In an era defined by great-power rivalry, supply-chain fragmentation, and the erosion of multilateral consensus, the international system has fragmented along geopolitical, economic, and ideological lines. Traditional alliances are burdened by domestic politics and differing threat perceptions, while formal institutions often prove too rigid or inclusive to take decisive action. Against this backdrop, mini-party groups – flexible, purpose-built coalitions of like-minded states – have emerged as important instruments of order-building. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which includes India, Japan, Australia and the US, is an example of this model. Despite the lack of binding commitments of a formal alliance, the Quad has demonstrated remarkable staying power. Its existence, despite the conspicuous absence of a leader-level summit in 2025, underscores the enduring value of practical, working-level cooperation in securing a free and open Indo-Pacific.
This is not the first time the Quad has faced tension. Inaugurated informally as a response to the 2007 Indian Ocean tsunami and growing concerns over Chinese aggression, the group faltered almost immediately. In 2008, Australia withdrew from the newly elected Kevin Rudd government. Canberra’s decision reflects a classic cost-benefit calculation: Beijing had expressed strong opposition to the Quad, seeing it as an embryonic anti-China containment mechanism. Rudd’s administration chose not to anger China, prioritizing economic relations with its largest trading partner. The move, announced with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, effectively put the Quad into hibernation until its quiet revival in 2017. This episode revealed a recurring vulnerability: group solidarity depends on convergent threat assessments and domestic political will. Yet the fact of its resurgence, driven by shared democratic values, maritime interests and a collective desire to preserve the rules-based order, demonstrated its latent resilience.
The present interval is an echo of the previous interval but has a different character. India was to host the Quad leaders’ summit in 2025 as the rotating chair, yet 2025 passed without a leader-level meeting. Bilateral friction, including India-US trade tensions and changes in US priorities under the second Trump administration, contributed to the delay. Critics have seized on the optics of drift. Yet a closer examination of diplomatic activity reveals continuity rather than decline. Over the past year, the Quad has maintained momentum through ministerial and working-level engagement. On January 21, 2025, barely hours after his confirmation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his Quad counterparts, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Australia’s Penny Wong and Japan’s Takeshi Iwaya, to Washington. The meeting reaffirmed the partners’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and their opposition to unilateral efforts to change the status quo by force. The second meeting of foreign ministers took place on July 1, 2025, again in Washington, where the four countries expanded their agenda to include maritime and international security, economic prosperity and security, critical and emerging technologies, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. They launched the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative and announced new cooperation on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and law-enforcement capacity-building. These gatherings, although lower profile than leaders’ summits, have kept the mechanism functional and friendly.
Further evidence of vitality comes from the diplomatic calendar that follows. Secretary Rubio is scheduled to visit New Delhi from May 24 to 26, 2026, for bilateral consultations with the Indian leadership and the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. The visit is clearly framed as an effort to reestablish and deepen India-US strategic ties strained by tariff disputes and other frictions. Far from a sign of abandonment, such insistence on maintaining ministerial rhythms shows that the Quad remains a priority even within the America First framework that emphasizes burden-sharing and transactional diplomacy.
Nowhere is the strategic logic of the Quad more evident than in India’s growing role as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region and the broader Indo-Pacific. New Delhi has long supported the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) approach; Prime Minister Narendra Modi during events in Mauritius in 2025 clarified its development in the Ocean – Reciprocal and holistic advancement for security and development in all sectors. The framework emphasizes capacity building, maritime domain awareness and inclusive regional architecture. India’s hosting of the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue in October 2025, attended by participants from more than 30 countries, underlined its convening power on issues ranging from blue-economy growth to climate-resilient maritime security.
At the heart of India’s Indo-Pacific position is the Great Nicobar Islands Development Project. Located at the southern tip of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, barely 160 kilometers from the Strait of Malacca, ₹The Rs 81,000 crore initiative includes a major international container transshipment terminal at Galathea Bay, a dual-use civil-military airport, a township and supporting power infrastructure. Once operational, the project will enhance India’s ability to monitor one of the world’s busiest chokepoints, through which about 80 percent of China’s energy imports and 25-30% of global trade passes, while reducing dependence on foreign transshipment hubs. The dual-use facilities will strengthen naval projection, surveillance and logistics, directly countering Beijing’s string of pearls strategy and exacerbating China’s Malacca dilemma. Environmental safeguards and tribal welfare provisions have been integrated, yet the strategic logic of the project is clear: it cements India’s forward presence in the eastern Indian Ocean and serves as a concrete expression of the Quad’s maritime security objectives.
For its part, the US has signaled a basic level of continuity amid change. While emphasizing burden sharing and some degree of retrenchment elsewhere, Washington continues to invest in the Quad mechanisms for supply-chain resilience, critical minerals, and maritime domain awareness. The July 2025 Foreign Ministers’ Statement explicitly welcomed the next Leaders’ Summit and Australian-hosted Ministerial Meeting in 2026, reflecting institutional memory and forward planning.
The Quad’s ability to tolerate without continued summit talks reflects the maturity of micro-lateral diplomacy. The high-level spectacle is symbolically valuable, but the group’s real strength lies in its working groups, technical cooperation and habit of consultation. Practical deliveries, such as vaccine diplomacy, humanitarian aid coordination and now critical-mineral security during the pandemic, build trust and interoperability more durably than photo opportunities. In a fragmented order where formal alliances risk entrapment and multilateral platforms risk paralysis, the Quad offers calibrated flexibility: democratic solidarity without the rigidity of treaty obligations.
Skeptics will continue to question the group’s relevance whenever leaders’ calendars diverge. Yet history and recent practice suggest otherwise. The 2008 comeback did not end the Quad; It just stopped it. Today’s tensions arising from domestic politics and economic restructuring in one of the four members have also failed to derail its core functions. As Rubio prepares to land in New Delhi later this month, the message is clear: The Quad persists not despite the absence of a leaders’ summit, but because its participants believe that sustained, functional cooperation serves their shared interests far better than episodic spectacle. In the contested waters of the Indo-Pacific, quiet resilience may prove to be the most powerful form of strategic signaling.
(Views expressed are personal)
This article is written by Shriparna Pathak, Professor, China Studies and International Relations, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
