 On Friday, September 24th, the leaders of the Quad countries had their first physical meetings. These are the leaders of the United States, Australia, Japan and India. A lot of issues were discussed. They released a joint statement. This has a lot of implications for the region itself. We'll be talking about all this on mapping guidelines. So let's first take a look at the joint statement released by the Quad countries. They've talked about a lot of issues of course. But one of the key aspects seems to be this focus on freedom of navigation, rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region. Now we've talked about this before as well. But again, what does the reiteration of this point by these countries really signify? You know, it's an interesting proposition of the rule-based international order which India is now subscribing to because who creates the rules is the real issue. And we had, post the Second World War, the United Nations, the Security Council, which is supposed to be in accordance with international law. They will decide what is lawful and what is not. Suddenly, we have a quote-unquote ex-colonial powers who have now aggregated themselves the right to decide what should be the quote-unquote international rules, which India is now subscribing to in violation with the long-held principles of the Indian government that these should be according to the United Nations international law. And that is the body. The United Nations Security Council is the body which will aggregate what the rules of conduct for nations can be. Now there are problems of that. It's not that there isn't. But the solution is that some countries will become the arbiter of these rules. The international, what should be the international rules of conduct of nations is harkening back to essentially a colonial era where a few of the colonial countries decided what are the international so-called international rules, which meant they could ride roughshod over a large number of countries. It's interesting. The United States, which has launched the largest number of attacks on the other countries post-Second World War, is the leader of this international rule-based order and is telling everybody what the rules should be. Now if you look at all the conduct that the United States had had, even recently, whether it is marching into Afghanistan without the United Nations Security Council umbrella or the Iraq War, what is called the Coalition of the Willing, again, outside the United Nations framework completely, all of this show that the U.S. does not abide by international law. There also have been, as we know, the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, its interventions, military intervention in Latin America and different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. Now all of that taken together, if we see the court's pronouncements, I'm not surprised by Australia, Japan, that is taken for granted. But India's now joining this kind of formulations seems to be that we are not really sticking by what should be and what would be called a relatively autonomous position where India looks at its own interest internationally and then decides how to align with on what issues. This seems to be signing on the dotted line. We are going to talk about freedom of navigations and it's really about South China Sea. Now South China Sea will be talked about in the Pacific but it is the near-literal states which are basically Philippines, Vietnam, other countries of that region and China who have certain conflicts about what are the territorial waters, what are the economic zones of each of these countries. But none of them subscribe to freedom of navigation as defined by the United States that they have the right to go wherever their warships want. That's not their position. In fact, they will say it's our territorial sea or it's our economic zone and it is not freedom of navigation which assumes its open seas. So there is even there the formulation that the court is making is gratuitous as far as these countries are concerned and these countries are already on record very weakly saying that we don't really agree with the freedom of navigation formulations that are being made by the United States and of course it's various camp followers which I can understand Australia, Japan and so on. But India again joining in that particularly on the freedom of navigation issue when we have seen in Lakhadeevs what the United States Navy has done. They don't recognize what we consider our territorial waters or our economic zones. So all of this raises a lot of flags and again the understanding that I have is that this does not seem to have taken place with a thorough understanding of where India should be coming from and what its independent or autonomous international positioning should be and here subscribing to the dotted line of the court in this form doesn't make sense for India. Particularly when you look at as you can see the Indo-Pacific India is not a player in the Pacific. It doesn't have a Pacific shall we say littoral position. So it's really about the Indian Ocean and Indian Ocean in that sense is not in play as far as China is concerned. When you talk about Indo-Pacific we are really talking about Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia if you see this is the region which is economically developing the fastest in the world today if we take economies of different regions and therefore this region is in play because at the moment whether that market will belong to whom that's also the battle and it's very clear China has a very strong trading position both in terms of buying and selling goods and this is also true for Japan and South Korea the allies of the United States. So given the economic relationships that are there it's very difficult to see how those countries will move easily towards the United States. Australia is an outlier here because they have got themselves into a spack with China recently two years their relationships have been pretty bad and Australia's of course if you look at again the map you will see Southeast Asia's proximity is Australia therefore Australia has a military position which can if Southeast Asia is in militarily in play can have the salience again of course whether the military power has any bearing in today's world is a different issue but the Australian at least there is a logic of what they are doing by saying that you know this is where we want to be and we will align completely the United States against China question is why is India doing it? Second question is is a military attack on China feasible? Is it a military play that we are seeing? How does such a military play? Impinge on what are essentially economic relationships which are developing in Southeast Asia and East Asia that's a big question and I think what the United States and its allies as I said India open question why we are joining all of that why we are not keeping relative autonomy vis-à-vis this but why is it why are these countries trying to encircle Southeast Asia militarily against China this I have not really understood because it seems to be getting back to prehistoric I will say by today's terms prehistoric days where you could do gunboat diplomacy and through gunboats and submarines, course neighbors and course other countries you know do force projection at a distance and oceans where the places through which you could do the force projections and if you can see US is quite at a distance Guam is the nearest base to East Asia just as it would