DPG Policy Brief
Harnessing the QUAD’s Maritime Power
Date: February 28, 2025
Since its inception, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, now known as the QUAD, was predicated on concerns regarding security and stability across the interconnected maritime commons of the Indo-Pacific. While the QUAD member states have steered clear from the military aspects of security, and the grouping has evolved to include a number of areas of cooperation that bring tangible and reassuring benefits to nations of the Indo-Pacific, the oceanic security rationale continues to be even more relevant today.
In this brief, the author observes that the joint statement issued after the latest QUAD Foreign Ministers’ meeting held on January 21, 2025 has reaffirmed the importance of the security dimension. As the host of the next QUAD summit, India will need to consider how best to harness the latent maritime security advantages of the QUAD in buttressing regional stability, including in the IOR which is vital for India’s interests. He suggests that while the QUAD is not a military alliance, adopting a contemporary version of 17th century “fleet-in-being” concept may serve to increase deterrence without provoking regional concerns.
The author goes on to trace the maritime underpinnings of the QUAD since 2004, and the lingering sensitive nature of the ‘China factor’ in the calculations of QUAD partners. Given the extreme unpredictability of contemporary geopolitics, strategic hedging is becoming the broad geostrategic impulse of our times.
Meanwhile, matters of traditional security are getting insufficient attention in the Indian Ocean, where security challenges are growing. China’s great power ambitions can only be realised by the projection of its naval power westward, using the Indian Ocean as a springboard.
The author argues that the four Navies of the QUAD are already interoperable to some degree, despite the absence of binding structures or commitments. Cooperation among the QUAD Navies can evolve into a pioneering maritime arrangement, or fleet-in-being, which has to be factored in by anyone inclined to disrupt the status quo by force or coercion in the Indo-Pacific. This will require the incremental enhancement of sustenance and interoperability, and a general commitment by QUAD members to nurture this one security vertical as regularly showcased through Exercise Malabar.
The recent India-US Joint Statement released after the Modi-Trump summit on February 13, 2025 has endorsed the objective of enhancing military cooperation through exercises of increased scale and complexity, as well as to “break new ground to support and sustain US and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific.” This approach can also be progressed in conjunction with the other two QUAD nations. The author points out that in history, coalitions of the willing have often proved more reliable than treaty-based constructs.
The author concludes that there is no better way for the QUAD to retain its latent potentiality as a grouping capable of addressing security challenges than to persist with enhancing maritime interoperability through the medium of a ‘fleet-in-being’. This should be on the agenda at the QUAD summit in India later this year.
To read this DPG Policy Brief Vol. X, Issue 8, please click “Harnessing the QUAD’s Maritime Power”.
In this brief, the author observes that the joint statement issued after the latest QUAD Foreign Ministers’ meeting held on January 21, 2025 has reaffirmed the importance of the security dimension. As the host of the next QUAD summit, India will need to consider how best to harness the latent maritime security advantages of the QUAD in buttressing regional stability, including in the IOR which is vital for India’s interests. He suggests that while the QUAD is not a military alliance, adopting a contemporary version of 17th century “fleet-in-being” concept may serve to increase deterrence without provoking regional concerns.
The author goes on to trace the maritime underpinnings of the QUAD since 2004, and the lingering sensitive nature of the ‘China factor’ in the calculations of QUAD partners. Given the extreme unpredictability of contemporary geopolitics, strategic hedging is becoming the broad geostrategic impulse of our times.
Meanwhile, matters of traditional security are getting insufficient attention in the Indian Ocean, where security challenges are growing. China’s great power ambitions can only be realised by the projection of its naval power westward, using the Indian Ocean as a springboard.
The author argues that the four Navies of the QUAD are already interoperable to some degree, despite the absence of binding structures or commitments. Cooperation among the QUAD Navies can evolve into a pioneering maritime arrangement, or fleet-in-being, which has to be factored in by anyone inclined to disrupt the status quo by force or coercion in the Indo-Pacific. This will require the incremental enhancement of sustenance and interoperability, and a general commitment by QUAD members to nurture this one security vertical as regularly showcased through Exercise Malabar.
The recent India-US Joint Statement released after the Modi-Trump summit on February 13, 2025 has endorsed the objective of enhancing military cooperation through exercises of increased scale and complexity, as well as to “break new ground to support and sustain US and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific.” This approach can also be progressed in conjunction with the other two QUAD nations. The author points out that in history, coalitions of the willing have often proved more reliable than treaty-based constructs.
The author concludes that there is no better way for the QUAD to retain its latent potentiality as a grouping capable of addressing security challenges than to persist with enhancing maritime interoperability through the medium of a ‘fleet-in-being’. This should be on the agenda at the QUAD summit in India later this year.
To read this DPG Policy Brief Vol. X, Issue 8, please click “Harnessing the QUAD’s Maritime Power”.
