AIR Spotlight - PM's Visit to Japan and QUAD Summit

AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio Newsonair. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation. In this article, the Prime Minister’s Japan visit and the significance of the Quad Summit are discussed.

Participants:

1. Sheel Kant Sharma, Former Diplomat 
2. Manish Anand, Journalist

Context: The Prime Minister of India paid an official visit to Japan to attend the 4th Quad Leaders’ Summit, which commenced in Tokyo.

 QUAD Summit in Tokyo:

• The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad)Summit in Tokyo offered a potential platform for the discussion on achieving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. 
• The Quad leaders engaged in bilateral meetings to create a cooperative and constructive agenda for maritime security and prosperity. 
• The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has disturbed the accepted norms on respecting territorial sovereignty, the global supply chain, increased prices of essential commodities and so on. 
• The Russia-Ukraine Conflict has deviated the global attention from important issues of pandemic and its implications, deficiencies in the healthcare infrastructure, economic recovery and so on. 
• The Quad Summit which was held in Tokyo opened an avenue for an extensive engagement between India, the US, Australia and Japan to formulate a multidimensional policy to address the upcoming security challenges. 
• With the primary objective to nurture a free and open Indo-Pacific, by forming compliance with the international law of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the four member countries issued a joint statement for the continuation of the cooperation. 
• The discussions emphasised the freedom of navigation and overflight along with major attention to embolden the maritime security extended to the East and South China Seas. 

The core dialogues of the Summit:

• The Quad members will strongly oppose the coercive, provocative and unilateral actions by Beijing and avert any sort of tensions in the maritime sphere. 
• There will be continuity of military coordination between the dialogue members to provide strategic depth to the mission. 
• The dialogue members will leverage resources in vaccine delivery, climate action, supply chain resilience, disaster response, cyber security, infrastructure and economic cooperation. 
• The dialogues surrounded the initiative to create a decarbonised green shipping network in the Indo-Pacific region making use of clean hydrogen.

Read more about the Quad Summit in CNA dated 25 May 2022.

 Challenges:

• The key challenge surrounded the China factor and its aggressive aspirations in the Indian Ocean Region. 
• Strategic challenges are imposed on rules-based international orders.
• There is a discontent between the Indian stance of being neutral about Russia and the upfront criticism of Russia by the US and Japan. 
• There has been an increase in the import of oil by India from Russia whereas the G7 countries and the NATO members pledged to end their imports from Russia. This can lead to the development of barriers within the Quad grouping. 

Shaping the road ahead:

•  The Quad grouping has enabled durable cooperation between the member countries with their expanding association in the areas of trade, defence, security, climate change, education and energy. Such collaboration has the potential to prevent the China factor in the maritime space. 
• India and the US signed an Investment Incentive Agreement which is a legal requirement for the Development Finance Corporation to continue to extend investment support in India. This agreement was welcomed by the leaders of both the US and India. 
• The Indian Prime Minister met his Japanese counterpart and discussed the roadmap to further the momentum of the India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership. This will deepen the bilateral bond predominant between the natural partners (India and Japan).
• The quad summit took place during the crucial period of prominent changes in world politics and India’s active participation in the dialogue between important countries will be beneficial to protect India’s maritime interests with the assurance of a reformed security framework in the Indo-Pacific. 
• Therefore, India expressed its indomitable commitment to work towards an inclusive Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with the key essence of trust, transparency and timeliness. 

Read more Gist of AIR Spotlight here.

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