By Humeyra Pamuk and Kirsty Needham
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Climate change, COVID and China’s “coercion” in the Indo-Pacific will top the agenda when foreign ministers of the Quad – an informal grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States – convene in Melbourne on Friday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Australia this week with Washington consumed by an escalating crisis with Russia, which has massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border and stoked Western fears of an invasion https://www.reuters.com/world/kremlin-denies-putin-promised-not-hold-manoeuvres-near-ukraine-2022-02-08. Moscow denies it has such plans.
The Biden administration wants to show the world that its long-term strategic focus remains in the Asia-Pacific https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/blinken-with-pacific-trip-aims-reaffirm-us-focus-asia-2022-02-07 and that a major foreign policy crisis in one part of the world does not distract it from key priorities.
Speaking to U.S. Consulate staff in Melbourne on Thursday, Blinken said Washington was working “24/7” on the Ukraine crisis but also remained focused on the Indo-Pacific — a region he said would be instrumental in shaping much of 21st century.
“It’s important that we be present, that we be engaged, that we be leading across this region,” he said.
Both Blinken and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne said a key element of the Quad discussion will focus on establishing a regional environment free from “coercion”, a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing’s expansive economic and military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
“Together we are a vital network of liberal democracies committed to practical cooperation and to ensuring all Indo-Pacific nations, large and small, are able to make their own strategic decisions, free from coercion,” Payne said in a statement on Thursday.
The Quad’s cooperation on the region’s COVID response was “most critical”, Payne told parliament, with cyber and maritime security, infrastructure, climate action and disaster relief – especially after the recent Tonga volcanic eruption – also in focus.
Speaking to reporters on the plane en route Melbourne, Blinken described the Quad as a “powerful mechanism” to deliver vaccines worldwide as well as to push back against “aggression and coercion” in the Indo-Pacific, without naming China.
The ministers will work furthering those goals but are unlikely to announce new pledges, leaving that until a May summit of Quad leaders in Japan that President Joe Biden plans to attend.
Blinken’s trip comes days after China and Russia declared last week a “no limits” strategic partnership https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-china-tell-nato-stop-expansion-moscow-backs-beijing-taiwan-2022-02-04, their most detailed and assertive statement to work together – and against the United States – to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy.
U.S.-Chinese ties are at their lowest point in decades as the world’s top two economies disagree on issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea and China’s treatment of ethnic Muslims.
Biden told Asian leaders in October the United States would launch talks on a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. But few details have emerged and his administration has been reluctant to offer the increased market access Asian countries desire, seeing this as threatening American jobs.
Critics say the lack of U.S. economic engagement is a major weakness in Biden’s approach to the region, where China remains to be the top trading partner for many of the Indo-Pacific nations.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Kirsty Needham; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
