Biden meets with key Pacific leaders, shores up maritime cooperation

President Biden met Saturday with the leaders of India, Australia and Japan, which make up a cooperative partnership in the Indo-Pacific, as the U.S. looks to strengthen ties in the region and counter a growing threat from China.

Biden announced new initiatives to enhance maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region in a joint meeting Saturday evening between all four leaders.

The U.S., India, Australia and Japan make up the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which primarily focuses on maritime cooperation in the broader Indo-Pacific region, but also includes tackling an array of issues from security to the economy and healthcare investment.

The Quad leaders announced the bolstering of a maritime agreement that monitors waters for illegal fishing and other unlawful international activity, with the new pact now including the Indian Ocean under the partnership’s purview.

Leaders also announced the deployment of new technologies and training programs to increase that maritime pact, along with Quad nations now able to join a U.S. Coast Guard vessel for the first time.

Biden said at the opening of the joint meeting that the Quad “was here to stay.”

“We’re democracies who know how to get things done,” Biden said. “Our four countries are more strategically aligned than ever before.”

Modi said the Quad has “enhanced cooperation in every sphere in ways unprecedented.”

“Quad is here to stay to assist, to partner and to complement,” he said.

Before the meeting, Biden spoke individually with each of the world leaders in Wilmington, Del., meeting first with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday evening. On Saturday, he spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Biden spoke on world issues with the three leaders, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the threat from China against the self-governing island nation of Taiwan.

Japan is expected to increase its investment in the deployment of advanced technology under the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) trilateral alliance, according to the White House readout of the meeting with Kishida. Japan’s partnership with AUKUS was first announced in April.

Kishida said during the meeting session that the “security environment surrounding ourselves is becoming increasingly severe,” emphasizing the need to defend international laws and commit to a partnership like the Quad to advance shared values like a free and open Indo-Pacific.

The White House also announced a strengthening of the U.S.-Australia commitment to AUKUS and to work on climate and clean energy investment and projects.

Albanese said the Quad has “evolved” to meet rising challenges in the Indo-Pacific region.

“We’ll always be better off when like-minded countries and our four great democracies work together,” he said.

As competition with China intensifies, and the possibility of a larger conflict with Taiwan or the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea looms, the U.S. is looking to shore up ties in the Indo-Pacific.

The Quad, which began as a loose partnership in 2004 but officially formed in its current state in 2017, has emerged as one of the key partnerships in the region along with AUKUS. This week, Congress announced the House and Senate Quad Caucuses to improve support for the cooperative alliance.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Friday that with the Indian Ocean now included, the U.S. was “quite confident in the fact that the Quad will endure.”

“The Quad continues to see itself as having a huge stake in the maritime security of the region, and is very proud of this project, which is already benefiting two dozen countries in the Indo-Pacific,” the official added.

The maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific is security-based with the countries’ coast guards working to enforce laws, but it also focuses on humanitarian assistance and disasters response.

The senior administration official said the Quad is “focused on reinforcing peace and stability and the continuity of international law in the region.”

“We continue to define the Quad as a partnership, not a military alliance of any kind,” the official said. “We continue to focus on providing public goods for the region, and in the service of that goal, we are very much interested in continuing to build out that work on maritime security.”