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Quad’s vaccine pledge: Game changer or late to the party?
The Quad, comprising the United States, Japan, India and Australia, has pledged to produce 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine for Southeast Asia as China has doled out close to 50 million doses of vaccines to the region.
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Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (right) speaks next to a monitor displaying US President Joe Biden (top left), Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison (bottom left) and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the virtual Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting, at his official residence in Tokyo on March 12, 2021. (Agence France Presse/Kiyoshi Ota )
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ast week, leaders of the United States, Japan, India and Australia, who are grouped together in the informal partnership under the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, pledged to ramp up COVID-19 vaccine production to assist countries in the Indo-Pacific region, where vaccine diplomacy has largely been dominated by China.
The initiative was one of the biggest outcomes to come from the virtual Quad summit on Friday, with huge investments to be made to produce a billion vaccines by next year to cater to Southeast Asia and the wider region.
Formerly a loose group of countries formed to coordinate disaster relief for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the so-called “diamond of democracies” has turned into an ad hoc security alliance focused on advancing a “free and open” Indo-Pacific in the face of China’s growing stature.
ASEAN nations such as Indonesia, which are located at the center of Indo-Pacific geography and strategy, have so far remained silent about fresh engagement from the US and its allies, as they resist the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing playing out in their own backyard.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in an interview with the BBC on Sunday, said it would not be possible for many countries to choose between the US and China.
"It is a problem for many countries, which is why we are all hoping and encouraging the two large powers to think very carefully before deciding that the other one is an adversary which has to be kept down, if not put down," he said, as quoted by The Straits Times.
Read also: 'An Indonesian perspective on the Indo-Pacific'
