A much-needed reality check for Quad

According to Rubio, the Quad was successfully transitioning from ‘discussing problems’ to pursuing cooperation on issues such as humanitarian relief, disaster response and maritime domain awareness

Foreign affairs analysts often struggle to assess the current state of the Quad. Some see it in the pink of health, highlighting the list of missions undertaken by member countries and the positive results flowing from them. They had expected India to host the Quad Summit in 2026. However, the current POTUS has been too busy stopping wars, saving the world and reaping unprecedented benefits from his weaponisation of trade and tariffs to spare time to attend a Quad summit in India.

On the other hand, sceptics maintain that the Quad, born in the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis created by the 2004 tsunami, gained international attention with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s soaring speech, “Confluence of the Two Seas”, delivered in the Indian Parliament in 2007. However, it remained in limbo from 2009 to 2016, before being resuscitated by US President Donald J. Trump in 2017 to counter China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. It was eventually elevated to the leaders’ level under Joe Biden, who hosted the first summit in Washington in 2021. Its mandate was also broadened to include non-security issues such as health security, climate and technology, infrastructure, and maritime domain awareness. The sceptics argue that the grouping is now overstretched and overly dependent on the US. The oft-repeated emphasis on keeping the Indo-Pacific open, free and inclusive, in accordance with international law, and resolving all disputes through peaceful dialogue sounds unobjectionable, but carries the shadow of China, even without naming it.

In the light of Trump’s visit to China in May 2026 and Xi Jinping’s much-hyped state visit to the US last month, which not only underlined Washington’s tacit recognition of China as its peer but also its keenness to maintain a thaw in relations with Beijing, the American vocabulary on the Quad has undergone a subtle change.

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At the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Atlanta on October 31, 2026, held on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, shared the American vision of the Quad without hype or woolly romanticism. He, in fact, introduced a much-needed reality check for those inclined to project the Quad as an earthshakingly significant grouping for the region. He said: “The challenge with any format like the Quad is that you can sit down, meet, and say that you have all these things you want to work together on. But you actually have to do them. In many cases, it’s about moving from talking about things to actually doing them…”