THE Quad — a grouping of the United States, Australia, Japan and India — wants to be the fantastic four of Asia.
If their virtual announcement on Friday is anything to go by, the Quad is needling its way there.
Meeting, though only virtually, for the first time after the grouping was formed in 2007, the leaders of the four nations promised Asia one billion doses of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine by 2022.
If the BBC is right, the vaccines will roll out of an Indian plant using US technology financed by Japan and America, with lots of help from Australian logistics. Johnson & Johnson may have got themselves into a geopolitical space it may have not wished for, but that is perhaps a Leader for another time.
The Quad, though, could not have chosen a better weapon. Not only Asia, the world, too, has coronavirus on its mind. But Covid-19 isn't the common enemy here.
The needle is pointed at China. The four leaders— US President Joe Biden, who hosted the meet, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — though were very careful not to mention China by name in their opening remarks.
But the Quad's stated purpose for the get together — to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific — makes that reading unmistakable. The Johnson & Johnson needle is just a metaphor for another jab aimed at an ascendant China.
Vaccine nationalism has now grown up to be vaccine internationalism. Call it geopolitics in syringes. Politics, when played within national borders, may be fine. But when it is played over geographies—that is what geopolitics really is — it can be dangerous.
Not only for the Quad and China, but also for the countries that dot the Asian continent. It is pointless to be cured of one disease only to be killed by another. Like in medicine, prevention is always better than cure in geopolitics.
But what is the disease? To put it simply, it is the tit-for-tat between China and the Quad. If the spat were within the borders of the five nations, it may be a matter to be resolved by them. It so happens that the spat is over other nations' geographies.
China is ascendant. There is no doubt about it. China has made no secret of this. Ascendancy by itself, especially economic ascendancy, shouldn't trouble the Quad. Or anybody else.
Every nation has the right to carve a path of growth for itself. Only when such wealth is used as an economic weapon to curb or hinder the growth of another should the world stand united against this.
Not just the Quad. In one reading, the trade spat between the Quad and China may be seen to be more than mere economic ascendancy.
Being a trade spat, such disputes must be resolved within the confines of trade. There is something else that is more troubling to the Quad: China's maritime claims in the East China Sea and the so-called nine-dash line that eats into other Southeast Asian nations' territories in the South China Sea.
In the former, it is Japanese laments of Chinese incursions and in the latter, it is similar laments with contested claims by the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.
China may or may not have been the reason why the US, Australia, Japan and India became the Quad in 2007, but it will surely be the motivation for them to remain so.