 Hello everyone, welcome to another International Reactions Capsule for the Shankar AIS Academy. Today our topic is the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Quad in Melbourne on the 11th of September. But today is a rather important day and we cannot start this discussion without referring to what's happening between Russia and Ukraine. Today is 2022-2022, so all twos. It's a very significant day in that sense but that seems to be marking a change, a turning point in the crisis between Russia and Western Europe. This is not a war yet as of now when we are talking at 5.30 on 22-2222. The war is not there yet and the CNN is reporting that we are on the edge of war. So what is the difference? The difference is that Putin has not declared war against Ukraine. In fact, he had always said that he had no intention to invade Ukraine and he has kept that even now, even though he has ordered some troops, Russian troops to enter parts of Ukraine, there are two provinces in Ukraine which are already considered themselves independent and they are mostly Russian dominated regions in the East. And these have been fairly, it's like a revolt going on for quite some time and Putin has been supporting Russia, has been supporting them, giving them arms and armaments and so on but not personally going there. So but it was very well known that they had a special interest there. And so what Putin is now saying is that first of all, he recognized these two territories as independent states. That's quite dramatic because it's not been done before, a disputed but not independent states. That is major change. But he's not saying it is an invasion. He says I'm sending some troops there for peacekeeping operations, for keeping the peace because Ukrainian authorities are suppressing them, oppressing them, etc. And these people have the right to self-determination. And therefore, Russia is simply supporting the self-determination of these people and therefore not to create any kind of destruction. He's sending some troops. So this is likely different from what he has been saying so far. But what he was trying to do was to get security assurances for himself. So these are two different things. What he has done now is to basically what he calls to save the people of these two regions. While what he started off was with a view to getting the security guarantees like that Ukraine will never be, will not be allowed into NATO. And there will be no further expansion of NATO eastwards, etc. And so the war is still not there. There are still possibilities of avoiding a war. But I just mentioned it because what we are going to say about the changes in the world, which we talked about last week are relevant in the context of Ukraine and what is happening there. So at the moment there is still no war between Russia and Ukraine. And even the Americans and others are not talking of war but they are only talking of sanctions. So let's hope that this will not become a full scale war because that will have implications for all of us and particularly for India. So in this context it's interesting as to what happened in Melbourne, the Quad ministerial meeting. Because just before the Melbourne meeting there was a very important summit meeting between President Putin and President Xi Jinping in Beijing about which we talked. So this was a very historic change in the whole situation in the world because instead of a two-way cold war we now have a three-way cold war for example or at least two cold war with the US on one side and Russia and China on the other side. Because it has implications for India which we already covered. But what has happened as a result of that is this Ukraine drama very much dominated the Melbourne meeting. And one could see though nobody declared anything new but one could see that the focus of Quad is shifting from an anti-China position to a pro-Quad position. You may have read the editorial in The Hindu which said Quad is now for something not against anything. And this is different from what it was what was originally meant in 2017 as a kind of grouping against China. So in the conversations that were held in Melbourne none of these four foreign ministers spoke about China as such. There was some kind of a reference to the possibility of not possibility the need for open India Pacific which is a fundamental thing about free and open India Pacific. Apart from that there was not even a suggestion that Quad is an anti-China move. Because now it is not only China which is opposing the Quad but also Russia in a big way. Because what Russia is saying is what the Chinese are saying also in the context of the Quad that they don't even accept the term Indo-Pacific. Russia also says that China also says that. So which means they both the countries are opposed to the concept of an Indo-Pacific which has to be Asia Pacific. So that's a serious matter and therefore some kind of a division has taken place. India for example has become very careful about talking about Ukraine because the crime is the burning issue but no discussion. I'm sure there must have been discussion but in the joint statement issued in Melbourne has no mention of Ukraine. There's a mention of Burma Myanmar but there is no mention of Ukraine and this apparently is a result of India's reluctance to say anything critical about Ukraine. In fact our external first minister was asked about Ukraine at this meeting by a journalist and then he was a bit or shall we say restless about that because he started by saying that Ukraine is not on the agenda of this meeting and then he went on to say whatever we have to say about Ukraine we have said it in the security council of the UI. So there also we did refrain from criticising Russia. We did not suggest that there would be a war between Ukraine and Russia but generally saying that everybody should be peaceful and there should be no conflict etc which we normally say. So India's dilemma about Ukraine is very much evident in the was evident in the Melbourne meeting and the speeches made by all the foreign ministers talked about partnership after talking just a little bit about free and open Indo-Pacific. They went straight into all the nice things they want to do for Indo-Pacific without any reference to any threat to Indo-Pacific. So they said that Quad is an opportunity and it is an opportunity for also to compare notes on what we had originally said and also these foreign ministers meeting was meant to be preparatory to a face-to-face Quad summit in Tokyo in June, July or May, June 2022. So this was in preparation for that and so one would have expected some sharp references without mentioning China but this was avoided there and they talked about various things that they can do and specifically the American Secretary of State referred to India in his opening remarks when he said India's leadership of many issues including COVID-19. He should have said many issues including Ladakh but that's not what he said. So the sharpness of a military angle to the Quad seems to be fading away. So this is an opportunity for the region and then India also in its response to the US external affairs minister talked about concrete and actionable proposals and Indo-US relationship has been a defining relationship. So he also put that in the context of India-US relations rather than the context of a grouping of countries wanting to do something for their own security. So these are nuances but certainly there were some indications about Quad becoming less of a military alliance which of course it is not meant to be but that sharpness seems to be disappeared. So it was more a talk about bilateral opportunity rather than a multilateral opportunity. So this was after two summits and before another summit and so you can see what I wanted to bring your attention was there is an evolution in the Quad. Of course the Quad adds muscle to the whole relationship among these four countries and it augurs well for the Tokyo summit