Akshobh Giridharadas
Observer Research Foundation, Oct. 25, 2021
“The signing of the Abraham Accords was the missing piece of the puzzle.”
The US-Israel-UAE-India minilateral aims to fructify a partnership in West Asia, and in October, the senior-most foreign policy representatives of the four nations sowed the seeds of the new forum. As Indian analyst C. Raja Mohan writes, “It is perhaps too early to call the new minilateral with the US, UAE and Israel the ‘new Quad’ for the Middle East. It will be a while before this grouping will find its feet and evolve.”[1]
Indeed, what is known as the ‘Quad’ has itself taken a long time to find its bearings: it started in 2007, when India, the US, Japan and Australia came together to form a Tsunami Core Group in response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean; it dissipated soon after the first exploratory meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum summit in Manila in May 2007. There was a sense of nebulousness about the Quad. But 2007 was a different time; there were talks about a peaceful China rise. A decade later, the Quad was revived as the four countries met again in Manila. By then, China had moved from Deng’s peaceful China rise to Xi’s pugnacity in the South China Sea.
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