Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, sometimes referred to as the Quad is a grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that is maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue is widely viewed by newspapers and think tanks to be a diplomatic arrangement responding to increased Chinese economic and political power.
The grouping was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with the support of Australian prime minister John Howard, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. vice president Dick Cheney. The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar. The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power.
The Quad ceased in 2008 following the withdrawal of Australia during Kevin Rudd's tenure as prime minister, reflecting ambivalence in Australian policy over the growing tension between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific. Following Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard in 2010, enhanced military cooperation between the United States and Australia was resumed, leading to the placement of U.S. Marines near Darwin, overlooking the Timor Sea and Lombok Strait. Meanwhile, India, Japan, and the United States continued to hold joint naval exercises under Malabar.
During the 2017 ASEAN Summits in Manila, all four former members led by Abe, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and U.S. president Donald Trump agreed to revive the Quad partnership in order to counter China militarily and diplomatically in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the South China Sea. Tensions between Quad members and China have led to fears of what was dubbed by some commentators "a new Cold War" in the region, and the Chinese government responded to the Quad dialogue by issuing formal diplomatic protests to its members, calling it "Asian NATO".
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam were invited to "Quad Plus" meetings to discuss their responses to it.
Background
Strategic framework of US–China competition
In the early twenty-first century, the strategic preoccupation of the United States with Iraq and Afghanistan served as a distraction from major power shifts in the Asia-Pacific, brought about by increased Chinese economic power, which undermined America's traditional role in the region. In the long term the United States has sought a policy of "soft containment" of China by organizing strategic partnerships with democracies at its periphery. While US alliances with Japan, Australia and India now form the bulwark of this policy, the development of closer US military ties to India has been a complex process since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Australian commentaries showed mixed attitudes to a Quadrilateral partnership isolating China.India–US military relations
Active US-Indian military cooperation expanded in 1991 following the economic liberalization of India when American Lt. General Claude C. Kicklighter, then commander of the United States Army Pacific, proposed army-to-army cooperation. This cooperation further expanded in the mid-1990s under an early Indian centre-right coalition, and in 2001 India offered the United States military facilities within its territory for offensive operations in Afghanistan. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee signed a "New Framework for India-US Defense" in 2005 under the Indian United Progressive Alliance government, increasing cooperation regarding military relations, defence industry and technology sharing, and the establishment of a "Framework on maritime security cooperation." India and the United States conducted dozens of joint military exercises in the ensuing years before the development of the Quad, interpreted as an effort to "contain" China. Indian political commentator Brahma Chellaney referred to the emerging Quadrilateral partnership between the United States, Japan, Australia and India as part of a new "Great Game" in Asia, and Indian diplomat M. K. Rasgotra has maintained that American efforts to shape security pacts in Asia will result not in an "Asian Century," but rather in an "American Century in Asia."Some, like US Lt. General Jeffrey B. Kohler, viewed US-India defence agreements as potentially lucrative for American defence industries and oversaw the subsequent sale of American military systems to India. Nevertheless, some Indian commentators opposed increased American military cooperation with India, citing the American presence in Iraq, hostility to Iran and "attempts at encircling China" as fundamentally destabilizing to Asian peace, and objecting to the presence of American warships with nuclear capabilities off the coast of southern India, or to American calls for the permanent hosting of American naval vessels in Goa or Kochi.
Trilateral Security Dialogue (TSD)
The Trilateral Strategic Dialogue was a series of trilateral meetings between the United States, Japan, and Australia. The TSD originally convened at senior officials level in 2002, then was upgraded to ministerial level in 2005. The United States expected regional allies to help facilitate evolving US global strategy to fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation. In return, Japan and Australia expected benefits including continued US strategic involvement and the maintenance of strategic guarantees in the region.2004 Tsunami Cooperation
The Quad's origins, also referred to as "Quad 1.0", go back to the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, later leading to a wider range of initiatives including maritime, health security, and education, and "with a focus on securing a free and open Indo-Pacific".In 2021, some commentators wrote that an ad-hoc Tsunami Core Group in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami may have been an early precursor to the Quad.
