The emergence of AUKUS is being widely speculated as a moment of alliance power-shift in the Indo-pacific region. Theorizing whether or not Quad may be blocked out by AUKUS when the former’s first-ever in-person summit is about to be conducted on the sidelines of a UN summit is futile without examining the objectives of the two groupings. The United States geo-strategic lead to the East is the axis on which the new tripartite- Australia, the United Kingdom and United States (AUKUS) treaty rests. Signed and sanctioned on 15 September 2021, the Indo-Pacific based pact includes cooperation on artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, undersea capabilities and cyber capacities. The trilateral defence pact launched to counter China, vis-à-vis Indo-pacific partnership rubs off on India as ‘two sides of the same coin’, namely QUAD and AUKUS. The newborn AUKUS pact now appears set to serve as the military lynchpin of the US’s anxiety towards Chinese dominance. While the four-nation grouping of QUAD assimilates similar fears and strengths, the proclivity amongst member nations to change the contours alliance has been ever-present since its inception.
Indo-Pacific Minilateralism: Did AUKUS Overshadow QUAD? – USI – Blog (usiblog.in)
