Who Will Save the Asian Order?

A decade ago, a young Japanese prime minister named Shinzo Abe had a curious idea for reconfiguring the Asian security landscape. Abe sought to unite Japan, India, and Australia – three vibrant democracies along the rim of the Indo-Asia-Pacific – with the United States, the global superpower, to form an informal “quadrilateral security dialogue.” The conception was premised on the idea that these four states, with their economic and security heft and normative underpinnings in democracy, would serve as an important check on the rise of China and preserve the status quo.

When Abe's proposal was first mooted in 2006, it was a very different time. China remained a rising power, though its destiny was increasingly becoming clear given a steady pace of double-digit year-on-year GDP growth. That year, India and Japan signed a major strategic global partnership agreement, giving thrust to their bilateral relationship. However, Australia, then led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, balked at the prospect of the forward-leaning quadrilateral proposal. Ultimately, Canberra sensed that the initiative would serve to badly derail its ties with China, which led to the initiative fading. Abe's eventual exit as Japan's prime minister in the autumn of 2007 shut the chapter on the "quad" in Asia.

The quad was never a particularly ambitious proposal, structurally. It wasn't a precursor to a security alliance – certainly with India's participation it couldn't be. It wasn't even a forum to pursue intergovernmental intelligence-sharing or broader coordination. The optics at the time, however, were shaped by the unusually ambitious U.S.-India naval exercises in 2007, which were multilateralized and held in the Bay of Bengal. In July that year, Beijing issued a demarche to the four states party to the quadrilateral initiative, seeking clarification. It became quickly clear to India and Australia – both of whom at the time sought a different sort of relationship with China than the United States and Japan – that the quad wasn't tenable.

As 2016 comes to a close, the sort of thinking that was the foundation of Abe's quad may have found more takers in the Asia-Pacific. Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has not only grown more assertive in the East and South China Seas, challenging the existing security architecture by defying international law, but it has increasingly taken an interest in centering itself as the commercial – if not normative – hub of East Asia. Meanwhile, Tokyo, New Delhi, and increasingly Canberra, see value in containing and checking China's ambitions, particularly its irredentist tendencies in maritime Asia.

The United States, too, has in the intervening years helped lay the groundwork for a networked coalition of like-minded Asian states interested in checking China. Japan and Australia remain strong U.S. allies; with Shinzo Abe's return to the Japanese prime ministership in 2012, the U.S.-Japan alliance has seen new energy, with revamped defense guidelines and Tokyo's push for collective self-defense. Australia, under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, has turned into an important supporter of the U.S. push for the rules-based order, throwing support behind U.S. initiatives to protect freedom of navigation and other norms in the South China Sea.

In mid-2016, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter unveiled what he called the "principled security network." Broadly speaking, this network referred to the broadening potpourri of partnerships, trilateral mechanisms, and multilateral forums convened by like-minded states in the pursuit of two important goals. First, the network would ostensibly serve to distribute responsibilities and costs for preserving the regional order. Second, the network would, by its existence and perseverance, preserve the rules-based order.

The network was thus, in some ways, a more modern crystallization of the ideas that had led Abe to pursue the quad in the first place – and at a more appropriate time in China's development as an ambitious superpower. Carter's network represents perhaps the most concrete U.S. restatement of the old hub-and-spoke alliance system that had persisted throughout the Cold War. Instead of Washington coordinating regional strategy bilaterally with a range of Asian capitals, it would encourage and lubricate the development of partnerships among like-minded Asian states.

And, of course, the election of Donald Trump in the United States gives the U.S. principled security initiative increased salience. As U.S. partners and allies grow concerned about a true grand strategic recalibration by Washington on a scope unseen since the days of President Harry Truman, existing diplomatic mechanisms without the United States' direct involvement may see additional enthusiasm.

The original quad proposed by Abe is of special interest in this context. Japan, India, and Australia stand to play an increasingly important role in helping underwrite the future of regional order. Between them, the three countries are steadily increasing their collaboration. In 2016, India and Japan finally clinched a long-delayed agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. They stand on the cusp of also finalizing a sale of Japanese ShinMaywa US-2 amphibious aircraft – a deal that would mark Japan's first successful overseas sale of military equipment after Tokyo's disappointing failure to win Australia's Future Submarine Program tender.

These three countries may need to step up more actively in defense of the regional status quo. On critical issues like the South China Sea disputes, where Chinese irredentist behavior appears to only be intensifying as time goes on, India in particular may need to speak out more forcefully – despite its broader bilateral considerations vis-a-vis Beijing. Japan's outreach to Russia over the Kuril Islands, which yielded little as seen by Abe's December 2016 meeting with Putin, suggests Tokyo may continue its charm offensive toward Russia. Meanwhile, a domestic debate rages in Australia on the country's appropriate strategic path ahead – especially considering that its most significant ally in Washington may lose interest in the thrust of Obama-era programs.

The principled security network formulation or even the imagined quad could come to compete with the China-led “Asia for Asians” vision, which is best crystallized in the increasingly networked patchwork of China-led multilateral groups, from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), to the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Smaller regional security forums like the Xiangshan Forum, hosted by China, compete with alternatives like the Shangri-La Dialogue hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a U.K.-based think tank. (Incidentally, Carter unveiled his "principled security network" idea at the 2016 Shangri-La Dialogue.)

Asian states may not necessarily expect a U.S. withdrawal from Asia, but they should at the least plan for Washington's pullback. Trump's cabinet-level appointments suggest that his campaign-era emphasis on an "America First" policy may not end up forming the basis of a grand strategic shift, but there should be little doubt that the incoming U.S. president presents far more uncertainty than is normally present in a presidential transition.

The coming years may yield the most important moment for Asia-Pacific states who bear a normative stake in the regional status quo to step up as China seeks to slowly but surely mold a regional security architecture with it at the center. Japan's Abe, Australia's Malcolm Turnbull, and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be ready to stand for the status quo rules-based order if they value it. Moreover, they must be ready to do so potentially without enthusiastic backing in Washington.