Nearly two years have passed since the leaders of the Quad—the four-nation framework comprising Japan, the US, India, and Australia aimed at advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)—last convened for a summit.
The next meeting, which India was expected to host, remains without a clear timetable, prompting growing calls within member states for an early gathering.
According to Indian diplomatic sources, a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting is being planned in India later this month. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to visit, among others. The ministerial meeting is likely intended as a stopgap until leaders can meet again.
Quad Takes a Back Seat
Shortly after returning to office in January last year, the second Trump administration hosted a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington, followed by another roughly six months later. President Donald Trump has hardly ignored the utility of the Quad as a mechanism for countering China’s increasingly assertive behavior.
Yet Trump’s attention is now firmly fixed on the Middle East. Keen to bring the conflict with Iran to a close on favorable terms, he has been working intensely through Pakistan—a country hostile to India—as an intermediary. A summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping is also expected in Beijing later this month.
With the US midterm elections on the horizon, these two issues have likely become Washington’s foremost diplomatic priorities.
US President Donald Trump (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025, on the sidelines of the APEC summit. (©AP via Kyodo)
The last Quad leadership summit took place in September 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware, under the Biden administration. India had hoped to follow that meeting by hosting the newly elected Trump for a summit of its own last autumn, but the plan never materialized.
Among the reasons were tensions sparked by last May’s military clashes between India and Pakistan. Trump claimed to have mediated a settlement to the crisis, an assertion India refused to acknowledge. Bilateral ties were further strained by reciprocal tariffs and punitive duties imposed on India by the Trump administration.
The tariff dispute was reportedly settled in February this year, bringing a temporary easing of tensions. Preparations for the next Quad foreign ministers’ meeting reflect improvement in bilateral relations.
Central Pillar of FOIP
FOIP also forms a central pillar of the foreign and security strategy of the Sanae Takaichi administration, with the China-focused Quad serving as one of its key foundations.
India, which remains locked in strategic rivalry with China, welcomed Japan’s recent revisions to its Three Principles on Defense Equipment Transfers and their operational guidelines—changes that fall within the broader FOIP framework.
In that sense, continued stagnation in the Quad offers neither Tokyo nor Delhi any advantage.
Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Indian think tank Observer Research Foundation, stressed the importance of Quad leader-level meetings, noting that they have historically served as venues where “new and ambitious initiatives were conceived and announced.”
A Gift to Beijing
So, will another summit take place anytime soon?
Derek Grossman, professor at the University of Southern California, argued in Foreign Policy that Australia could still host a summit later this year as chair. But he warned that “If Trump declines again, then the Quad will be relegated to geopolitical insignificance, and it may even spell the end of the grouping entirely.”
Grossman further noted that if Trump’s visit to Beijing creates the impression of US-China harmony on trade, Taiwan, and security issues, it would fuel fears of a Sino-US condominium that sidelines allied interests.
“China will undoubtedly benefit,” he wrote, “not because it outmaneuvered the Quad but because the United States chose to disengage.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Chinese President Xi Jinping anchor the meeting of leaders attending the BRICS summit in Kazan, central Russia, on October 23, 2024. (©AP via Kyodo)
Meanwhile, Rahm Emanuel, former US ambassador to Japan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called for “re-energizing the Quad” as part of a proposed security agenda for Democrats eyeing the next US presidential election. He dismissed Trump’s oft-touted personal rapport with Xi and other authoritarian leaders as “immaterial to our national interests.”
India, however, continues to pursue its trademark multi-aligned diplomacy. This year, it also chairs BRICS, the non-Western grouping that includes China, Russia, and Iran. India is set to host a BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting this month and a leaders’ summit in September.
If the Quad fails to hold a summit before year’s end, cooperation with the non-Western bloc may take precedence, and the Indian Ocean could begin to feel just a little farther away from the Pacific.
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Author: Tomoo Iwata, The Sankei Shimbun
(Read this article in Japanese)
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