President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing for a summit-level meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping may not have yielded the desired fruits for the United States, but it was definitely a signal that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the QUAD was fast losing relevance.
Established in 2007 and again being revived in 2017 after a period of dormancy, QUAD comprises India, the US, Australia and Japan. The central tenet of the QUAD has loosely been based on an anti-China plank with a stated commitment to a “free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific” as well as a rules-based international order—euphemisms that China thinks are directed against it. At one time, China had even termed the QUAD a “mini-NATO”.
Faced by unexpected military challenges on the Iran front, coupled with rising domestic unpopularity, Trump sought China’s proactive involvement, but this was not to be, as Beijing stuck to its position on Iran as well as on Taiwan.
Amid a raging global geopolitical churn, Trump’s visit to China undermines QUAD’s relevance.
But for Indian diplomacy, there is hope yet. New Delhi has another lever for enhancing its importance on the high table of the global comity of nations.
The upcoming BRICS Summit in New Delhi in September has already in all possibility netted the big two. While Russia has confirmed that Putin would be in attendance in September, Xi is “most likely” to participate too. For New Delhi, this is a big win.
The 11-membered BRICS has been growing in relevance and importance since its formation in 2009. It now accounts for about 55 per cent of the world’s population and 42 per cent of the world’s GDP. It is also being seen as a powerful voice for the global south, of which India has been a keen votary.
While India’s bilateral ties with Russia have been consistently warm and close, the fact that India and China have pulled back from a 2020 border row and militarily de-escalated to graduate to a relationship that is notably ‘polite’ at the moment, despite active Chinese help to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, speaks a lot to the strategic necessity to work together.
India needs a stable trade relationship, defence technology and platforms from the US, while Russian oil and India-China trade are competing temptations. Incidentally, at the moment, China is India’s biggest trading partner, valued at $151.1 billion in the 2025–26 fiscal year. All the more reason for India to talk about “strategic autonomy” and to walk it too.
