Will QUAD expand to Indian Ocean? after all it is India Ocean
President of USA Shri Joe Biden will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan for the fourth in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit on Saturday, September 21.
This maritime initiative seeks to keep a check on illegal activities on seas and was first launched at the QUAD Leaders Summit in Tokyo two years ago.
As per the willy Americans , during the QUAD summit they have plans to propose expansion the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness initiative from South East Asia to the Indian Ocean Region. The QUAD leadership summit begins on Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware, with participation of the four member states — India, US, Japan, and Australia.
A formal announcement, in case agreed by all especially India, about the expansion will be made in Wilmington on Saturday, a senior administration official told reporters on condition of anonymity
Besides the expansion desperately wanted by the Americans , the partnership will now include export of “new sophisticated technologies to improve the maritime domain picture”, as well as new training programmes, the official said.
Another senior administration official said the expansion of the IPMDA to the Indian Ocean “provides opportunities, not just for Australia to coordinate with us in the Pacific, but also with India to coordinate more with a lot of our partners in the Indian Ocean region.” So they really want to lure India and will try ask for a permanent base next?
“We are also going to be launching as part of our new quad development, increased work together on logistics cooperation. The advent of the QUAD was responding to humanitarian disasters.
“All of our countries have a lot of capacity when it comes to logistics, in the air, at the sea, to respond to these kinds of disasters. We are really pleased that we’re going to be piloting this next year with some new work that will allow us to work more closely in this space,” the official said.
Responding to a question, the official expressed confidence in the QUAD countries’ long term future as like-minded democracies.
“We are, of course, four leading democracies and political change is baked into the cake,” the person said.
