Quad Summit 2021: The Elephant in the Room?

Policy Alert #237 | September 29, 2021

On September 24, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia at the White House for the first-ever in-person Leaders’ Summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. In a joint statement, without naming China, the four leaders renewed their commitment to a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific that is “undaunted by coercion.” The leaders expressed their resolve to “champion adherence to international law, particularly as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to meet challenges…in the East and South China Seas.” It is hard to miss the veiled references to China’s rising influence peppered throughout the joint statement from Quad leaders.

September has seen a number of major summits, including BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), capped off by the Quad, as well as the UN General Assembly. Moreover, the Quad meeting came just over a week after the announcement of AUKUS, a new three-way security pact among the U.S., U.K., and Australia centered on a deal to share highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Canberra. In Beijing, the angry reaction was swift and predictable; however, the agreement also created turbulence in U.S.-France relations, even as France is the only European country with territories and a military presence in the Indo-Pacific.

The Quad leaders have put forth ambitious initiatives that advance practical cooperation on 21st-century challenges: ending the COVID-19 pandemic, including by increasing production and access to safe and effective vaccines; promoting high-standards infrastructure; combatting the climate crisis; partnering on emerging technologies, space, and cybersecurity; and cultivating next-generation talent in the four countries. As Biden declared in his Quad remarks, “we are four major democracies with a long history of cooperation… we know how to get things done, and we are up to the challenge.” Although the Quad, unlike AUKUS, is not a military pact, establishing a unified front amid shared concerns about China is clearly topmost. 

In this Policy Alert, we examine the Rising Powers’ response to the Quad Summit amid the announcement of AUKUS the previous week.

Read the full alert.

Rising Powers at 13th BRICS Summit 2021: Together but Separate?

Policy Alert #236 | September 13, 2021

On September 9, 2021, the 13th BRICS Summit was held via videoconference, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The theme of the Summit, chosen by India, was BRICS@15: Intra-BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus. The Summit saw the participation of all BRICS leaders – President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Xi Jinping of China, and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. Several new initiatives included the first BRICS Digital Health Summit; the first BRICS Ministerial Joint Statement on multilateral reforms; a BRICS Counter-Terrorism Action Plan; an Agreement on cooperation in field of remote-sensing satellites; a virtual BRICS vaccine Research & Development Centre; and a BRICS Alliance on Green Tourism.

At the conclusion of the Summit, the leaders adopted the New Delhi Declaration, which placed an emphasis on COVID-19, strengthening and reforming the multilateral system, and peace, security, and counterterrorism, as well as economic and financial cooperation for sustainable development. Elaborating on these themes, the declaration highlighted the leading role that BRICS countries can play in the post-COVID global recovery through enhancing speed and accessibility of vaccination and diversifying pharma and vaccine production capacities beyond the developed world.

Meeting for the first time since the Taliban captured power, the BRICS leaders managed to cobble together some joint objectives on Afghanistan on paper even as their geopolitical divergences persist: “We stress the need to contribute to fostering an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue so as to ensure stability, civil peace, law and order in the country…We underscore the priority of fighting terrorism, including preventing attempts by terrorist organization.”

India passes the baton to China as the next Chair of BRICS 2022.

In this Policy Alert, we examine the rising powers’ level of convergence at the 13th BRICS Summit 2021.

Read the full commentary here.

Rising Powers React to Hasty U.S. Withdrawal and Taliban Control

Just last month during a White House press conference on July 8, U.S. President Joe Biden rejected the notion of a Taliban takeover being “inevitable.” But on August 15, the Taliban seized control of the country’s capital Kabul as the government collapsed and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. The rapid takeover of the country by the Taliban caught the Biden administration off-guard and set in motion a chaotic evacuation in which some 2,500 American troops attempted to secure the Kabul airport. On August 16, during a UN Security Council Briefing on Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda-Thomas Greenfield urged nations that “together, we must do everything we can to help Afghanistan, to help Afghans who wish to leave and seek refuge. We in the international community stand ready to assist them.

On August 24, the Group of Seven agreed on conditions for recognizing and dealing with a future Taliban-led Afghan government, but President Biden refused to accede to the appeals of G7 leaders to extend the August 31 U.S. withdrawal date to allow more time for evacuations. Two days later, over 100 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in a suicide attack carried out by the ISIS-K, the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, at the Kabul airport. President Biden denounced the attack, vowing, “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Going forward, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a press briefing on August 25 remarked, “If a future government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with. If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah.”

In this Policy Alert, we examine the rising powers’ reactions to the Taliban taking power in Afghanistan as the U.S. leaves and how they view the future.

Read the Policy Alert here.

The Fallacy of a Taliban Strong State

Will the blast outside the Kabul airport on the eve of American withdrawal prove to be a warning shot to the Taliban or a case of an isolated attempt to take advantage of a chaotic security environment? Be that as it may, one thing is certain—it won’t be long before the Taliban faces an ongoing paradox like every previous government in Afghanistan—in order to have a strong state, Afghanistan needs a weak center. This hard realization is something that since the late 1970s, each successive group running the country has been unable to come to terms with. There’s no reason to think that the Taliban will be any different this time around and therein lies a fundamental weakness for the new dispensation in Kabul.

