A stretch of awkward diplomacy is unfolding in the Indo-Pacific.
After India’s 2025 term as the Quad’s rotating chair ended without a leaders’ summit, New Delhi is planning to host a foreign ministers’ meeting that could be framed as a leaders-level discussion, even if the top leaders do not attend, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The move is seen as a way to ease India’s ruffled feathers on several counts.
“It’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig,” said Sourabh Gupta of the Institute for China-America Studies, a think tank in Washington.
“The outcomes in practice will not be worth the paper on which they are written,” he added, calling it “more farce than tragedy”.
The Quad, an informal strategic grouping that also includes Australia, Japan and the United States, was revived in 2017 during the first term of US President Donald Trump and has often been viewed as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in the region.
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