The Quad meetings at home in his hometown of Wilmington in Delaware may have been heavy with sentiment around US President Joe Biden’s swansong, but it had some great messaging for the world as a forum going beyond the reasons for its founding to look at the greater good in health issues, etc. Its commitment to try and establish a way to root out cancer with vaccines in the Quad Cancer Moonshot Initiative makes the Quad summit in Delaware, United States, a pathbreaker for humanity.
Notwithstanding the cynicism over this being a curiously timed meeting in a lame duck US President’s last months in office, besides the fact that the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is also on the way out, it may be deemed a success for looking to serve humanity besides being a meeting of minds over the shifting geopolitics of a highly fragmented world calling for such strategic affiliations among countries of the free world.
The four leaders may have resolved before the meeting not to let the elephant in the room distract them from coming together for causes besides making common cause in the preservation of democracy. And yet China was foremost on their minds as a hot mike episode involving Mr Biden was to reveal how much aggression there is perceived to be from the land of the eternal leader Xi Jinping.
If the US and three Indo-Pacific nations were to sign a maritime agreement and resolve to pep up a joint Coast Guard mission, it is a pointer to how much concern China’s military posturing in the China seas and beyond is causing the free world. Assurances on the Quad continuing way beyond the time of the current US President are heartening considering the uncertainty caused by the impending US elections and the fact that there is no guarantee of continuity if former President Donald Trump were to emerge the winner.
The US presidential poll puzzle may have added a bit to the greater challenge that the US and its allies from the free world face in steering ties with China without tipping the delicate balance between diplomacy and security in the existing tense global environment exacerbated by the two wars being fought in Europe and the Middle East. It did, however, seem that Biden had carried the day in reminding his allies of the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
China’s military assertiveness was a key topic of the India-US bilateral as well with Mr Biden helping seal what he called the defining partnership of the century. He had played a leading hand in how ties have shaped in the years since the first formal (virtual) meeting of the group that was revived in 2017 took place in 2021. The India-US defence partnership has also gone up a level with India in a position now to procure 31 high-tech drones which will enhance “surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of India’s armed forces across all domains".
India adding to its stature as a reliable mass producer of vaccines gets a further boost with the cancer-stopping doses to be produced here and given to the world as a gift while getting technical expertise from Japan and scientific support on cancer elimination from Australia which is reported to have eliminated cervical cancer from its shores in the Indo-Pacific region that is known to have a one-in-four incidence of the deadly disease that does not spare young girls either.
