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As the Quad loses steam, other security partnerships arise
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Quad ‘ocean foam that will dissipate’; he may have been right.
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The talk is of an expanded Aukus, the defence sales and high technology arrangement grouping Australia with the UK and US.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Six years ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was asked about the revival of the Quad, which groups the United States with Japan, Australia and India. The revival, after a decade-long freeze, had come on the back of the US endorsement of Japan’s move to promote a strategic mixing of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, which led to the “Indo-Pacific” nomenclature for the Asia-Pacific. The US even renamed its Pacific Command to IndoPacom.
Mr Wang responded acidly, saying there was no shortage of “headline-grabbing ideas”, before going on to predict that all this would soon dissipate like “foam on the seas”.
