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The recently concluded Quad foreign ministers\u2019 meeting should help to ease some of the recent anxieties around the group. Analysts have been tempted to measure the vitality of the group\u2014comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States\u2014by the frequency of its summitry<\/a> or mentions in American strategic documents<\/a>. But that would be a mistake. Granted, much of the Quad\u2019s pomp and pretense have been stripped away, but what remains is a group that is more narrowly focused and self-interested\u2014and therefore more credible.<\/p>\n Until last year, the Quad boasted a dizzyingly broad agenda<\/a>, from climate change to curing cancer, with paltry results<\/a>. Then, at the last foreign ministers\u2019 meeting, in July 2025, it streamlined its work to four security-related efforts<\/a>: maritime security, economic security, critical and emerging technology, and emergency assistance. Thus, this week\u2019s meeting yielded potentially important outcomes<\/a> on maritime security, with the announcement of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration (IPMSC) and a new maritime common operating picture.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The recently concluded Quad foreign ministers\u2019 meeting should help to ease some of the recent anxieties around the group. Analysts have been tempted to measure the vitality of the group\u2014comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States\u2014by the frequency of its summitry<\/a> or mentions in American strategic documents<\/a>. But that would be a mistake. Granted, much of the Quad\u2019s pomp and pretense have been stripped away, but what remains is a group that is more narrowly focused and self-interested\u2014and therefore more credible.<\/p>\n Until last year, the Quad boasted a dizzyingly broad agenda<\/a>, from climate change to curing cancer, with paltry results<\/a>. Then, at the last foreign ministers\u2019 meeting, in July 2025, it streamlined its work to four security-related efforts<\/a>: maritime security, economic security, critical and emerging technology, and emergency assistance. Thus, this week\u2019s meeting yielded potentially important outcomes<\/a> on maritime security, with the announcement of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration (IPMSC) and a new maritime common operating picture.<\/p>\n This refocusing, often overlooked, was a key turning point in the Quad\u2019s evolution. It was driven by the Trump administration\u2019s well-known antipathy to the old international order\u2014or the provision of \u201cinternational public goods<\/a>,\u201d as the Quad put it.<\/p>\n Equally, however, this evolution has been reinforced by the revision and diminution of the U.S.-India strategic partnership<\/a>. The bilateral relationship\u2014which in many ways has been the engine <\/a>\u00a0of the Quad\u2019s recent development\u2014was severely ruptured<\/a> in 2025. That partnership is being repaired, but it will not bounce back to its previous shape. For both sides, the partnership has a lower ceiling, and strategic priorities have diverged.<\/p>\n The Quad mirrors this trajectory. With less grandiose order-building aspirations, its partners have an opportunity to cooperate more quietly, but more effectively, for the cause of regional security.<\/p>\n Even close partners<\/span> struggle to forge a common strategic vision. In recent years, the United States and India\u2014alongside other partners\u2014deepened their partnership largely from a common goal of competing against China\u2019s growing assertiveness. That was true even if they differed on priorities or tactics. Over the past year, though, that common strategic vision has fractured.<\/p>\n The bilateral rupture<\/a> was triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s imposition of high tariffs<\/a>, his intemperate insistence on taking credit for a conflict-ending cease-fire<\/a>, and perennial threats to curb legal Indian immigration<\/a>. New Delhi was, unsurprisingly, shaken by the sudden and repeated breaches of trust. In response, it energetically doubled down<\/a> on its instincts for multialignment<\/a>, building productive relationships with as wide a range of partners as possible as a hedge against dependency or entanglement with any one.<\/p>\n Thus, in just the past 12 months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inked significant new agreements with Japan<\/a>, the United Arab Emirates<\/a>, the United Kingdom<\/a>, Israel<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, and South Korea<\/a>, among others. His welcome to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a state visit<\/a> should be seen in that context of omnidirectional hedging, rather than as a return to an old alliance. His apparently cordial visit to China, similarly, was designed to restore calm to a tense relationship, not unlike Trump\u2019s own visit there<\/a>. India is not about to fall into Russia\u2019s or China\u2019s orbits. But the rupture with the United States did underscore in New Delhi the need for quiet borders; economic security; and above all, self-reliance.<\/p>\n Even as the partners work to repair the damage, they will never restore<\/a> the partnership to its pre-Trump trajectory<\/a>. The United States has lost its credibility<\/a> as a dependable partner for India, probably irreversibly. As a result, the partnership has a new, lower ceiling.<\/p>\n The bilateral rupture has been reinforced by a broader divergence in each country\u2019s strategic priorities. India\u2019s short conflict with Pakistan in May 2025 revealed capability gaps<\/a>, eliciting a burst of emergency modernization<\/a> and consternation about Pakistan\u2019s post-conflict gains<\/a>. More significantly, the United States reordered its global priorities<\/a>: devoting new resources to border security, prioritizing the Western Hemisphere, and seeking a \u201cdecent peace<\/a>\u201d rather than \u201cgreat power competition<\/a>\u201d with China.