Since its conception more than two decades ago, the Quad’s obituary has been written repeatedly by commentators and strategic rivals.
After its revival in 2017, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi predicted that the regrouping between Australia, the United States, Japan and India “dissipate like sea foam.» More recently, an Australian analyst observed in November 2025“The Quad is either dead or on life support so deep that there are few signs of life.”
A failure vaccine rollout, diplomatic disputesand a lasting “consistency problem” have done little to prove his critics wrong. Since the advent of Trump 2.0, India-US tensions have threatened to undo decades of quiet diplomacy aimed at anchoring India in a US-aligned Indo-Pacific, while the wars in Iran and Ukraine have developed daylight on strategic perspectives among the four members of the Quad.
Yet perhaps most egregious is the absence of a leaders’ summit since September 2024. Leaders’ meetings motivate bureaucracies, provide a closed-door forum for frank discussions, and serve a vital signaling function to regional partners. It was an annual event under the Biden administration, which elevated the Quad to a central pillar of the Indo-Pacific security architecture.
But the absence of a summit should not be overestimated as evidence of the Quad’s demise.
Although the four leaders have not met since Trump’s second inauguration, the Quad’s practical work has continued in the meantime. Indeed, during the first year of Trump’s term, the Quad countries continued to have at least one engagement each month at the working group level.
This includes the four countries coordinating their support following the March 2025 earthquake in Myanmar, leading the early Coast Guard collaborative efforts in June 2025, launch the Quad Initiative on Critical Minerals in July 2025, as well as the organization of the third meeting of the Quad working group on counter-terrorism, the first field training exercise of the Indo-Pacific Quad logistics network and the simulation exercise and the Quad strategic meeting on humanitarian assistance and disaster response, which took place in December 2025.
Last month, the meeting of the four foreign ministers in New Delhi gave rise to a wave of announcements – from commitments to advance port infrastructure in Fiji to launching new initiatives on critical minerals and maritime surveillance.
The steady pace of cooperation on the ground suggests that the Quad – despite its thin institutional structure – may actually be insulated from higher-level political volatility. Strengthening these working relationships could prove to be the best way to survive in turbulent geopolitical times.
It is with this in mind that in February 2026, the Center for United States Studies hosted the second Quad Track-1.5 Leadership Dialogue in Sydney, Australia. The Chatham House Dialogue brought together three dozen officials, experts, academics, industry stakeholders and policy researchers from Australia, the United States, Japan and India to analyze the progress of the Quad and the paths forward in a new strategic era.
It was clear from the discussions that the Quad has struggled to deliver on many of its announcements, which participants saw as a gift to the group’s critics and strategic rivals. As has been aptly said, the Quad appears to be “afraid to fail, but also afraid to succeed”.
Participants argued that the Quad must now focus its “sprawling” agenda and redouble its efforts on a limited number of priority areas where it can produce meaningful results for regional partners.
So, which opportunities hold the greatest potential for the Quad?
Maritime security has emerged as arguably the “most important contribution” the Quad can make in terms of socializing habits and daily cooperation. Participants were clear about the overall effects that the four maritime powers should aim to generate: as one surmised, “the Quad must be an instrument of collective deterrence and, if necessary, collective defense.”
But the Quad doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to make an impact. Many of its existing activities are “security-adjacent” – although primarily designed as public goods and humanitarian assistance – and are transferable to a tougher deterrence agenda. Key examples include the Indo-Pacific Logistics Network, which is an important development given its ability to foster the sharing of logistics capabilities, and the Indo-Pacific Logistics Network. Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness. The annual Malabar naval exercise also shows that cooperation between the four maritime powers need not be explicitly labeled Quad.
Going forward, participants agreed that Quad countries should move toward more “real-time data sharing” across the Indo-Pacific. Ultimately, the objective should be for the sharing of logistics and capacities to become “absolutely commonplace”, particularly with India. This has been characterized as a decades-long project aimed at building a culture of grassroots cooperation in civilian bureaucracies as well as the military services through understanding of different systems.
As participants emphasized, this maritime security agenda cannot be separated from the port infrastructure that underpins trade, data and energy flows in the Indo-Pacific. Investment in ports is a strategic tool that can transform economies and enable small countries to maintain their agency and security. In 2022, the Quad countries promised more than $50 billion in investment in the Indo-Pacific by 2027, and in 2025 India hosted the Quad Regional Conference on Ports and Transport under the Ports of the Future Partnership, focused on supporting high-quality port infrastructure across the region.
Yet translating these commitments into operational benefits for Quad countries and regional partners remains a challenge. And the Quad’s combined investments in port infrastructure in the Indian Ocean to date (about 3 billion dollars) fall short of China’s total contributions to the region, which total 4 billion dollars.
Together, Quad members could leverage Australia’s regulatory and capacity-building expertise, US financing and security capabilities, Japan’s experience in high-quality infrastructure investment, and India’s regional access, to create transparent, digitally advanced and environmentally sustainable ports in the Indian Ocean.
Compared to the Quad’s initial position as an ad hoc mechanism for humanitarian cooperation, participants described critical minerals as a “boiling frog” situation and a “wicked” problem with no easy solution. There is broad consensus that public-private partnerships will be essential to meeting this challenge. Participants proposed a range of options for strengthening private sector engagement, which could be encouraged through mechanisms such as buyers’ clubs, pooled financing arrangements and a new boost for the flagging Quad investor network.
Likewise, participants highlighted how the Quad is well-positioned to forge standards of responsible behavior in critical and emerging technologies. The group could serve as a valuable forum for reaching consensus on issues such as the regulation of space activities and the sabotage of submarine cables, thereby laying the foundations for future legally binding mechanisms. Other priority areas include scaling digital infrastructure projects – such as Australia-CyberCX Partnership – to meet regional demand and position Quad countries as collaborative and federated providers across the security stack.
Since its resurgence under the first Trump administration, the Quad has gone through several election cycles in all four capitals and proven to be a resilient and agile group. Yet the minilateral’s evolution depends on its ability to move from ambition to achievement and demonstrate why it remains fit for purpose in an era of profound geopolitical change.
There is a clear opening to deepen cooperation on maritime security, port infrastructure and critical supply chains for minerals and technologies. If the four nations do not seize this opportunity to develop a clear value proposition – and deliver tangible results for the region – the Quad risks proving its critics right.