take the Diego Garcia it says there is a base there but these are not in play so therefore Australia becomes important but Australia is looked upon as a colonial power in Southeast Asia the record has not been very clean neither they are really liked over there so if you take the Australia-UK-US relationships it seems to be harkening back to Anglo-Saxon dominance and again is not in consulance even with the Quad we don't know is the Quad the step brother of the Australia-UK-US alliance who is the step son and who is the real son is not clear at the moment but there seems to be some dissonance between the two it's interesting Prabir you mentioned these points because the AUKUS also was mentioned yesterday by Scott Morrison who kind of indicated that there was some kind of complementary relationship of course not expanding it now one of the aspects of the AUKUS alliance is that the submarines which Australia is supposed to get are going to come much much later so there really is a question in terms of what is the benefit for all of these players because we know that already we have a lot of military bases as far as the United States is concerned in the region and it's the areas full dotted completely West Asia of course but also this region so are we looking at a kind of encirclement the policy that is trying to come into shape with the help of Australia or is there something else you know if you look at the bases you will find they're concentrated in West Asia they're not concentrated in Southeast Asia or in East Asia there are bases East Asia in terms of Taiwan Japan as well as South Korea Taiwan is a protectorate it really doesn't have bases but ships and aircraft regularly are now visiting Taiwan basically saying that they would like to keep give it quote-unquote protection not mentioning is it a part of one China or two China policy officially United States still talks about one China policy but the way they are behaving is very clear they would like Taiwan at some point to give declare its independence, recognize it and put up bases over there the question that arises is that if Southeast Asia is mainly in play not so much East Asia then do they have bases and you will find there aren't many bases over there in fact most of the countries have refused to provide bases to them so even the existing bases which for instance existed in Philippines no longer exist there given that what is the United States wanting to do because if that area they want to deny to China militarily then Australia becomes a player so it has been articulated by various experts and even foreign policy which is a fairly very pro state department or has very close links to the state department they have said that this in fact is Australia willing to have submarines, ships Tomahawk missiles and aircraft posted in Australia so it seems that the first stage of the AUK US alliance of course as you know UK may still have delusions of past glory but it's a bit player today in the world unless it climbs on to the US in some form or the other so because Australia has a position which is strategic it seems that the submarines are only the some sense of smoke screen through which Mr Morrison wants to join the US bandwagon militarily and therefore we probably will see submarines nuclear submarines and we will see for instance aircrafts bases and so on provided to Australia, Australia willing to host them which is the key issue US always wants bases around the world so it will add a few more in Australia so force projection of the United States against China in Southeast Asia then could become relatively easier because Guam is still too far away as far as Southeast Asia is concerned it is not a player again so South China see as I said really about Southeast Asia so that really doesn't matter but when it comes to Australia I think they have a position which is much closer so it does seem it's a more of drawing Australia into its immediate military ambit and that's the real meaning of the AUK-US alliance and therefore it's more Australia willing to have the United States come and position itself in Australia and the submarines are in that sense it's interesting because submarines Australia will have to pay for so it provides bases and pays a high price for submarines that will be available only 20 years down the line maybe 15 maybe 20 years down the line so what it is buying is interesting because it seems to be buying American presence making itself a target in any war that might take place in the future and also promising to pay for protection so is it that it is protection money Australia will pay to United States for the privilege of hosting them in its bases in Australia as well and also buying submarines in the future long term dependency but of course the other joker in the pack which we haven't talked about is the fact that it's a violation of various nuclear agreements that have been agreed to by various players so various countries so the fact that these are not low enriched uranium fuel that these submarines will use but highly enriched uranium fuel that these submarines that the United States is offering will use means it is basically weapons grade uranium and weapons grade uranium is transferred to a non nuclear weapons country as declared in the NPT and the comprehensive test ban treaty these are all violations of the existing international existing atomic energy regulations and rules that have been framed and they violate also IAEA regulations so this is a declaration Australia is now being given the quasi-formal position of being a nuclear state just as India was also given this position so effectively the United States seems to be inducting with UK help another country into its nuclear you know larger orbit by which it also declares itself a nuclear state so even though this is not being stated the implications of this seem to be given the fact it's highly enriched uranium weapons grade uranium seems to be that and that's a big big question that the world has to place because if that loophole we always do this loophole existed in the nuclear agreements that the world has signed question is that if this is the loophole Australia is allowed to use why can't for instance other countries use it if for instance Iran says ok we are going to develop a highly enriched uranium submarine nuclear submarine what is the proposition then the US will have so creating holes in nuclear agreements of this kind if the US is serious about just non-proliferation forget about you know comprehensively getting rid of all nuclear weapons which is what the North American Treaty had actually said if that is not the goal then creating such a big hole through which you can drive a submarine a nuclear submarine also means you can also drive therefore violation of all the nuclear agreements so I think that's the big question it may appear to be a small one at the moment but the way this loophole has been created means can other countries also exploit this loophole and that's a big question for the world because you know having nuclear weapons is a threat having more countries have nuclear weapons is simply multiplying the threat really exponentially and I'm really worried that all of this which this narrow aim of containing China militarily, strategically and economically can blow up in the world for everybody's face and that is the threat really of the AUK-US policies which are now embedded or being also somewhat sanctified by the court absolutely, thank you Praveen that's all we have time for today keep watching NewsClick