Read the full commentary here.

Post-Olympic Quick Takes from the Rising Powers

Despite the protests and criticisms before the event, the Tokyo Olympics overcame the threat of the raging Delta variant and came to a nuanced end on August 8. While Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga thanked the Japanese people’s understanding and cooperation to “fulfill our responsibility as the host nation,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the country’s only gold medal winner as the Olympic games concluded with relative success in maintaining the “Olympic bubble.”

Among the Rising Powers, China walked away with the most medals at 88, ranking at second place behind the United States. Japan exceeds its own record at 58 medals in total. Despite having limited participation while competing under the disguise of ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) as a consequence of the doping scandal, Russia was able to grab 70 medals. Meanwhile, India had its best ever Olympics games with 7 medals in total.

In this Policy Alert, we examine what conclusions Rising Powers are drawing from the widely scrutinized Tokyo Olympics.

Read the Policy Alert here.

Democracy in Action: Past and Present Movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Myanmar

The recent reversal of fortunes for democracy movements in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong and Myanmar, stands in contrast to an earlier highly successful campaign for political liberalization in Taiwan. The ongoing democratic crisis in the region warrants a closer comparison of these three movements, and what parallels and differences may be found. The role of young activists and use of media as a tool of mobilization seem to hold across cases but the geopolitical context has dramatically changed with the rise of China and its increasingly assertive behavior. How do democratic prospects look?

To delve into these questions, the Sigur Center’s recent Taiwan Roundtable featured a panel of leading experts including Michael Hsiao, Chairman of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, Kharis Templeman, Program Manager of Stanford University’s Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, Christina Fink, Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University, and Shirley Lin, Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Read the full Asia Report here.

RPI – 5 New Book Recommendations Summer 2021

There’s still time in August to take stock of your reading progress and update your summer reading list. RPI recommends 5 new books on the international relations and foreign policy of Asia’s Rising Powers and provides links to their most recent book reviews:

Title: Orchestration: China’s Economic Statecraft Across Asia and Europe
Author: James Reilly
Publisher: Oxford University Press 2021
See the book review on Orchestration.

Title: The Elusive Tipping Point: China-India for a New Order
Author: P S Suryanarayana
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company 2021
See a book review on The Elusive Tipping Point.

Title: India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present
Author: Shivshankar Menon
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press 2021
See a book review on India and Asian Geopolitics.

Title: Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific
Author: Saori N. Katada
Publisher: Columbia University Press 2020
See a book review on Japan’s New Regional Reality.

Title: India Versus China: Why They Are Not Friends
Author: Kanti Bajpai
Publisher: Juggernaut Publishers 2021
See a book review on India Versus China.

Rising Powers’ Quick Takes on the Tokyo Olympics

After a one-year delay due to COVID pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics finally opened on July 23 with a muted ceremony in an empty stadium of fewer than 1000 spectators. Against protests by the public and warnings from the medical community while Tokyo’s new virus cases nearly reached 2000 a day, the Japanese government put the capital under state of emergency and pushed forward with the Olympic games as a broadcast-only event with no spectators.

In this Policy Alert (#233, July 26 2021), we briefly examine the Rising Powers’ anticipations of the Tokyo Olympics.

Read the Policy Alert here.

Rising Powers Consider U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan and What the Future Holds

On April 14, President Joe Biden’s policy review of the conflict in Afghanistan concluded with the decision to withdraw the remaining force of roughly 2,500 U.S. troops before September 11, 2021. The withdrawal from Afghanistan means that Washington would need to find another location in the region to maintain U.S. military presence. Potential replacement locations for U.S. military base include Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. However, in a Washington Post op-ed published on June 21, Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan dismisses the possibility of hosting U.S. forces and argues that the presence of U.S. military base would increase the chance of terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

After the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal, Taliban forces have made substantial gains in territories by seizing more than fifty districts, including the provincial capitals of Lashkar Gah, Kunduz, and Maimana. On June 22, UN Security Council held an Open Debate to address the escalation of conflict in Afghanistan. During the meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda-Thomas Greenfield promised that Washington would “use our full diplomatic, economic, and assistance toolkit to support the peaceful, stable future the Afghan people want and deserve. And we will continue to support the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in securing their country.” Three days later, President Biden hosted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah at the White House and assured President Ghani of Washington’s continued financial, humanitarian and security assistance, with the latter coming in the form of MQ-9 Reaper drones stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Despite the efforts of the international community, the prospect of the peace process in Afghanistan remains stagnant, whereas the ongoing conflict could see further escalation. In a press conference at the NATO command in Kabul, coalition commander General Austin S. Miller warned that “civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory.” At the moment, the Taliban is perceived to have the upper hand. A recent U.S. intelligence report has concluded that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after U.S. military withdrawal from the country is completed.

