New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to join the leaders of the US, Japan and Australia at the Quad summit in the US later this month as the influential grouping is likely to deliberate on pressing global challenges including the situation in Ukraine. The summit is likely to take place on September 21 in US President Joe Biden’s hometown of Wilmington in Delaware, people familiar with the matter said.

There is no official announcement yet on the date and venue of the high-profile summit. It was India’s turn to host the Quad summit this year. However, the leaders of the grouping decided to hold the summit at a venue convenient to all in view of constraints of a tight calendar.

As per the new plan, India is expected to host the Quad summit next year.

PM Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida are among the world leaders who are travelling to the US to attend the UN’s Summit of the Future in New York on September 22 and 23.

The Quad summit is likely to focus on boosting cooperation among the member nations in the Indo-Pacific besides delving into various key challenges facing the globe including the conflict in Ukraine.

In July, the foreign ministers of the Quad member nations held wide-ranging talks in Tokyo with a focus on boosting overall cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

In a loud and clear message to China, the Quad foreign ministerial meeting reaffirmed the grouping’s steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and resolved to work towards a region where no country dominates others and each state is free from “coercion” in all its forms.

The foreign ministers also announced a plan to expand its ambitious Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) programme to the Indian Ocean region that would facilitate monitoring the strategic waters.

In New York, Prime Minister Modi is also set to address an Indian community event besides holding talks with a number of world leaders on the sidelines of the UN summit, the people cited above said.

The Summit of the Future will bring leaders from various countries to forge a new international consensus on how to deliver a “better present and safeguard the future”, according to the UN.

Effective global cooperation is increasingly critical to our survival but difficult to achieve in an atmosphere of mistrust, using outdated structures that no longer reflect today’s political and economic realities, the UN said.

The Summit of the Future is a chance to get back on track, it said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with USA President Joe Biden, Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida during the Quad Leaders’ Summit, in Hiroshima. File photo
| Photo Credit: PTI

India and the United States have “swapped” hosting the Quad Summit so as to allow U.S. President Joseph Biden to hold the Summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida from his hometown of Delaware, said sources, confirming that the summit will be held later this month in the United States rather than India. 

India would host the Quad Summit in 2025, they said, which indicated the new U.S. President, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would visit India next year.

The summit, which will be held on September 21, as The Hindu reported on Saturday (September 7, 2024), and will take place in Mr. Bidens homestate of Delaware.

On the September 22, PM Modi will address a diaspora meet at the Nassau Coliseum in New York’s Long Island entitled “Modi & U.S. Progress Together” and will attend  the “Summit of the Future” at the United Nations on September 22-23. Meanwhile, possibly given that Mr. Modi will travel to the US earlier than scheduled, he will not stay on to deliver the address to the UN General Assembly, as announced before, on September 26. According to a revised provisional list of speakers issued by the UN, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will address the General Debate on September 28th. 

According to official sources said the Quad summit swap was decided after a meeting of the Quad ‘sous sherpas’, the officials negotiating the logistics for the Quad Summit earlier this month and finalized after conversations between Prime Minister Modi and the US and Australian leaders. While originally, India had planned to host the Summit in New York on the side-lines of the UN meetings, the US has now decided to organize the event, that will fall on a Saturday. Mr. Biden travels from Washington to his vacation home at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware on the weekends. 

“Once it became clear that this year’s Quad Summit would take place in the United States around the UN General Assembly, Quad partners consulted and agreed that the U.S. and India would swap host years,” a source aware of the negotiations told The Hindu.

“This enables President Biden to host the Summit in his final year as President, and India to host in 2025, providing an opportunity for PM Modi to host Quad Leaders in India next year,” the source added.

Explained | What’s the 4-nation Quad, where did it come from?

As The Hindu reported on Saturday, confusion over the Quad Summit, that is held annually, and is meant to rotate between the Australia, India, Japan and the US as venues, has intensified over the last few months, as Indian officials attempted to coordinate schedules amidst elections in India, the US, and ruling party elections in Japan. In addition, the political commitments of Mr. Modi, Mr. Biden, Mr. Kishida and Mr. Albanese have grown more fraught owing to the US President and Japanese PM deciding not to contest for the next term, and the Quad Summit now finalised will be seen more as a “farewell” for the two leaders. 

The week gone by has been a busy period for India in the Indo-Pacific. India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, attended the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Laos and the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Japan. Jaishankar’s visit to Laos also featured a bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, following their last meeting at Astana earlier this year. The context for Jaishankar’s visit was set by India’s enduring pushback against China in key arenas of its interest. Arguably, China remains the pre-eminent concern for India’s national security planners. India’s China challenge is multipronged, with unresolved border conflict along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as well as Beijing’s expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean. China’s more recent overtures in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the South China Sea region, have also compelled India’s Quad partners and several Southeast Asian countries to intensify measures to counterbalance Beijing. Thus, the China question was a natural focal point for Jaishankar during both Laos and Japan visits.

