The United States is planning to expand NATO's presence in the Asia Pacific region using the Quad, Russia has alleged even as India has of late defended the four-nation coalition, dismissing opposition to it as a ‘unilateralist’ approach rooted in the desire to control choices of other nations.
“In the Asia-Pacific region, the United States and its allies are also creating restricted blocs, trying to draw the greatest number of states into their ranks based on anti-Russian or anti-Chinese principles,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the National Security Council of Russia, said at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tashkent. “This can be vividly demonstrated by the arrangements under the AUKUS and QUAD,” he added.
The Quad is a coalition forged by India, Japan, Australia and the United States to counter China’s hegemonic aspirations in the Indo-Pacific region, albeit with a benign agenda, like development partnerships. The AUKUS – a new security alliance comprising Australia, the US and the United Kingdom – is aimed at creating a framework for the US and UK to support Australia in acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, again to counter military aggression of China.
Patrushev made the comment about the Quad in Tashkent soon after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said at an event in Bangkok that the entire Indo-Pacific region could be benefited by delivery of public goods by the four-nation coalition.
“If there are reservations (about the Quad) in any quarter, these stem from a desire to exercise a veto on the choices of others. And possibly a unilateralist opposition to collective and cooperative endeavours,” Jaishankar said, delivering a lecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
The External Affairs Minister’s comment was apparently intended to dismiss criticism of the Quad by China and Russia.
“Washington intends to begin NATO’s expansion in the region, relying on their potential,” Patrushev said in Tashkent a day after a meeting with India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in Moscow.
Moscow had earlier expressed reservation about the Quad and called it a ‘divisive’ and ‘exclusivist’ tool being used by the United States to implement its “devious policy” of engaging India against China as well as to undermine Russia’s close partnership with India.