Strategic opportunities for India

The Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting in Washington on 1 July opens up strategic opportunities for India. Will New Delhi make the most of it having missed the bus a few times before?

- DK Giri

This is the time for reckoning for Quad in the context of freedom and security in India Pacific in the face of Chinese belligerence. For India, Quad meetings in the run-up to the Summit later this year become doubly important as New Delhi has been somewhat marginalised in the recent SCO meet.

I will juxtapose Quad against other regional structures India is part of, namely BRICS and SCO. This is to drive home the point that New Delhi has to make a choice in the current chaotic geopolitical situation.

Quad was created in 2007 with a formal proposal by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Although it started as Tsunami Core Group following the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, there was little doubt about its real intention. That was to contain China. That is why for about a decade, Quad remained dormant, largely due to Australian concerns about potential negative impacts on its relationship with China.