DNA Special: Quad 2.0 - Four countries, one common enemy

Quad is the story of four countries and the enemy of these four countries is China. Work on the Quad began during the 2004 tsunami. Then, India, Australia, Japan and America came together to deal with threats like a tsunami. But after this, the Quad became almost inactive.

Then in August 2007, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe came to India. While addressing the Parliament of India, he said that no country should be allowed to be arbitrary in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. He was pointing towards China. China and Japan are each other's old rivals in this area. Shinzo Abe insisted that the world's biggest democratic forces should come together against China.

But the very next month, Shinzo Abe resigned from his post. After this, Yasuo Fukuda became the new Prime Minister of Japan, but the new Prime Minister of Japan was not in favour of engaging with China, although even after this, the countries included in the Quad did a war exercise at sea with Singapore, but in 2008, Australia pulled out of it.

During this, the then government of India was also not against China. Rather, the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh considered China as an ally of India.

In 2008 itself, America also got a new President in the form of Barack Obama and he too was not in a mood to engage with China at that time. Overall Quad weakened and China started calling Quad seafoam, which disappears anytime.

Gradually time passed and China started playing hostility with India. Between 2013 and 2020, China took an aggressive stand against India four times.

The four countries involved in the Quad were starting to weaken due to their own internal politics and rapidly changing diplomacy. But in the meantime, something happened in Japan. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had come to power again in the year 2012 and as soon as he came he started cornering China, but in the year 2017, he accelerated it.

Australia had also understood China's intentions very well by then. That's why it also became active again in Quad. In 2019, there was a meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries involved in this organization and from here, Quad 2.0 came into existence.

And today is the first personal meeting of the supreme leaders of the Quad countries. That's why China, which once called Quad sea foam, is considering it as a threat to itself today.

But Quad is still a victim of confusion because no one knows right now whether the countries involved want to help each other militarily or its purpose is to deal with diseases like corona together or they have to deal with threats like tsunami together.

Among the countries included in the Quad, India is the only country whose borders meet with China. In such a situation, the first effect of China's aggressive attitude will be on India itself.

Although the main purpose of the Quad is to ensure the security of the Indo Pacific region. Its shape on the map is like a quadrilateral. That's why it is called Quad. The South China Sea also comes in this area, about which China has a dispute with 9 countries. 33 per cent of the world's maritime trade is done through the Indo Pacific, so China wants its control over it but the countries included in the Quad do not accept it.