Secretary of State Tony Blinken has been in Australia for the past few days, culminating with today’s meeting of the U.S.’s “Quad” partners—Australian Foreign Secretary Marise Payne, Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Yoshimasa Hayash, and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. As host of the meeting, Payne boasted that the meeting will send a message to China that security in the region is a top priority for the U.S., VOA News reported. Blinken was also expected to discuss the “threat” posed by the growing China-Russia partnership as evidenced by last weekend’s meeting in Beijing between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Payne called that meeting “concerning.” Why? Because “it doesn’t represent a global order that squares with those ambitions for freedom and openness and sovereignty and territorial integrity,” that the Quad and the Western world defends.
Compared to the bellicose statements he made to the media, stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could occur at “any time, even during the Olympics,” the joint statement issued after the meeting was almost bland, with no mention of either China or Russia, but repeated the word “coercion” several times, lest anyone forget that it’s China doing the coercing. It references the need to defend a “free and open Indo-Pacific ... whose states strive to protect the interests of their people, free from coercion.” Quad partners champion “the free, open, and inclusive rules-based order, rooted in international law, that protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of regional countries.... We oppose coercive economic policies and practices that run counter to this system and will work collectively to foster global economic resilience against such actions.…The Quad is supporting regional neighbors to build resilience and counter disinformation.” (https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-quad-cooperation-in-the-indo-pacific/)