Since it was first conceived over two decades ago, the Quad’s obituary has been penned time and again by commentators and strategic rivals alike.
Following its revival in 2017, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi famously predicted the grouping between Australia, the United States, Japan and India would “dissipate like sea foam.” More recently, one Australian analyst observed in November 2025, “the Quad is either dead or on life support so deep there are few signs of life.”
A bungled vaccine rollout, diplomatic spats, and an enduring “coherence problem” have done little to prove its critics wrong. Since the advent of Trump 2.0, India-U.S. tensions have threatened to undo decades of quiet diplomacy aimed at anchoring India in a U.S.-aligned Indo-Pacific, while the wars in Iran and Ukraine have pulled into sharp focus the daylight in strategic outlook among the four Quad members.
Yet, perhaps most glaring is the lack of a leaders’ level summit since September 2024. Leaders’ meetings motivate bureaucracies, offer a closed-door forum for candid discussion, and serve a vital signaling function to regional partners. They were an annual event under the Biden administration, which elevated the Quad as a core pillar of the Indo-Pacific security architecture.
