LATIKA M BOURKE: Donald Trump upends the Quad, calling it security dialogue, defying Australian ‘caution’

Penny Wong has agreed that the Quad will defend the Indo-Pacific from threats, despite the Foreign Minister’s own website explicitly ruling out that the Quad is a security-based network.

In a bold show of the second Trump Administration’s focus on countering China’s aggression in the region, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted his Quad counterparts on his first day on the job.

The foreign ministers of the US, Japan, Australia and India released a joint statement committing to “strengthening a free and open Indo-Pacific where the rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity are upheld and defended.”

“Our four nations maintain our conviction that international law, economic opportunity, peace, stability, and security in all domains including the maritime domain underpin the development and prosperity of the peoples of the Indo-Pacific,” the ministers said.

“We also strongly oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.”

Asked if Quad would be more assertive on security and defence as a result, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said after the meeting: “We think more ambition in what the Quad does is a good thing – the form of that is something that will be discussed.”

Buried deep in one of his many inauguration-day executive orders, US President Donald Trump referred to the grouping as “the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.”

But Labor has gone out of its way to say that while the Quad involves general maritime security, it is not a security dialogue.

After Labor won government in 2022, DFAT changed its website to explicitly state that the Quad was: “Not the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, noting its nature as a diplomatic, not security, partnership.”

When the Coalition left office, the website simply said: “Quad’s origins date back to our collaboration in response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.”

In the readouts of their bilateral meetings Japan and the United States twice named China but Australia, also a treaty ally of the United States, did not.

Former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo said the significantly strengthened language reflected a “most welcome evolution” of the Quad that was clearly driven by the new Trump Administration.

“It explicitly embraces security issues as being central to the Quad’s rationale and purpose,” Mr Pezzullo told The Nightly.

“Secretary Rubio has made a very telling first move in sharpening regional security arrangements, and his demonstration of US leadership in this regard is very welcome.

“The Quad is an important component of the emerging regional security architecture that will help to thwart China’s rise to regional hegemony.

“The explicit reference to opposing the use of force or coercion in the regional is especially welcome in this regard.

“Australia has been too cautious about this in the recent past, by routinely declaring that the Quad is a ‘diplomatic’ rather than security partnership.

“I cannot imagine that Secretary Rubio or the Trump administration more generally would have accepted that formulation.

“Hopefully it can now be retired from Australia’s diplomatic lexicon.”

Professor Harsh Pant from the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation which has close relations with the Modi government said there was no doubt that the Trump Administration was making its mark by transforming the Quad.

“The way it has panned out certainly has the imprint of the United States and the Trump Administration,” Professor Pant said in an interview from Delhi by phone.

“Because there was a very cautious approach under the Biden administration because they thought that countries like India might be more comfortable with ambiguity.

“So they’ve been treading cautiously.”

But Professor Pant said that under Trump, countries like India that had been previously more passive on Quad’s purpose would find it hard to say no.

“That’s one of the things with the open transactionalism that that comes with Trump,” he said.

India and China have had a tense relationship in recent years but reached an agreement on their border dispute late last year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is likely to hold his first meeting with US President Donald Trump at the next Quad leader’s meeting will be hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India.

Professor Pant said it would be a good opportunity for Modi to host Trump to showcase India and the relationship beyond Quad.

The Quadrilateral was first formed to deliver aid after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Kevin Rudd, who is now serving as Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, contributed to the grouping’s canning in 2008 when he was Prime Minister.

Anxious about China’s growing dominance, the first Trump Administration revived it and the Biden Administration continued it.

But as part of efforts to insist that it was not a security grouping, the Quad’s focus was diluted and its range of priorities ballooned to include healthy oceans, and at Joe Biden’s last Quad leader’s meeting committed to trying to solve cancer.

Euan Graham, acting director for Defence Strategy and National Security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said with the new shift it was possible that Quad could begin to operate more formally and openly on defence.

“The Quad navies already exercise together in the annual Malabar drills,” he said.

“It is likely that a military dimension to four-way cooperation will now develop within the Quad, not only in un-war-like activities as disaster relief but also focused on deterrence.

“This should not dilute the Quad’s collaborative agenda in other policy fields, such as supply chain resilience and maritime domain awareness, but rather complement it.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a daily briefing that countries should not be targeting one another.

“China believes that cooperation between countries should not target any third party,” she said.

“Engaging in group politics and bloc confrontation will not bring lasting peace and security, and is not conducive to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and the world as a whole.”