Anti-Chinese flag or biden… US, Japan, India and Australia’Quad Summit’ held

‘Quad’, a consultative group formed by the United States, Japan, India and Australia to check China, will hold its first summit meeting on the 12th (local time).

The White House confirmed the facts on the 9th (local time) and announced that President Joe Biden would attend a video conference to meet with quad counterparts such as Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

It can be interpreted that President Biden has rallyed the alliance from the beginning of his term and raised the anti-Chinese flag high.

“The fact that President Biden is preparing (Quad) as one of the multilateral meetings held at the beginning of his tenure shows that we value close cooperation with alliances and partners in the Indo-Pacific,” White House spokesman Jen Saki said at a regular briefing. “He said.

In the meantime, Quad added that although working-level and foreign ministers regularly held meetings, it was the first time meetings were held at the summit level.

Saki said, “We expect to discuss various issues facing the international community, such as the threat of new coronavirus infection (Corona 19), economic cooperation, and the climate crisis.”

The White House did not mention China on its agenda, but it is noteworthy what kind of countermeasures the first heads of heads will come up with.

It is also of interest that there will be discussions on how to organize’Quad Plus’ by adding Korea, Vietnam, and New Zealand to the four quad countries. The discussion on expanding the quad began with the Donald Trump administration and continues to the Biden administration.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan publicly announced on January 29 that he would like to further develop the Quad, shortly after the Biden administration was launched.

At a regular briefing by the State Department that day, to a question about South Korea’s participation in the quad, State Department spokesman Ned Price did not give an immediate response, but only replied that “Korea is an important and essential alliance with the (defense) treaty.” “We share many concerns, including the North Korean challenge and the free and open Indo-Pacific,” said Price.

Quad was created to respond organically and cooperate with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated the’Sea of ​​Freedom and Prosperity’ in August 2007, and it came to be called the’Quad Security Dialogue’. In September of that year, four quad nations and Singapore held joint maritime drills, demonstrating their potential as a security dialogue organization.

However, it was temporarily suspended as the opposition from China and the interests of each country revealed differences. At the end of 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who is more friendly to China, took office, and in January 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited China as a state guest and announced that improving relations between the two countries will be a top priority. After Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took office in February 2008, he announced the suspension of participation in the quad in consideration of relations with China.

Nine years later, during the ASEAN summit held in 2017 with the Donald Trump administration, the leaders of the four quad countries revived the security council. The first foreign ministers’ meeting was held in New York during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019, and the second foreign ministers’ meeting was held in Japan in October of last year.

The quad operation is one of the foreign policies that the Biden administration inherited from the Trump administration. On the 18th of last month, a month after the Biden administration came to power, Secretary of State Tony Blincoln held a video conference with foreign ministers from four countries. The announcement of the summit in less than a month is expected to be a strategic choice by the Biden administration to rally the alliance and stop China’s expansion of influence.

Washington = Correspondent Park Hyun-young [email protected]