In this Policy Alert, we will examine the rising powers’ considerations on the state of the Afghan peace process and what U.S. military withdrawal could mean for the future.

Read the full Policy Alert here.

The Biden Administration’s Approach to Asia and Views on Taiwan

The Biden administration’s first few months have laid to rest any claims that its foreign policy agenda will take a backseat to domestic priorities. Important questions regarding the role of Taiwan in a renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific as it relates to force posture, economic ties and a broader strategic vision, have also begun to be answered in these early days. What have we learned already about how the Biden team views Taiwan strategically and economically? What are the prospects of cooperation bilaterally and multilaterally? How does Taiwan fit into the administration’s overarching framework within the region?

To address these questions, the Sigur Center’s recent Taiwan Roundtable featured a panel of leading experts including Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, Barbara Weisel, managing director at Rock Creek Global Advisors, and Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University.

Read the full report here.

Rising Powers Respond to the G7 Summit

On June 13, the leaders of G7 nations ended their three-day summit in southwest England. At his first in-person meeting with the leaders of the world’s most influential democracies, President Joe Biden took the opportunity to announce the U.S. “is back in the business of leading the world alongside nations who share our most deeply held values.” Among a wide range of global issues, the ongoing COVID pandemic and the rising influence of China are at the center stage of the meeting. In the joint communique, G7 nations pledge to donate one billion COVID vaccines to developing countries while allocating $100 billion through the IMF, among other funding sources, to support the “Build Back Better World” initiative for global post-pandemic recovery. Moreover, the communique calls for China to respect human rights in Xinjiang and freedoms in Hong Kong, while urging a transparent investigation of COVID origin in China, as well as underscoring the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. In addition to the communique, G7 nations also signed an Open Societies Statement with India, South Korea, and South Africa to reaffirm their “shared belief in open societies, democratic values and multilateralism.”

In this Policy Alert, we examine the Rising Powers’ reactions to the outcomes of the G7 Summit.

Read the Policy Alert here.

Shared Worldviews in the Indo-Pacific and the Future of U.S.-India Relations

Amid the rising assertiveness of China, the worldviews and interests of U.S. and India are presently converging in unprecedented ways. After President Joe Biden took office, the Indo-Pacific has become the front and center of U.S. foreign policy as Washington adopts a renewed multilateral approach in the region. How will U.S.-India relations evolve in the post-pandemic era? What does the first 100 days of the Biden administration tell us? How important are shared values in the overall context of bilateral relations? To address these questions, the Rising Powers Initiative at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and Christ University in Bangalore, invited a panel of leading experts to discuss the prospects for U.S. India relations, including Alyssa Ayres, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, Daniel Twining, President of the International Republican Institute, Joshua White, Associate Professor of Practice of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Richard M. Rossow, Senior Adviser and Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at Center for Strategic & International Studies.

The purpose of the conference was to engage a younger demographic of students and young professionals in Bangalore and around the region on new directions in U.S.-India cooperation related to growing challenges in the Indo-Pacific. The conference attracted over 700 registrants and nearly 600 attendees. In this Policy Brief we examine the panel’s insights on how the U.S. and India could develop comprehensive relations beyond security and economic interests in the coming years.

Read the Policy Breif here.

Rising Powers React to the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

After weeks of rising tension, which started with the eviction of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem and resulted in several Palestinian deaths, Israel raided the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, causing more than 50 injuries. On May 10, Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem for the first time since 2014, prompting Israel to retaliate with airstrikes. As the violence escalated, United Nation’s Security Council had three attempts to issue joint statements condemning Israel and calling for ceasefire, all of which blocked by the United States. After 11 days of fighting, which saw thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and hundreds of airstrikes on Palestinian territory, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire proposal brokered by Egypt on May 20. The deadly conflict has led to more than 200 killed in Gaza, including more than 60 children, and at least 10 killed in Israel

In this Policy Alert, we examine the Rising Powers’ reactions to the latest round of violence between Israel and Palestine.

Read the Policy Alert here.

Rising Powers React to Biden’s First 100 Days

The ongoing pressure of the global pandemic has not slowed down President Joe Biden’s foreign policy during his first 100 days in office. Fulfilling the promise of tackling global issues through enhanced engagements with U.S. allies and like-minded partners, the Biden administration took swift actions in several critical areas of U.S. foreign policy.

On addressing the “extreme competition” with China, the first meeting of American and Chinese top diplomats in Alaska led to heated exchanges but the two sides were able to find common ground on confronting climate change. On the advancement of a free and open Indo-Pacific, President Biden strengthened multi-faceted cooperation of the Quad countries through the group’s first leaders’ summit. While President Biden promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, his administration bolstered the alliance with Japan during Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s first visit to Washington and established closer defense ties with India during Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit in New Delhi. Despite the criticism of Washington’s initial lack of response, the Biden administration quickly changed course and provided extensive support for India’s deadly second wave of COVID.

In this Policy Alert, we examine how the Rising Powers are responding to the President Biden’s foreign policy during his first 100 days.

Read the full Policy Alert here.