The Quad grouping of India, Japan, the United States and Australia is claimed to be a “key pillar of Australian foreign policy”. But the Quad is either dead or on life support so deep there are few signs of life. It isn’t an illiberal Hindu nationalist India that killed it, it’s Trump 2.0.
The Quad is centred on the idea of a “free and open Indo Pacific”, contrasting with a region dominated by Chinese power. The grouping was supposed to be delivering public goods to regional nations that both advanced prosperity and security and demonstrated the attraction of democratic systems.
There was always tension within the grouping about how much of the effort should be devoted to collective security – particularly deterring China from military adventurism – and the focus on economic prosperity, public health and infrastructure. Economics was meant to be easier.
No one can read the 2024 Wilmington declaration from the last Biden-era Quad and see Trump administration directions or core values in it.
But despite these tensions, Quad cooperation had been on a continuing march, moving from foreign ministry focused meetings to leader-level Quad summits under then US President Joe Biden, with four in person leaders’ summits between 2021 and 2024.
Since January 2025, however, it’s been hard to see anything but decay and shrinking in all things Quad. That looks like the new path, partly because US policy towards India has taken a sharply disruptive and confrontational turn over tariffs and India’s purchasing of Russian oil.
The bigger misalignment, though, is because the Trump administration simply no longer shares the “Quad Vision”. No one can read the 2024 Wilmington declaration from the last Biden-era Quad and see Trump administration directions or core values in it.
Foundational statements from the four leaders only a year ago are now jarring. These lines from last year’s hopeful declaration give the flavour of the change:
“Since elevating the Quad to a leader-level format, the Quad is more strategically aligned than ever before and is a force for good that delivers real, positive, and enduring impact for the Indo-Pacific. We celebrate the fact that over just four years, Quad countries have built a vital and enduring regional grouping that will buttress the Indo-Pacific for decades to come.
Anchored by shared values, we seek to uphold the international order based on the rule of law.”
An even deeper reality check comes when you read the topics that the four nations saw as priorities back then and contrast these with Trump administration directions.
A year ago, the Quad was a “global force for good” focusing on regional health security through vaccines and a “cancer Moonshot”. Now, President Donald Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a renowned vaccine sceptic who has been dismantling vaccine research and funding, and contesting the role of the world-leading Centres For Disease Control. The administration’s domestic approach to public health is already being reflected in the Indo-Pacific region through the radical reduction in USAID presence and programs from the Musk DOGE chainsaw.
A year ago, the US, India, Japan and Australia were “jointly committed to expanding humanitarian and disaster relief assistance regionally, through pre-positioning more supplies and deepening collective planning”. Gutting USAID capacity has undercut any US contributions here. And expanding humanitarian assistance is plain out of step with an America First foreign policy based on ending others free riding on America.
A year ago, the Quad leaders said this on climate change: “we underscore the severe economic, social, and environmental consequences posed by the climate crisis, we continue to work together with Indo-Pacific partners…to enhance climate and clean energy cooperation as well as promote adaptation and resilience.”
Now, US energy policy is best summed up by Trump’s slogan of “Drill baby, drill” and rolling back the Biden-era incentives for a rapid transition to renewable energy.
Trump’s domestic agenda is so at odds with the Quad directions of public health through vaccines, open trade, rule of law and strengthening democratic freedoms that it is killing cooperation. It’s hard to cooperate on security whilst beating your partners up on economics.
Add to that Trump’s disdain for multilateral meetings – and now the split between the United States and India over tariffs and Trump’s Nobel Prize ambitions – and the Quad’s reasons for being are disappearing. We’ve already heard rumours out of the White House that Trump isn’t going to go to any Quad leaders meeting in India in the coming weeks.
For now, any idea that this minilateral is core to any of its members’ strategic or foreign policy agendas looks delusional.
Narendra Modi has responded to Trump’s repeated claims that he arranged the ceasefire between India and Pakistan after their clash in May this year by rejecting the notion any nation affected India’s decision making. Modi’s embrace of Putin during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in China and warm approach to Xi Jinping (the world’s other big buyer of Russian oil) seem very clear signals to the United States that he has options if Trump is determined to push India away.
Pre-Trump 2.0, India was the hardest to fit into the Quad because of its deep connections to Russia and the BJP’s strident Hindu nationalism, laced with Modi’s strongman tendencies. Those problems remain, but now it’s the United States that looks most odd in the room.
The July statement from Quad foreign ministers shows the problems are now real. Climate change and clean energy are gone, as is any mention of vaccine development and distribution. We’re left with boilerplate statements on maritime security and the usual appeals to cooperation in cyber. It looks like everyone below the level of Quad national leaders is trying to keep the grouping alive, if only on life support. But fish rot from the head down – and no initiative involving the United States has much prospect if it isn’t embraced by the White House’s Decider-In-Chief.
The Quad might get yet another reincarnation under a new US administration if Modi’s revived bromance with Putin and Xi falters on national interests and history. But for now, any idea that this minilateral is core to any of its members’ strategic or foreign policy agendas looks delusional. Biden’s world is very distant from 2025.
