India Pushes Itself Forward in the Quad Summit Post Operation Sindhoor

As the Indian government has started to go on the diplomatic offensive by rallying against both China and Pakistan following the recent Operation Sindhoor, the recently held Quad External Affairs meeting assumes significance.

- Balaji Chandramohan

The Quad foreign ministers' meeting served as a precursor to the scheduled Quad summit later this year. The ministers' summit followed the earlier Defence Ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where India pushed for a concrete declaration against terrorism sponsored by Pakistan.

Earlier, the Secretary of State of the United States and the Foreign Ministers of Australia, India, and Japan met in Washington, D.C. on July 1, 2025, for the 10th Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting.

As part of the summit, the ministers announced key initiatives to strengthen maritime and transnational security, economic prosperity, critical and emerging technologies, and support for humanitarian assistance and emergency response across the region.

The original Quadrilateral Security Initiative was a proposed maritime alliance that included the United States, Japan, and Australia, with India initially seen as a reluctant partner. This perception has changed in recent times. It has been rebranded as “Quad 2.0” because India is now more active in the alliance, including in the western Pacific, and is much more embedded in U.S. and Australian maritime strategic thinking on the Indo-Pacific.

Quad 2.0 focuses on the Indo-Pacific, acknowledging that China has concentrated on expanding the South Sea Fleet rather than the North and East Sea Fleets over the past ten years, warranting an adjustment in focus to the broader Indo-Pacific concept, as opposed to the Asia-Pacific, which excludes the western Indian Ocean.