ABSTRACT
The re-emergence of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) was triggered by the return of Shinzo Abe as Japanese prime minister in 2012. Since then, analyses of the QSD’s renewal in 2017 have tended to stress its potential role as a bulwark against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and as a force for promoting democracy in the region. In this chapter, we argue that while the QSD’s resurrection may signal a convergence of interests between the United States, India, Japan and Australia in the Indo-Pacific, there are few signs of a genuine renewal of purpose. We challenge optimistic interpretations of the QSD’s potential on two grounds. First, despite its heralded revival, the lack of unified declarations following multiple security summits points to the absence of coherent strategic intent between the four parties. Second, the QSD is likely to remain a distant second to US alliances and existing trilateral arrangements in the region. The chapter concludes that we are likely to look back on the QSD’s resurrection in 2017 as another false dawn for the development of meaningful security arrangements outside formal alliances in the Indo-Pacific.
