Jaishankar Says Quad Nations Share Responsibility for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

On Tuesday in New Delhi, the foreign ministers of the four Quad countries sat down for their third meeting in under 18 months, and India's External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, opened it by describing what the group owes the region it is named for.

India, Japan, Australia and the United States, he said in his opening remarks, are maritime democracies, pluralistic societies and market economies, and that shared identity carries a shared responsibility for a free and open Indo-Pacific. The region, he added, must remain a driver of global growth and stability.

Jaishankar noted that the ministers would be discussing and deciding the group's shared activities, and that those decisions would take account of the many challenges and opportunities in the wider world. But he drew a boundary around the conversation. The focus, he said, would clearly be the Indo-Pacific, which he called the specific limit of the Quad.

He then listed the problems that he said the ministers need to address at the global level: supply chain resilience, connectivity choke points, concentrations of manufacturing and resources, and gaps in critical infrastructure. Each of these, in his framing, offers a new argument for more partnerships, stronger growth and realising the promise of technologies.

The Indo-Pacific, he said, has its own particular concerns on top of those. Meeting them will require enhancing strategic confidence, ensuring maritime security, promoting economic choices and fostering a deeper collaborative ethos. In his view, the best route to that is trusted and transparent partnerships.

Jaishankar also pointed to work already done below the ministerial level. Over the past several months, he said, Quad officials have advanced collaboration across four core priorities: maritime security, critical technologies, economic resilience, and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, known as HADR. He described encouraging progress on many initiatives, without naming specific ones in these remarks, and said he was confident the day's deliberations would be useful and productive.

The Quad's agenda, as the group describes it, spans maritime security, resilient supply chains, critical minerals, infrastructure development, disaster relief and emerging technologies. Attending the New Delhi meeting alongside Jaishankar were Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

What these opening remarks do not yet show is outcomes. The language is of progress and priorities rather than announced projects. With three ministerial meetings in less than 18 months, the thing to watch is whether the officials' work turns into concrete joint initiatives that come out of this session.