other members said and the underpinnings of it were clearly defined and Quad will take off with the agreement to share to a shared agenda and so into an agenda of a vision for the Quad. So the reason is I think the Russia-China alliance or relationship which has been concretized in Beijing has caused some consternation and some surprise some new element into the Quad and its countries and so it's very interesting what were the ideas they discussed. First one vaccine support this is a decision taken at the summit and so they straight away jumped into vaccine support and how much medicines they have exchanged, how new vaccines have been developed and recognition has been given to each other's vaccines and so on. Very harmless, very important but purely on a humanitarian or health perspective. The second is critical technologies how the Quad countries can develop technologies there are so many technologies being developed in different parts of the world but countries like India, US, Australia and Japan has a shared special competencies some have the money others have the technology others have the critical ability to manufacture and so there is a complementarity among these countries to develop what different technologies and that again nobody will dispute and the third was counter terrorism again that's like motherhood nobody can object counter terrorism because all these countries have been affected and the next was supply chains again of concern for everybody because of the China's delicate situation and so alternate supply chains have to be developed, competence have to be developed and therefore that's an important matter and it was made one of the very important aspects of the cooperation and the last was a stable one which all the four have model as the same use as the United States and so all these seem to suggest that the shift is taking place and then there was a curious reference to the Quad working with UAE to counter radicalization of certain areas because they mean Islamic countries and also to promote global peace and so in that effort that is outside the Quad they were talking about basically the UAE as a partner and then more importantly nothing new centrality of ASEAN so none of the ASEAN countries is in the Quad as yet but there are candidates like Indonesia, Philippines etc have also been intending to or willing to join but though they have not been invited, it's quite clear that they'll be partners, observers and consulting partners and things like that so that was quite clear and those new particularly mentioned UAE in this context and as you know there is another Quad which includes UAE, India, US, Israel and UAE there's another Quad one doesn't hear much about it but the cooperation between UAE and Israel has increased tremendously in the last few months and so in the light of that perhaps this has come then the disputes that China has with most of these countries did not trigger so in the discussions in Melbourne that were of course they were all conscious of the disputes that China has with different countries on the question of Taiwan there's a big difference with the United States on Japan there is a Senkaku Islands in India there is the military action against India in Ladakh and none of these were referred to so in a no change in the posture towards China as such but they were all very very very careful avoided India avoided any answer as far as Ukraine was concerned so there was a stern message against cross border terrorism and this again something that we may have insisted on though we were soft about China but we didn't want to be soft on this Pakistan so a stern message was there in the joint statement against cross border terrorism and you know breaking or disrupting peace and solidarity in South Asia as well as something about North Korea so the whole reflection that we have to notice is that the apprehension that many people have that after the formation of focus Quad has become less significant as an instrument of policy in the international region so that is something you have to mark and that means it makes us weaker vis-a-vis China and also vis-a-vis Russia and then what is it that in store for us if China becomes more suspicious of Russia and then becomes suspicious of India's military cooperation with Russia and we want to move further towards the United States and then if the United States turning Quad into a civilian or humanitarian or agency then the strength that we had at the time of the end of President Trump's tenure the kind of solid support that we got from the US will disappear so already almost disappeared and therefore will China will become more intransigent and they will not disengage as they were doing in contact so that the Quad angle or the strength that we had of this group as a counter against China is weakening this is what I wanted to explain to you and coming back to the Ukraine situation India is in an dilemma because we cannot take a position which is against Russia and so we have to do a lot of tight rope walking the external office ministries in France trying to assist the French government to intervene in some form and therefore the European angle has become more prominent in our thinking rather than the Indo-Pacific Pacific angle so the whole question of the utility of Quad for us in our defense against China is weakening and at the same time the Russia China alliance with the possible partnership of Iran and Pakistan is also providing a lot of challenges to India so the November sorry the February meeting of the Quad in Melbourne has sent out these signals that we should watch let's hope that the Ukraine situation will be resolved sooner or later in today there was an interesting revelation that there were a very serious discussion between President Yeltsin and President Clinton in the early 90s when the Soviet Union broke up there have been rumors that there were agreements between US and New Russia that is Yeltsin that NATO expansion will not take this and that is not not confirmed very much but now letters exchanged between President Yeltsin and President Clinton have emerged from the archives of the US State Department where Clinton has given specific assurances to Russia that of course he doesn't say that it will be don't be done but it will be slow and if at all NATO expands it will be an inclusive expansion in the sense that it will not be against Russia but even Russia could be included in NATO that's the suggestion he made and he kept saying that nothing will be done against the interests of Russia sensitivity is there and President Yeltsin we did not think of I did not think personally of Yeltsin as a statesman or a strong person because Yeltsin was absolutely like a slave of the United States when he became president because he had no money he had no strength and therefore he was behaving like a slave state of United States at that time but to look at these letters you will find that he was very specific and very strong about NATO and Clinton was avoiding an assurance but he virtually gave that assurance that nothing will be done in the expansion of NATO which they were not interested in immediately and if it's all something happens that will be with the partnership it'll be more a partnership with Russia rather than anti-antagonistic NATO becoming stronger so there's a new element that you might watch for in the developing drama relating to Ukraine so we are still on the edge of war and not in it yet and for the sake of everyone particularly for India which will be in a real dilemma this if there becomes a war we hope and pray that it does not become a full-fledged war between Russia and Ukraine into which the European Union and United States can be dragged but they are not talking about only sanctions and sanctions will mean not a war but certainly difficulties for many countries including us but at least no destruction of people or cities and that's the only hope we have that's all for today thank you very much