Revived Quad alliance eggs on Chinas response
China’s territorial assertiveness has rapidly revived the long-dormant Quadrilateral (Quad) alliance among major maritime powers India, Japan, Australia and the United States.
A renewed sense of urgency among China’s strategic rivals is being driven partly by growing frustration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) grouping’s inability to tame Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions through dialogue and engagement.
With Asean’s centrality in question, classic balance of power calculations are beginning to define the future of the Asia-Pacific’s strategic order – or disorder, as it may become. The major risk with the Quad’s formation is that, viewed by Beijing as a provocation, it fuels rather than constrains China’s maritime assertiveness, particularly in the South China Sea.
In recent years, China’s Quad rivals have stepped up joint naval drills among themselves, while hosting various high-profile exercises aimed at defending freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters.
India is set to host an eight-day joint naval exercise around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a highly strategic group of islands at the crossroads of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. As many as 16 nations, including Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, are set to participate in the exercises.
Interestingly, the exercises were announced shortly after an agreement was reached between China and Asean to hold their first ever joint naval exercises later this year.
http://www.atimes.com/article/revived-quad-alliance-eggs-chinas-response/
So Southeast Asia including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philipines, and Indonesia is being ceded to China? Well, probably not the Muslim countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei?
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