China’s actions in the region and its “sudden turn toward serious aggression” are the factors currently driving members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a senior US State Department official said.
The official’s remarks, made during a background press conference, followed Tuesday’s meeting of foreign ministers from the four countries in the informal group – India, Australia, Japan and the United States. Quad members, during their discussions, pushed for a rules-based world order and peaceful dispute resolution.
Referring to the Quad ministerial meeting and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s interactions with his counterparts in the other three countries, the unnamed state department official said that “you can’t help the fact that it’s China and his actions in the region that make the Quad really matter and work this time. ”
Also read: India makes China signal, US hints at ‘formal’ Quad
When asked by the media about the fact that Pompeo was the only one of the four foreign ministers who explicitly named China in his opening remarks at the meeting, the official responded by saying that “the only thing that is driving all this [is] a sudden turn towards the brutal aggression of the Chinese government in all its periphery ”.
The official referred to the five-month border standoff between India and China and said: “I mean, if you look at the conflict … in the Himalayas between China and India, something that in the past has been handled according to the tacit o unwritten rules … to keep these things from getting out of hand, and then you look at what happened here recently, where there are actually people who beat themselves to death … ”
The official was referring to the June 15 clash in the Galwan Valley that left 20 Indian soldiers dead and resulted in unspecified Chinese casualties. The two sides have been unable to move forward with the withdrawal of troops at the sticking points despite several rounds of diplomatic and military talks.
The official further said that China’s aggressive activities were witnessed in many areas. “I mean, if you go all over the Indo-Pacific and its western borders, you are seeing things that you have not seen before, and they are responding to that,” he said.
Also read: Quad of 4 nations consolidates at the Tokyo meeting, sends a stern message to China
During their second ministerial meeting, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and his counterparts from Australia, Japan, and the US discussed the post-Covid-19 world order and sought a coordinated response to challenges, including financial problems, stemming from the pandemic. They also focused on increasing the resilience of supply chains and improving access to affordable vaccines.
The ministers also discussed connectivity, humanitarian assistance, maritime security, health security and the fight against terrorism, and reiterated their support for the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their willingness to work towards the realization of a common vision for the Indo-Pacific.
Pompeo said in an interview Tuesday that the United States wants to formalize and expand the Quad, and for other countries to join the group at the right time to “counter the challenge presented by the Chinese Communist Party.”
A second US state department official present at the briefing said Pompeo had spoken before about “results-oriented multilateralism” and “voluntary groupings of like-minded nations. [which] we share common values of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and individual freedom ”.
“So this is a piece of a much broader vision … for multilateralism that really works: effective multilateralism,” added the second official.
The second official further said that the issue must be framed correctly: “This is not a dispute between the United States and China. It is about the free world against Chinese authoritarianism. Y [Pompeo] He talks about it often, and that’s the way he framed his discussions, and there was a lot of agreement at that table. ”
The Quad remains a loose and informal grouping and there was no joint statement after Tuesday’s meeting, and the four countries issued separate readings on the discussions. This has raised questions among experts about whether the Quad can effectively function as a counterweight to China.
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