Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Two days ahead of US President Joe Biden’s virtual meeting with America’s partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga discussed with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi the potential threats the Indo-Pacific Region faces from a resurgent China.
Experts view the Quad as a prelude to the alliance’s formalization as the ‘Asian Nato’ in the coming years.
Ahead of the March 12 video conferencing between leaders of the US, Australia, Japan, and India, Tokyo sounded an ‘alarm’ about Beijing’s regional intentions, media reported on Wednesday.
During their 40-minute conversation, the two leaders highlighted the importance of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’. They reportedly focused on the threat posed by China to the status quo in the Indo-Pacific Region, a geographic space on either side of the Malacca Straits which links the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, and is a major chokepoint of the east-west international trade.
Modi and Suga also agreed to advance not only the India-Japan relationship but also cement bonds of the Indo-Pacific Quad.
‘The two leaders shared the recognition that cooperation towards realizing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific is becoming increasingly important and to this end, shared the view to steadily advance both Japan-India bilateral cooperation and Japan-Australia-India-U.S. quadrilateral cooperation,’ a press statement of the Japanese foreign ministry said.
Naming Beijing, the strongly-worded statement said that ‘Prime Minister Suga expressed serious concerns regarding unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and the South China Sea, China’s Coast Guard Law and the situation in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).’
‘Prime Minister Suga also asked for understanding and cooperation toward the early resolution of the abductions issue by North Korea. Furthermore, the two leaders confirmed that they have grave concerns over the situation in Myanmar and they would closely work together in this vein.’
US President Joe Biden has spoken to the PMs of all three countries ahead of the Quad Summit. But a joint meeting of the four leaders would give a major push to the collective Indo-Pacific strategy.
The four leaders’ talks will go beyond security issues and discuss the establishment of new supply chains, highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic after the world realized the dangers of critical overdependence on China.
The Quad Summit will be an opportunity to exchange views on contemporary challenges such as resilient supply chains, emerging and critical technologies, maritime security, and climate change,’ the Ministry of External Affairs’ statement said.
Supplies of Covid-19 vaccines in the Indo-Pacific will be another top priority during the summit. The leaders will also review efforts to combat the pandemic and ‘explore opportunities for collaboration in ensuring safe, equitable and affordable vaccines in the Indo-Pacific region,’ it added.
On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping directed his country’s military to be prepared to respond ‘to the current complex and difficult situations’ which remain largely unstable and uncertain.
‘The current security situation of our country is largely unstable and uncertain. The entire military must coordinate the relationship between capacity building and combat readiness, be prepared to respond to a variety of complex and difficult situations at any time, resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and provide strong support for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist state,’ the South China Morning Post quoted Jinping as saying during a panel discussion attended by armed forces representatives in Beijing.
Amid heightened frictions with China, the Indian Navy and its partners in the Quad after the summit will engage in complex interoperability exercises involving carrier strike groups, anti-submarine warfare aircraft and attack submarines in April, a move aimed at projecting their dominance from the Persian Gulf to the Malacca Straits.
Quad’s strategic allies France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be part of this exercise. The UAE will be joining India and France for the first time in a trilateral naval exercise in the strategically important Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in late April under the Varuna banner, scheduled from April 25 to 27.