Quad 2.0: Contemporary Trends and Future Trajectories

The growing power of China remains a key concern for the new Trump administration. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy notes that the evolving challenges in the region necessitate leveraging the core asymmetric strength of the U.S.—its network of partnerships and security alliances—by promoting interoperability and its warfighting capabilities. The quadrilateral cooperation mechanism, known as the Quad, is a manifestation of this approach based on a minilateral grouping among U.S., India, Australia, and Japan. Shared interests, democratic values, and strong people-to-people ties underpin this partnership. Although the Quad’s agenda seemed opaque since its inception, evolving to cater traditional security threats, the member states frequently refer to the commitment of ensuring a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Region” (FOIP). It primarily includes supporting a rules-based order, maritime security, and enhanced connectivity as opposed to the Belt and Road Initiative, freedom of navigation and overflight, and so on.

Being a key instrument in the ongoing geostrategic tussle for influence, the Quad has direct ramifications for other regional states due to several factors. By contributing to the resurgence of a Cold War mentality, the Quad puts direct pressure on developing states by embroiling them into bloc politics. Amid ongoing Sino-U.S. great power contestation, New Delhi perceives this moment as a strategic opportunity to align with the U.S. to acquire political and technological advantages that could not only complement India’s geo-political and economic aspirations at systemic level but also expand the strategic focus from continental borders to maritime domain. Hence, India has embraced hyphenating the two oceans under the Indo-Pacific construct and joined the quadrilateral grouping. Growing military collaborations with countries like the U.S. and Japan enhance India’s capabilities to respond to China’s posture, particularly in the maritime arena. The expanding influence of Beijing has challenged New Delhi’s identity as the preeminent power in South Asia.

India’s access to high-end military technology and critical military information and data that facilitates locating and identifying potential targets shall enable it to strike the intended targets with the help of advanced weapons like guided missiles and drones. Given India’s recent ambitions to contemplate counterforce targeting options, New Delhi may be tempted to use real-time data to monitor adversary’s key military assets and incentivize it to conduct pre-emptive strikes in a crisis.

The Quad has come a long way, evolving from merely a platform for non-traditional security threats to becoming militarily more assertive in character, having serious repercussions for security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. At geopolitical level, it contributes to bloc politics by embroiling states into zero-sum games to pursue opposing interests. Weaker states feel compelled to choose sides between competing models of China and the U.S. This trend reduces prospects for cooperation and induces competition with heightened challenges for military confrontation. At the military level, the Quad provides a framework for the rapid flow of advanced military technologies and related aspects, leading not only to strategic disequilibrium—particularly, in South Asia—but also incentivizes the offensive posturing of India with growing risks of the pre-emptive use of force against adversaries.

The growing power of China remains a key concern for the new Trump administration. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy notes that the evolving challenges in the region necessitate leveraging the core asymmetric strength of the U.S.—its network of partnerships and security alliances—by promoting interoperability and its warfighting capabilities. The quadrilateral cooperation mechanism, known as the Quad, is a manifestation of this approach based on a minilateral grouping among U.S., India, Australia, and Japan. Shared interests, democratic values, and strong people-to-people ties underpin this partnership. Although the Quad’s agenda seemed opaque since its inception, evolving to cater traditional security threats, the member states frequently refer to the commitment of ensuring a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Region” (FOIP). It primarily includes supporting a rules-based order, maritime security, and enhanced connectivity as opposed to the Belt and Road Initiative, freedom of navigation and overflight, and so on.

The revival of this security dialogue as Quad 2.0 in 2017 expanded the scope of cooperation to include conducting joint military exercises and the establishment of six working groups as well as an investors network. Quad 2.0 brings forth a clear aim to counterbalance China and cooperate on security issues. Driven by geopolitical pragmatism, Quad member states have adopted an aggressive foreign policy approach, stretching from the South China Sea in the Pacific to the Western Indian Ocean. Towards this effect, during the Quad virtual summit in 2020, President Joe Biden noted that member states would play key role in achieving the objectives of the Indo-Pacific strategy. Hence, the Quad emerges as a tool in the U.S.-led model for strategic confrontation based on deterrence and a military based response.

Being a key instrument in the ongoing geostrategic tussle for influence, the Quad has direct ramifications for other regional states due to several factors. By contributing to the resurgence of a Cold War mentality, the Quad puts direct pressure on developing states by embroiling them into bloc politics. Amid ongoing Sino-U.S. great power contestation, New Delhi perceives this moment as a strategic opportunity to align with the U.S. to acquire political and technological advantages that could not only complement India’s geo-political and economic aspirations at systemic level but also expand the strategic focus from continental borders to maritime domain. Hence, India has embraced hyphenating the two oceans under the Indo-Pacific construct and joined the quadrilateral grouping. Growing military collaborations with countries like the U.S. and Japan enhance India’s capabilities to respond to China’s posture, particularly in the maritime arena. The expanding influence of Beijing has challenged New Delhi’s identity as the preeminent power in South Asia.

There appears to be an agreement in the Quad that this arrangement’s effectiveness hinges upon New Delhi’s ability to exert increasing influence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). This is evident from U.S. perception of India’s leadership role in the IOR. Hence, India’s common interests with the U.S., as well as its potential to hedge against Beijing, if backed by adequate military capabilities and a political will to tangibly compete against rising China, offers New Delhi a strategic opportunity to assume a key position in the Indo-Pacific alliance system.