China, A Critical Cog In The Quad

At the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting, the four member countries of the grouping released a joint statement which amply addressed their common concerns with regard to China’s belligerent posturing in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad members have long resisted the notion that the formulation of the grouping is directed at countering Beijing, instead emphasising that it seeks to harness the emerging opportunities of collective cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. There is no denying, however, that the China factor is a critical cog in the Quad wheel. The latest joint statement released by the Quad countries evidently suggests that concerns regarding China’s overtures in the Indo-Pacific appear to be taking centre-stage in the thinking of the grouping. The joint statement expressed concerns over the evolving situation in the East and South China Seas, alluding to China’s unilateral actions by use of force and coercion. The statement decried, without naming, Beijing’s use of coast guard and maritime militia in the South China Sea attributing it to ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ in the region. 

Jaishankar’s individual remarks about the state of India-China relations have further garnered attention. Upon being questioned about India’s relations with China, Jaishankar unequivocally stated that the bilateral ties between the two neighbours are ‘not doing very well’. This admission appears to present continuity in India’s enduring pushback against China in light of border skirmishes and conflict since 2020. However, in the Indo-Pacific context, a shift appears to be underway in India’s approach towards China. In the past, India’s response to China’s aggressive overtures in the Indo-Pacific had remained relatively subdued. In its stead, Jaishankar’s recent comments at the Quad summit and the joint statement demonstrate India’s willingness to push back against China in the Indo-Pacific context as well. 

An Eye On Distant Seas

The question arises, what explains India’s pushback against China’s unilateral actions in the South China Sea? Even though the South China Sea geography does not fall under India’s primary maritime area of interest, it remains vital for India’s myriad strategic interests, such as the protection of Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs), energy security, etc. Moreover, India’s sustained advocacy for a free, open, inclusive, and rules-based order at sea, emphasising the need for adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), makes it imperative for New Delhi to respond critically against Chinese attempts to change the status quo in the region.

Within the wider Indo-Pacific, China’s continued attempts to foray into the Indian Ocean region, more recently by way of sending survey and surveillance vessels into the region, have prompted an enduring security dilemma in New Delhi, of People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) imminent launch of carrier task force patrols in the Indian Ocean by 2025. Thus, upping the ante against China in the Indo-Pacific appears to be a logical progression in India’s continued efforts to counter Beijing’s advances in geographies of India’s core interests at sea. 

India’s Message

Notably, Jaishankar has displayed nuance and complex thinking in India’s plans to counter the multipronged challenge that China poses. While on the Indo-Pacific front, India has sought to actively engage in minilateral groupings to counter China, upon being asked if New Delhi would encourage third-party intervention for the resolution of the India-China territorial border conflict along the LAC, Jaishankar reiterated that only bilateral engagement based on ‘mutual respect, mutual interest, and mutual sensitivity’ can restore normalcy.

The message is very clear: New Delhi will not relent in pressing ahead with its pushback against Beijing even as the door is open for China to recalibrate its anti-India positioning.

(Harsh V Pant is Vice President for Studies at ORF. Sayantan Haldar works with the Maritime Initiative at ORF)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

INDUS-X, which stands for enhanced strategic and defence partnership between India and the U.S., was launched on June 21 last year.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

“The India-U.S. Defence Acceleration Ecosystem has advanced the commitment of the two strategic partners to building a defence innovation bridge under the Critical and Emerging Technology Initiative,” the U.S. has said on the partnership’s first anniversary.

INDUS-X, which stands for enhanced strategic and defence partnership between India and the U.S., was launched on June 21 last year by the U.S. Department of Defence and the Indian Ministry of Defence during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington, DC.

“In its first year, INDUS-X has advanced both countries’ commitment to build a defence innovation bridge under the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET),” the Department of Defence said in a press release on June 21.

The iCET was launched by Prime Minister Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the QUAD summit in Tokyo on May 24, 2022.

“INDUS-X has strengthened private sector cooperation between the United States and India by facilitating partnerships among defence technology companies, investors, and researchers,” the press release said.

“The third INDUS-X Summit will take place in Silicon Valley in September 2024 with a focus on harnessing private capital for defence innovation,” it said, citing a recent announcement by the White House.

The summit will be co-hosted by the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and Stanford University. The India-U.S. defence and strategic ties have been on an upswing in the last few years.

The two countries have inked key defence and security pacts over the past few years, including the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 that allows their militaries to use each other’s bases for repair and replenishment of supplies.

The two sides also signed COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement) in 2018 which provides for interoperability between the two militaries and also provides for the sale of high-end technology from the U.S. to India.

In October 2020, India and the U.S. sealed the BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) pact to further boost bilateral defence ties. The pact provides for the sharing of high-end military technology, logistics and geospatial maps between the two countries.