Trump’s kiss of life for the Quad
At the Raisina Dialogue with senior naval officials from Japan, India and Australia in New Delhi last week, United States Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris Jr claimed “China is a disruptive, transitional force in the Indo-Pacific”. The quadrilateral dialogue, a concrete step toward evoking the “Quad alliance”, and the recent replacement of China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation by a Japanese enterprise to win a huge rail deal in the US, are widely viewed as initiatives taken by the four countries to target China on the security and economic fronts.
Since President Donald Trump raised the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy during his first trip to the region in November, it has been shown to incorporate economic as well as security connotations. A series of remarks recently made by Trump and his newly unveiled National Security Strategy report all testify to the US president’s inclination to incorporate economic considerations into security affairs. For example, the Trump administration tries to build judicial, administrative and technical barriers at home to resist “economic aggression” from China on the one hand, and work together with so-called democratic states such as India, Japan and Australia to forge a “diamond alliance” to tackle “China’s challenge” on the other hand.
Given the ever-rising economic nationalist sentiment under his presidency and his “America First” strategy, the Trump administration is combining economic, trade, security and geopolitical measures to pursue its interests and counter what he said some countries have done to sabotage fairness, abuse the US’ benevolence and undermine the essence of the free market. As part of this, countries that are its allies are crowned by Washington as full market-economy states while others are labeled as “revisionist nations” intent on sabotaging market principles.
With this mentality, the US is accelerating its attempts to revive the moribund Quad alliance and is trying to inject into it security, strategic and economic connotations. A network of new and exclusive economic and trade arrangements may be woven across a broader region in the foreseeable future, against which China will have to remain vigilant.