External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday said that the Quad grouping was the solution to resistance to reforming international organisations. While the minister did not name any specific organisation, the expansion of the number of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has been India’s long-pending demand

Jaishankar made the statement while virtually delivering the JG Crawford Oration at the Australian National University, Canberra.

The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is a grouping of India, Australia, the United States and Japan. The four countries first met in November 2017. Countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region is believed to be among the objectives of the grouping.

In his address on Monday, Jaishankar said that the Indo-Pacific region was grappling “with different capacities and new approaches”. In such a situation, he said, that some are likely to make more progress than others.

“The fact is that the days of unilateralism are over, bilateralism has its own limits, and as the Covid reminded us, multilateralism is simply not working well enough,” the foreign minister said.

He added that the Quad has focused on maritime security, cyber security, disaster response, climate action and counter-terrorism measures in the past two years. The grouping’s expanding agenda “affirms a declared intention to promote greater prosperity and ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific”, the minister continued.

The foreign minister said there has been a “real transformation” in India’s relations with Australia, the US and Japan in the last two decades.

Jaishankar said that the US has become India’s leading trade partner and “closest collaborator” in technology and innovation. “The United States is undeniably the premier power of our times and will remain so,” he said in his address. “Indeed, such is its centrality to the current order that be it ally, competitor, the agnostic or the undecided, none of us can really be indifferent to its posture.”

Referring to “geo-political turbulence” in the Indo-Pacific, the situation in Afghanistan and the Covid-19 pandemic, the foreign minister said that the world has “witnessed quantum shifts along with more organic change”.

“Those who connect the dots would surely agree that we are really now at the cusp of something big.,” he said. “As we seek to discern the outlines of what emerges next, there is no question that the Indo-Pacific would be very much at its core.”

Jaishankar also made a reference to the “impressive growth of Chinese power”. He added, “We have entered a new phase in international relations and the full impact of China’s re-emergence will be felt more than those of major powers before it.”