South China Sea
The nine-dash line refers to the ill-defined demarcation line used by the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, for their claims of the major part of the South China Sea. The contested area in the South China Sea includes the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and various other areas including Pratas Island and the Vereker Banks, the Macclesfield Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. Despite having made the vague claim public in 1947, neither the PRC nor the ROC has filed a formal and specifically defined claim to the area. An early map showing a U-shaped eleven-dash line was published in the then-Republic of China on 1 December 1947. Two of the dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later removed at the behest of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, reducing the total to nine. Chinese scholars asserted at the time that the version of the map with nine dashes represented the maximum extent of historical claims to the South China Sea. Subsequent editions added a tenth dash to the east of Taiwan island in 2013, extending it into the East China Sea.Condemnation of Pahalgam Terror Attack
In July 2025, the Quad foreign ministers—representing the United States, India, Japan, and Australia—condemned the 22 April terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, that killed 26 civilians, most of them tourists. In a joint statement issued from Washington, the Quad called for the perpetrators, organisers, and financiers of the attack to be brought to justice without delay. Though not naming Pakistan explicitly, the group's call aligned with growing international concern over cross-border terrorism originating from Pakistani soil.The Quad also expressed serious concerns over coercive actions and militarisation in the East and South China Seas. In the wake of the Pahalgam attack, India launched Operation Sindoor on 7 May, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The Quad's statement marked a clear show of solidarity with India's right to defend its citizens from state-sponsored terrorism.
Members
List of Leaders Summits
Creation and cessation of the Quad (2007–2008)
Creation
In early 2007, Prime Minister Abe proposed the Quad, under which India would join a formal multilateral dialogue with Japan, the United States and Australia.The initiation of an American, Japanese, Australian and Indian defence arrangement, modelled on the concept of a Democratic Peace, was credited to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Quad was supposed to establish an "Asian Arc of Democracy", envisioned to ultimately include countries in Central Asia, Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula, and other countries in Southeast Asia: "virtually all the countries on China's periphery, except for China itself." This led some critics, such as former U.S. State Department official Morton Abramowitz, to call the project "an anti-Chinese move", while others have called it a "democratic challenge" to the projected Chinese century, mounted by Asian powers in coordination with the United States. While China has traditionally favoured the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Quad was viewed as an "Asian NATO;" Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund of the United States has written that the arrangement "could lead to military conflict," or could instead "lay an enduring foundation for peace" if China becomes a democratic leader in Asia.
China's opposition
China sent diplomatic protests to all four members of the Quad before any formal convention of its members. In May 2007 in Manila, Australian Prime Minister John Howard participated with other members in the inaugural meeting of the Quad at Cheney's urging, one month after joint naval exercises near Tokyo by India, Japan and the United States. In September 2007 further naval exercises were held in the Bay of Bengal, including Australia. These were followed in October by a further security agreement between Japan and India, ratified during a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Tokyo, to promote sea lane safety and defence collaboration; Japan had previously established such an agreement only with Australia.Though the Quadrilateral initiative of the Bush administration improved relationships with New Delhi, it gave the impression of "encircling" China. The security agreement between Japan and India furthermore made China conspicuous as absent on the list of Japan's strategic partners in Asia. These moves appeared to "institutionally alienate" China, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, and promote a "Washington-centric" ring of alliances in Asia.
The Japanese Prime Minister succeeding Abe, Taro Aso, downplayed the importance of China in the Japan-India pact signed following the creation of the Quad, stating, "There was mention of China – and we do not have any assumption of a third country as a target such as China." Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon similarly argued that the defence agreement was long overdue because of Indian freight trade with Japan, and did not specifically target China. On the cusp of visits to China and meetings with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao in January 2008, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, declared that "India is not part of any so-called contain China effort," after being asked about the Quad.