India’s engagement in the Quad further advances its extra-regional ambitions in the Indo-Pacific by extending its position as a legitimate actor beyond the Bay of Bengal to East Asia and the Pacific. It also justifies a stronger U.S.–India relationship, diluting Chinese influence and curtailing potential adversary participation in regional forums. While the Quad serves as a tool to check and balance China’s rise, it exacerbates an arms race by facilitating the inflow of arms development and acquisition in the Indo-Pacific region. The expansion of the Indo-U.S. strategic and security partnership in the last one and half decades has contributed to enhanced defense trade and technology cooperation between the two states. For instance, New Delhi’s defense procurement from the U.S. amounted to $20 billion in 2023, as compared to zero in 2008. Major defense articles provided by the U.S. to India include C-130J, C-17, and P8I aircraft, in addition to different types of multi-mission helicopters including Apache, Chinook, MH60R. Conducting Malabar naval exercises, among Quad members and other likeminded states like Singapore, is another significant step to promote interoperability through different naval operations, including combat maneuvers and war games.

Participation in the Quad has afforded significant advantages to India in terms of access to advanced defense related technologies. One of the most noteworthy aspects of this engagement is that India has been able to acquire these technologies from the U.S. without entering any formal alliance with the latter. Contrary to its Cold War model of establishing alliances based on a “hub-and-spokes” relationship with each of its allies, Washington now prefers incremental and informal evolution of engagements that are minilateral or multilateral in character. The Quad signifies this evolving system of partnerships, albeit with differing views, if this security-based grouping may adopt character of a military alliance. While India’s mixed diplomatic approach and claimed policy of strategic autonomy is a constraining factor for prospective formal alliance, the Quad is unfolding as a project or issue-based military collaboration among member states. Japan and Australia are already engaged with U.S. for collective security through formal agreements. Simultaneously, India’s gradual drift from non-aligned posture to leverage partnerships by intertwining with the U.S. and militarily gearing-up against China is indicative of the Quad’s possible transformation into a more informal and project-based security alliance. This raises Washington’s expectations of New Delhi as a balancer against China to promote U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA)—one of the four foundational agreements between the two countries—is an example that provides a mechanism for military collaboration against perceived adversaries and significantly boosts India's offensive military capabilities. Signed in October 2020, BECA enables the provision of a range of geospatial products from the U.S. to India. This includes flight information products and access to hydrographic and mapping data, as well as the geospatial information bank of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. BECA accrues two significant advantages for India. First, access to geospatial maps provides New Delhi with pinpoint military accuracy of automated hardware systems and weapons including ballistic and cruise missiles. Secondly, it allows for the acquisition of armed unmanned aerial vehicles, like Predator-B, that rely on spatial data to accurately strike desired targets. BECA also includes providing high-quality GPS for real-time intelligence, as well as navigation to strike enemy targets with maximum precision. Previously, India had limited access to advanced navigational and flight management systems for C-17, C-130J, and P8-I aircraft systems. The extensive network of spy, GPS, communication and other U.S. satellites continuously provide real time updates on military movements anywhere in the world. As BECA provides a mechanism for intelligence and information sharing with partner states, a possible provision of this to New Delhi shall prove detrimental to security of its adversarial states as it would render their strategic and military assets vulnerable to detection, identification, and targeting by using precision strike delivery systems. India’s strategic agreements with the U.S. offer mechanisms for greater interoperability and sharing of military intelligence and technologies. This constitutes the shared use of force against perceived adversaries and thus heightens their security dilemma. All these trends suggest the changing geopolitical and geostrategic landscape of the Indian Ocean Region.

Engagement through the Quad serves as a catalyst for India to pursue a strategic roadmap that bolsters its military prowess and elevates its stature as an emerging great power. The Quad has significant implications for the security dynamics of the IOR. By fueling military asymmetries in the South Asian context, the Quad is placing a greater role to India in regional affairs, and helping it pursue expansive ambitions in the maritime domain. Thus, the Quad directly exacerbates Pakistan’s threat perception. Any efforts to exert dominance particularly in the Western Indian Ocean shall constitute as a step to marginalize adversarial states like Pakistan. Islamabad has expressed concerns that policies of discrimination and exceptionalism undermine strategic stability in the region. The preferential treatment to India through frameworks like the Quad rouses Islamabad’s concerns about how exacerbating power differential is affecting the regional balance of power. Hence, given India’s desire to establish strategic dominance in the wider Indian Ocean, the Quad is emerging as a hard-core tool of coercion. It not only constrains Pakistan’s options by impacting great power rivalry but also undermines its efforts to maintain strategic balance in the IOR.

India’s access to high-end military technology and critical military information and data that facilitates locating and identifying potential targets shall enable it to strike the intended targets with the help of advanced weapons like guided missiles and drones. Given India’s recent ambitions to contemplate counterforce targeting options, New Delhi may be tempted to use real-time data to monitor adversary’s key military assets and incentivize it to conduct pre-emptive strikes in a crisis.

The Quad has come a long way, evolving from merely a platform for non-traditional security threats to becoming militarily more assertive in character, having serious repercussions for security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. At geopolitical level, it contributes to bloc politics by embroiling states into zero-sum games to pursue opposing interests. Weaker states feel compelled to choose sides between competing models of China and the U.S. This trend reduces prospects for cooperation and induces competition with heightened challenges for military confrontation. At the military level, the Quad provides a framework for the rapid flow of advanced military technologies and related aspects, leading not only to strategic disequilibrium—particularly, in South Asia—but also incentivizes the offensive posturing of India with growing risks of the pre-emptive use of force against adversaries.