United States, India, Japan and Australia – to improve the distribution of vaccines against Covid-19. This time around, it should be about collaboration in the manufacture of computer chips, in the deployment of 5G and in the construction of common digital infrastructures.

American soft power tool

So many areas where Washington is trying to contain China. “The Quad seems to be evolving towards a kind of platform for economic collaboration in areas relating to security in the region”, analyzes Zeno Leoni, specialist in Sino-American relations at King’s College London, contacted by France 24.

In this sense, “the Quad looks like an American soft power tool”, adds this expert. This club can be seen as “a response to the Chinese New Silk Roads program,” confirms Andrew Small.

“It allows to demonstrate to the other countries of the region that even if, separately, these countries do not have the same financial means as China, they are able, together, to carry out equally ambitious projects”, summarizes Zeno Leoni.

As such, it is a much more political weapon than the Aukus. The Quad makes it possible to “say out loud: ‘Look at what democracies can achieve when they team up against China,” said Andrew Small.

And this is where one of the specificities of the Quad takes on all its importance: “It is not a club reserved for allies of the United States”, recalls Antoine Bondaz. Unlike the Aukus, which looks like a subset of the “Five Eyes” group – the “five eyes” that bring together Anglo-Saxon countries working together in the field of military intelligence.

The Quad thus counts among its members India, a country which has never officially chosen its camp between the United States and China. The fact that New Delhi is participating in this initiative and that Narendra Modi in person visited Washington on Friday demonstrates that the desire to counter Chinese ambitions in the Indo-Pacific zone is not the prerogative of Washington’s allies alone. , underlines the site The Diplomat.

It’s also proof that Joe Biden is ready to share a bit of American know-how with a wider range of countries than his traditional allies in the region.

Ultimately, Washington is setting up a game of alliances that isolates Beijing as much as possible. “It’s a bit of a two-speed cooperation system,” recognizes Antoine Bondaz. There is the Aukus, a small circle of three countries – United States, Australia, United Kingdom – which share a common vision of the stakes in the Indo-Pacific zone and have agreed to react quickly in the areas the most sensitive. And there is the Quad, which represents a more ambitious partnership but with more blurred outlines, and which is more open to countries which do not necessarily share the same priorities as Washington.