Arzan Tarapore
The Quad is not keeping pace with security needs in the Indo-Pacific. Its members—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—should step up cooperation to keep an eye on what’s going on at sea. They have the tools for this.
The partnership is already helping other countries in the Indo-Pacific to monitor their own and nearby waters. A program known as the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) provides commercially sourced imagery from satellites to regional states.
But Chinese naval activity in the Indo-Pacific is intensifying. This calls for more systematic operational coordination among the four partners, particularly by coordinating operations of and sharing information from maritime patrol aircraft, especially Boeing P-8s. The Indian Ocean is the ideal venue for this cooperation, because Chinese maritime activity is expanding there and violent disputes, such as those in the South China Sea, are absent.
Gone are the days when Indo-Pacific states needed to worry only about illegal fishing fleets. In just the past three months, China deployed a naval task group in a long-range show of force around Australia, sent a dual-use research vessel to loiter off Western Australia, and announced a new capability to cut undersea internet cables. More broadly, China maintains a high tempo of military-affiliated survey ship deployments in the Indian Ocean, signalling its intention for a greater regional military presence.
Such conventional military challenges affect all Quad members and impinge on other regional states’ national security interests. Chinese ships operating in the Indian Ocean transit through the South China Sea and the Indonesian archipelago, directly challenging Southeast Asian states’ maritime claims. They often act recklessly. For example, recent incidents include unannounced live-fire exercises in international waters as well as increasingly violent grey-zone scuffles with neighbouring states. The whole Indo-Pacific has an interest in monitoring and understanding China’s actions and demanding greater transparency from it.
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