TOKYO: Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan and the United States – a grouping known as the “Quad” – met in Tokyo on Monday (Jul 29) for talks expected to focus on maritime security and initiatives to build up cyber defences.
The talks attended by Australia’s Penny Wong, India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Japan’s Yoko Kamikawa and Antony Blinken from the US, follow security discussions between Tokyo and Washington on Sunday where the allies labelled China the “greatest strategic challenge” facing the region.
“We all know our region and our world are being reshaped. We all understand we face the most confronting circumstances in our region in decades,” Wong said in opening remarks at the start of the Quad talks on Monday.
“We all cherish the region’s peace, stability and prosperity and we all know it is not a given, we all know we can’t take it for granted.”
In her opening remarks, Kamikawa highlighted the need to build up cybersecurity capability and provide training opportunities in maritime security to protect and develop prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
The US announced plans on Sunday for a major revamp of its military command in Japan to deepen coordination with its ally’s forces.
It was among several measures taken to address what the US and Japan said was an “evolving security environment”, noting various threats from China including its increasingly muscular maritime activities in the East and South China Seas.
“Now, we have conflicts: Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan, they get a lot of attention, understandably,” Blinken said in his opening remarks to the Quad group.
“But even as we’re doing what we need to do, what we must to try to bring these conflicts to an end … we have not lost sight and indeed we are resolutely focused on this region that we share.”
After leaving Tokyo, Blinken and Austin will hold security talks with another Asian ally, the Philippines, as the Biden administration seeks to counter an increasingly bold China.
Blinken met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Laos on Saturday and repeated that Washington and its partners want to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, according to a US readout of the meeting.