India’s Cautious Stance toward the Securitization of the Quad

Interview with Rohan Mukherjee

Source Link

As the Quad (comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) emerges as a key platform in the Indo-Pacific’s evolving strategic landscape, India maintains a cautious stance toward deepening security commitments within the forum. In this interview, Ruhi Kulkarni asks Rohan Mukherjee about New Delhi’s efforts to balance India’s role in an increasingly securitized Quad with the country’s domestic and regional interests. Mukherjee discusses how India’s approach to the Quad reflects careful calibration in leveraging select economic, security, and diplomatic initiatives while also maintaining nonalignment in its foreign policy engagements.

Even as the Quad has gained increasing strategic significance in the Indo-Pacific, India remains hesitant to embrace it for greater security cooperation. Are there discrepancies between India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific and that of its Quad counterparts. If so, what is driving these differences?

Much depends on what we mean by “security cooperation.” If this means a treaty alliance, then India is unlikely to embrace it. If we mean more robust cooperation on security issues, then India has supported this vision of the Quad since at least 2020, when the border standoff between India and China began in Ladakh. How firmly New Delhi pursues such cooperation is probably where the difference lies between India, on the one hand, and the United States and its treaty allies, Japan and Australia, on the other. It is noticeable that India became more active in the Quad and supportive of its security objectives after relations with China soured in 2020. Now that diplomacy between Beijing and New Delhi has yielded some agreement on a disengagement process, there will be less incentive for India to aggressively counter China, especially given the importance of bilateral trade.

In this sense, India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific is different from its Quad counterparts in that New Delhi is more open to an arrangement that develops regional stability by engaging China rather than treating it as an outright adversary—provided that Beijing itself is cooperative. In the past, India has modified the free and open Indo-Pacific framing to add the term “inclusive,” which reflects this more flexible approach to regional diplomacy.