Quad Leaders Unveil Maritime Security, Supply Chain Initiatives at Delaware Summit

The leaders of the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral partnership (Quad)—the United States, Australia, Japan, and India—announced new efforts on Sept. 21 to boost their shared maritime security capabilities and expand other areas of regional cooperation.
President Joe Biden hosted the fourth in-person Quad Leaders Summit in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sept. 21 to discuss a range of topics concerning the four nations, including ways to enforce international law in the waterways of the Indo-Pacific.
Ahead of the summit, the White House announced that the Quad partners will soon begin their first joint coastguard exercises that will become a rotational training effort. The United States will lead the first round of the joint training, with Australian, Japanese, and Indian personnel coming aboard a U.S. Coast Guard vessel to pick up and exchange skills.
The White House announced that the Quad will also expand its existing Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative. The IPMDA aims to increase transparency about maritime activity in the region and how nations may be asserting their various claims in the Indo-Pacific waterways, providing awareness not only to the Quad members but also to other regional partner nations.
According to the White House readout, the two leaders discussed their support for maintaining peace throughout the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese people govern themselves independently of the Chinese mainland. But the People’s Republic of China considers the island, also known as the Republic of China, as part of its territory despite there being no formal peace treaty to end the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Since the 1970s, the United States has favored a strategically ambiguous status quo on the question of who should control Taiwan.
The White House stated that Biden and Kishida “reiterated their resolve to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and underscored their opposition to any attempts to change the status quo by force.”
Biden also thanked Kishida for being willing to grow ties between his nation and South Korea, allowing for an expanding trilateral partnership that could prove useful in reinforcing the regional status quo.
The roadmap calls for directing about $1 billion in new multilateral financing through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to help expand India’s domestic clean energy supply chain.
“Over time, we seek to mobilize additional financing into priority clean energy manufacturing sectors that harness public and private financial tools and pioneer innovative financial vehicles to meet the rapid demand for flexible climate finance solutions,” the White House document reads.
Another objective of this U.S.–India clean energy roadmap is to identify ways to expand supply chains for clean energy components. The roadmap also entails working with African partner nations on new solar and electric vehicle projects.