UPSC Exam Preparation: Topic of the Day – Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) was an informal strategic dialogue between the United States, India, Australia and Japan that was maintained by talks between member countries. The dialogue was initiated in 2007 by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, with the support of Vice President Dick Cheney of the US, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.
- Japan President Shinzo Abe delivered a speech to the Indian Parliament in August 2007, entitled a “confluence of the two seas”, a phrase he took from the title of a book written by Mughal prince Dara Shikoh.
- The dialogue was paralleled by joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, titled Exercise Malabar.
- The diplomatic and military arrangement was widely viewed as a response to increased Chinese economic and military power, and the Chinese government responded to the Quadrilateral dialogue by issuing formal diplomatic protests to its members.
What was the intention of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD)?
- The initiation of an American, Japanese, Australian and Indian defence arrangement, modeled on the concept of a Democratic Peace.
- The Quadrilateral was supposed to establish an “Asian Arc of Democracy,” envisioned to ultimately include countries in central Asia, Mongolia, the Korean peninsula, and other countries in Southeast Asia: “virtually all the countries on China’s periphery, except for China itself.”
Drawbacks
- The Quadrilateral was viewed as an “Asian NATO;”
- Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund of the United States has written that the arrangement “could lead to military conflict,” or could instead “lay an enduring foundation for peace” if China becomes a democratic leader in Asia.
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