Rubio Leads Quad Security Meeting in India for Plans to Counter China

The foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a group commonly known as the Quad, joined Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday to announce new security and energy initiatives for the Indo-Pacific region to counter the growing influence of China.

Meeting with Rubio in New Delhi on Tuesday were Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu, and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Rubio said the United States is “deeply committed to this partnership,” praising the Quad as a “linchpin in a cornerstone of our global strategy as a nation.” He said it was time for the Quad to move beyond merely discussing issues like maritime security and critical mineral supplies and begin taking collective action.

The four nations of the Quad informally came together for disaster relief after an earthquake and tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in 2004. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was formalized in 2007, but became inactive within a year, because Australia feared offending China and quickly withdrew. China, then and now, fiercely opposes the Quad as an alliance against Beijing’s interests.

The Quad was reactivated, and reinvigorated, in 2017 after years of Chinese aggression against disputed territories in the South China Sea. The group began meeting at least once a year in 2019 and convened its first formal annual summit in 2021. The 2025 summit was skipped due to trade and tariff tensions between India and the United States.

Jaishankar said Tuesday’s talks were “an exercise of considerable value,” and agreed with Rubio that the “responsibilities of the Quad will grow commensurately” with the importance of international trade in the Indo-Pacific region.

Wong said the region was under “acute economic stress” due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the energy supply for India, Japan, and Australia normally flows.

“We recognize the importance of maintaining the principle of freedom of navigation and our opposition to any tolling proposition,” she said, agreeing with President Donald Trump’s demand that Iran must not be allowed to extort payments from shipping through the international waterway of the Strait of Hormuz.

“There is great alignment between our interests. We all share a vision for the Indo-Pacific, a region that is free and open,” she said.

Motegi held bilateral meetings with Rubio and Jaishankar during his visit to New Delhi, in addition to the Quad talks. The Japanese foreign minister said his country and India should be the “driving force” in protecting the free and open Indo-Pacific, given their proximity to the conflicted regions and their mutual interests.

Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae recently announced updates to Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) initiative, emphasizing more practical cooperation with allied nations to safeguard freedom instead of rhetorically invoking “the rule of law,” and more involvement in the initiative by the other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a grouping much larger and less focused than the Quad.

Motegi has been doing the legwork to bring other nations of the “Global South” into Japan’s FOIP strategy, including countries in Africa and Asia. India has long sought recognition as a leader and speaker for the Global South, a loosely defined collection of developing nations that are generally not members of heavy-hitting economic blocs like the Group of Seven (G7).

According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Motegi presented Japan’s ideas for the FOIP to the other Quad members at the beginning of the summit, and they were generally agreeable to the framework.

Motegi also sought to rally the Quad against North Korea’s “unlawful development of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction,” and its “malicious cyber activities.”

The joint statement from the Quad members carefully avoided mentioning China by name, but Beijing predictably denounced the meeting.

Diplomatic niceties aside, it was fairly clear who the Quad was talking about when it expressed “serious concern about the situation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” including “dangerous and coercive actions” such as “the unsafe use of water cannons and flares.” Chinese ships deployed near disputed islands frequently use water cannons and flares against Philippine vessels.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday that her government opposes “the formation of exclusive cliques or bloc confrontation.”

“No cooperation should undermine ​mutual trust and cooperation ​among regional countries,” she said.