Thursday, March 28

Taiwan Situation Overshadows Quad Alliance Summit


Updated

The leaders of the US, Australia, Japan and India did not agree to condemn Russia’s aggression in Ukraine

from left From left to right: Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi and Fumio Kishida.AFP
  • Asia Joe Biden says US will defend Taiwan in case of attack
  • war in ukraine This is how Taiwan studies Ukraine’s “asymmetric defense”

With permission from the war in ukraine, this week the geopolitical focus has shifted to the Far East. The US President’s First Asian Tour Joe Biden is not disappointing: it was sold as a trip to close a new trade pact with the democracies of the region and has ended up becoming a crossroads of incendiary darts between USA Y Chinawith taiwan in between, adding more sand to the jar of the new Cold War that was already nearly full.

That Biden said on Monday from Tokyo that his country Willing to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan, caused great surprise in Beijing, which expected an aggressive narrative, but did not count on such a blow. His response was to warn the US that he was “playing with fire” And don’t underestimate its power.

From the Asian giant they have never hidden their intention to retake, by force if necessary, the island that they consider a separatist province, but which functions de facto as an independent nation. Although not even Washington’s ally dares to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. To do so would be to cross a sacred red line for China and neither of the two superpowers is interested in another war right now.

“No power, including the United States, can stop the Chinese people’s pace toward reunification or alter the failed fate of the Taiwan independence forces,” Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, responded on Tuesday.

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Under the storm caused by Biden’s statements on Taiwan, leaders of the quad the alliance made up of the US, Australia, Japan and India, widely seen as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in the region. The four countries have jointly carried out two naval exercises since 2020 and its leaders have met three times in two years, including a face-to-face summit at the White House.

During the stage of donald trump in Washington, the Quad woke up as fast as it went back to sleep. Biden made it clear from the beginning of his term that he intended to strengthen ties with his allies in the region. He has in his favor that they all share various disputes with China.

Tokyo partners with Washington to monitor Chinese naval activity around the Senkaku Islands, claimed by the Japanese and Chinese. India has already become used to clashes with China on the more than 3,000-kilometre border they share in the Himalayas. And Australia has been immersed in its worst diplomatic relations in decades with the Asian country for two years, specifically since Beijing imposed tariffs on Australian products such as wine, barley and beef, despite having a free trade agreement signed in 2015.

The new Australian Prime Minister, Labor Anthony Albanesehas been the rookie in this meeting of the Quad led by Biden and in which the Japanese was also fumio kishidaand the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who has distanced himself in recent months from the allied democracies due to his country’s position after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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India has been doing balancing act so as not to condemn the Moscow attack, walking the equidistant line of not giving up its millionaire agreements with Putin, but neither does it want to anger its traditional partner in Washington. After the meeting, the Australian Albanese told reporters that the leaders shared “strong points of view” in the talks on Russia. Although in the statement they issued together no direct mention is made of Russia, which can be understood as a concession to India’s ambiguous position.

More direct were the individual comments at the end of the meeting. “Russia’s unilateral, illegal and immoral attack on the people of Ukraine is an outrage and the atrocities being committed against innocent civilians is something we could not have expected in the 21st century,” said Australia’s Prime Minister. “Russia’s assault on Ukraine only increases the importance of the objectives of the fundamental principles of international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Biden defended.

A response to Chinese influence

The Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) was born as a simple mutual aid association after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, when the four countries came together to provide humanitarian assistance. The alliance was formalized in 2007 by the then Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, but it was inactivated a few months later when Australia announced its withdrawal to strengthen commercial ties with China. It took until 2017 to see the group revived in response to Beijing’s growing regional influence. Since President Xi Jinping came to power, the regime has been applying an increasingly assertive foreign policy, boasting economic and military strength.

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The Quad democracies defend the revival of their alliance over their rival’s moves, which range from building artificial islands in the South China Sea, putting pressure on Taiwan, or sending its coast guards and fighter jets to surround the islands in dispute with China. Japan. Also because of the rapprochement with Russia, especially after, at the beginning of the year, a few before the invasion of Ukraine, Xi signed an “unlimited” partnership with Vladimir Putin.

The leaders of the four Quad nations promised on Tuesday to unite for a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, a recurring expression of the allies that Beijing always translates as an attempt to create an “Indo-Pacific NATO”. The group’s most high-profile announcement was the launch of a satellite-based maritime initiative, the Indo-Pacific Maritime Dominance Awareness Association (IPMDA), to help countries in the region “track illegal fishing and armed militias.” unconventional maritime forces”, in clear reference to the movements of Chinese fishing vessels that sometimes act more like military militias than maritime ones.

During the meeting, Washington pledged to provide more booster shots Covid-19 and pediatric vaccine doses to Indo-Pacific countries, while India has said it will expand its serum manufacturing capacity. The partners also announced their joint plans against climate change, beginning with the creation of two ministerial task forces aimed at developing “green” shipping corridors between member countries and cleaning up supply chains through increased deployment of hydrogen and minimizing methane emissions.

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