On January 22, 2013, the administration of then-President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines instituted arbitral proceedings against China under the dispute settlement provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The arbitration concerned the role of historic rights and the source of entitlements in the South China Sea, the status of certain maritime features there, and the lawfulness of certain related actions by China that the Philippines alleged to be in violation of UNCLOS.

According to the July 12, 2016 arbitration decision, China’s historic claim to the area and its resources is not consonant with UNCLOS and is thus legally invalid. This means that the resources within some of the Philippines’ claimed zones — like the fisheries outside the territorial sea around Scarborough Shoal and any oil or gas under the Reed Bank — are Manila’s alone.

^{Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons/NASA}

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Strategic location, fast economic growth, young demography, and a politically stable environment make Southeast Asia an important region. Naturally, great powers gravitate to the region to promote their interests and forge mutually beneficial relationships. In such endeavors, a robust strategy is necessary, and deft messaging matters. After facing criticism for the incoherence of his regionwide Asia strategy (aside from a fixation with denuclearizing North Korea and trade war against China), President Donald Trump threw his support behind the notion of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” also called the FOIP. In a November 2017 speech before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam, Trump described the FOIP as “a place where sovereign and independent nations, with diverse cultures and many different dreams, can all prosper side-by-side, and thrive in freedom and in peace.” The 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) added that the FOIP provides prosperity and security for all and that the United States will strengthen its alliances and partnerships in the region to build “a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains.” Rolled out during Trump’s Asia tour late last year, FOIP represents Trump’s answer for an Asia strategy that regional states had been looking for from Washington. However, for the strategy to work, seven key issues must be closely considered.

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Recent decades have seen how the trend of infrastructure connectivity programs has evolved in developing regions, with each program being seen as either complementary or competing with another. A powerful state like China that has the technical capability and financial resources to pledge assistance has boldly presented a master plan, while smaller states participate individually in these economic connections offered by the big players, or come together as a regional bloc to make their own (i.e., ASEAN Connectivity, Asia-Africa Growth Corridor). ASEAN has a master plan for connectivity, for instance, that has long been cascaded to the national level, but as developing states, its member countries are challenged by the lack of financial capital, technology, and expertise to build infrastructure and thus need help from others, particularly fund-provider states and multinational banks.

^{Illustration by Liu Rui, Global Times}

Secondary powers, on the other hand, are caught in between. These key states behave in strategic ways along the balancing-bandwagoning spectrum, such that it creates significant impact on the international affairs, especially in times of power shift. From a political-security perspective, Japan for one lacks security independence from the United States, although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is recently pursuing a more active role in regional security. Economically speaking, Japan has robust trade relations with China. However, five years after the 2013 pronouncement of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Tokyo is still half-hearted and uncertain on how to engage the initiative. It is being argued that the country has an ambiguous economic policy towards China. Moreover, being the third largest economy, Japan has its own blueprint and has been partnering with ASEAN states even before the pouring of Chinese aid in recent years.

In what ways can Japan play a significant role in relation to the BRI? How can a secondary power like Japan integrate its own economy into the overlapping connectivity initiatives?

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In 2007, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue brought the United States, Japan, India, and Australia together in a loose security dialogue. Countries of the Quad, as it later came to be known, sought to strengthen each other on the basis of shared values and interests, particularly on maritime security from East Asia to the Indian Ocean. Despite its potential, the Quad suffered an untimely death when Australia withdrew from the association in 2008. Today, however, there seems to be an apparent connection between the revival of the Quad in 2017 and the formation of the so-called Indo-Pacific region. Indeed, one can make the argument that there is a definitive relationship between these two variables, that is, that the rebirth not just of the idea but of the actual Quad spurred the creation of the Indo-Pacific concept. Accompanying these arguments are typically empirical analyses that trace the events that led to the creation of the Quad in 2007 and its untimely demise in 2008, as well as the factors that resulted in its revival in 2017. While rich empirical analyses are always an advantage, they oftentimes run the risk of being disorganized precisely because they are unmoored in contemporary scholarly debates. I argue here that one way to deepen our understanding of the Quad phenomenon is to go one level of abstraction up and engage with theory. Thinking theoretically is neither favored only by the dwellers of the Ivory Tower, nor a futile exercise. Indeed, while theory does not construct reality, it does shape our perception of it. Here, I offer two ways to think theoretically in regard to the Quad.

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