Commentary
The Quad is the Quadrilateral Security Dialog between the United States, Australia, Japan, and India. The group has been denounced by Beijing as “a sinister gang” and an incipient Asian NATO. The latter term has often been applied to it in the media. Is the Quad a military alliance in the making? Should it be?
Purpose of the Quad
The idea of organizing the Quadrilateral Security Dialog is credited largely to former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In 2007 he proposed a coalition of Indo-Pacific democracies to work together to guarantee a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region.
That cooperation was in part an outgrowth of Exercise Malabar; a joint U.S.-Indian naval exercise that began in 1992. The United States suspended the exercise in 1998, in response to India’s nuclear weapons testing, but renewed the collaboration following the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001….