Converging and Diverging Interests of Quad Members

September 19, 2025

3–4 minutes

Excerpt from my article “Quad-Plus? Carving out Canada’s Middle Power Role“

Another important area to examine when thinking about the Quad and attempting to carve out a role for middle powers is to examine the converging and diverging interests of its current members to identify synergies and opportunities to establish a Canadian middle-power role.

For existing Quad members, there are many areas of convergence. The most imminent concerns for them are growing economic interdependence with China and China’s track record of using economic coercion as leverage for strategic gains. China’s surrogates in Northeast Asia and South Asia, in particular nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Pakistan, also create worries in Japan and India.

China’s objection to expanded representation in the United Nations Security Council, despite attempts by Japan and India, represents another shared concern for Quad members. China’s expanding maritime claims in ESC, SCS, and Indian Ocean have the potential to disrupt sea lines of communication (SLOC). Furthermore, Quad members are united in their continued frustration with China’s role in fracturing Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) unity. Finally, there is also growing interest among Quad members to use arrangements such as the Quad to enhance partnerships through specific initiatives such as strengthening and diversifying global supply chains.

India sees the Quad as a as a coalition of states to sustain the US presence in the region. The subtext here is to ensure the Indo-Pacific region and the Indian Ocean are not dominated by China as Beijing seeks to elevate its global reach through the construction of ports and infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other arrangements in India’s neighboring states of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan.

For India, Chinese infrastructure projects are strategically located in what India deems its historical sphere of influence and are often called China’s string of pearl around India’s neck – albeit viewed more as a garrote than a necklace.

New Delhi’s views of the Quad partially overlap with those of Tokyo and Canberra in this regard, as all three states want to ensure that the United States remains engaged in the region through active institutional arrangements such as the Quad.

While convergences are many, there are important divergences that continue to make deeper institutionalization of the Quad a challenge.

For India and Japan, issue linkage over North Korea and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities continues to foster disagreement. Tokyo would like to get India’s support for North Korea, and New Delhi seeks Tokyo’s support for Pakistan – but neither side is willing to seriously support the other’s concerns. Another area of divergences is Tokyo, Washington, and Canberra’s comfort with alliances, alignment, and minilaterals, whereas New Delhi continues to wed itself to the Non-aligned Movement.

More critically perhaps is the gap between New Delhi and its Quad counterparts in terms of the geographic understanding of the Quad and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Here, India sees the Indian Ocean as the geographic scope of the Quad’s activities, whereas the other members of the Quad have much more expansive understandings.

Last but not least, each member of the Quad has different degrees of concern regarding the securitization of the Quad or FOIP. For India, Japan, and Australia, their largest trading partner is China, and that relationship cannot be easily changed.

Table 1.0 Japan–Australia–India–US and Canada’s converging and diverging interests
	Japan–Australia–India–US and Canada	Concern
Converging Interests	Growing economic interdependence with China (Glaser, 2017) Chinese surrogates in Northeast Asia and South Asia UNSC permanent member status (Mohan, 2013, 283) China’s expanding maritime claims in ESC, SCS, and Indian Ocean (Abe, 2015) China’s role in fracturing ASEAN unity Resilience of Global Supply China (Basu, 2020) Infrastructure, connectivity	Economic coercion DPRK, Pakistan (missile and nuclear tech) Monopolization of representationSea lines of communication ASEAN Centrality Global supply chain disruption Development, integration
Diverging Interests	Issue linkage (Panda, 2011, p.8) Alliance/alignment/minilaterals Competing visions (Roy-Chaudhury and Sullivan de Estrada, 2018) Over-securitization of Quad or FOIP	North Korea vs Pakistan Legacy of Non-aligned Movement US–Japan Alliance, Transpolar Sea Route Indian Ocean vs Indo-Pacific Exclusion of China and conflict