<\/p>\n Overshadowing all of these deliberate moves was the impulsive war against Iran, which predictably flung open a Pandora\u2019s box of painful setbacks<\/a> in the Middle East and gutted U.S. capacity<\/a> to deter war in Asia.<\/p>\n And with their respective strategic firmaments in churn, both Modi<\/a> and Trump<\/a> made high-profile visits to Beijing to seek their own detente and their own riches. The notion of a shared vision to collectively outcompete a global revisionist power has succumbed to divergent priorities and messy unforced errors.<\/p>\n At the same time, Washington seems content with a more modestly framed partnership with India. The country scarcely rates a mention<\/a> in the Trump administration\u2019s strategic documents. In a major policy speech<\/a> in New Delhi, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby tipped his hat to India\u2019s \u201cindispensable\u201d role in Asia, but also emphasized that the bilateral relationship would henceforth be \u201cinterests-based and realistic,\u201d and that \u201cdifferences and even disputes\u201d should be expected. The U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific has favored the pointy end<\/a> of combined operations in the Philippines\u2014alongside Japan and Australia, in the so-called \u201csquad\u201d\u2014as the centerpiece of its regional posture.<\/p>\n By the same token, however, if the rupture has lowered the ceiling on the partnership\u2019s potential, it also revealed that the partnership has a higher floor than it once did. In contrast to the scandals and perturbations of the past, this massive political rift did not break the partnership or suspend any major initiative of it.<\/p>\n Even at the height of the tension in late summer 2025, the two sides continued their programs of work: They conducted the bilateral army exercise Yudh Abhyas<\/a>, held their 2+2 intersessional<\/a> meeting, and continued multiple Quad working group<\/a> meetings and exercises<\/a>. The January appointment of a Trump confidant, Sergio Gor, as ambassador to India<\/a> and the February trade deal<\/a> made it politically safe for both sides to begin rebuilding bridges. They traded high-level delegations, with the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command<\/a> and senior officials<\/a> from the State<\/a> and Defense<\/a> departments going to India and the Indian foreign secretary<\/a> and the chiefs of the Indian Navy<\/a>, Air Force<\/a>, and Army<\/a> going to the United States. This exchange culminated with the late May visit by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n The persistence of the relationship, even through political volatility, is a testament painstaking institution-building over multiple decades. Washington and New Delhi have together built a bureaucratic infrastructure\u2014from foundational defense agreements to expanding exercises<\/a> among Quad partners<\/a> and a battery of policy talks<\/a>\u2014that is almost self-sustaining even in rough patches.<\/p>\n And underlying that superstructure is the irresistible strategic logic that the United States and India are still both locked in their own distinct forms of competition with China. For India to achieve its goal of Viksit Bharat<\/em> (\u201cDeveloped India\u201d)\u2014or even to retain its sovereignty in the face of Chinese coercion\u2014a partnership with the United States promises unique dividends.<\/p>\n The net effect of the sudden bilateral rupture, the divergent priorities, and the resilient institutional ties is a U.S.-India strategic partnership that remains intact, but in a changed form.<\/p>\n Some aspects of defense cooperation are now less likely. In a more fragmented Indo-Pacific, India is now less likely to coordinate military activities with the United States in the western Pacific, for example. In recent years, it had been reviewing its options<\/a> for potential measures<\/a> to deter aggression against Taiwan, but that project now seems far more remote. India continues to purchase munitions<\/a> and additional quantities of existing weapons systems<\/a> from the United States, but it is also now less likely to indulge in procuring new types advanced systems. The United States was always unlikely to transfer data-intensive fifth-generation equipment to India\u2014but now it is also implausible because of Indian wariness of creating new interdependencies with an unreliable Washington.<\/p>\n Other aspects may now be more likely. At a national level, as Colby noted<\/a> in his speech, the United States is determined to deepen defense industrial base cooperation. This should also suit an Indian government toying with defense industrial base reforms, as long as it can navigate the political imperative for self-reliance. At an operational level, the U.S. and Indian militaries continue to deepen their cooperation through increasingly complex exercises. This essential work of building the enabling foundations of military cooperation, largely out of political view, should continue.<\/p>\n A similar dynamic<\/span> is now at play with the Quad. The agenda is more modest, but since it is consciously more self-interested, it should also be more credible. The partners have retained those elements of the agenda that have a real-world impact<\/a>, and they should find it easier to resource and execute on initiatives that yield direct benefits.<\/p>\n One totemic example is the IPMSC announced at the foreign ministers\u2019 meeting in late May. This initiative will allow the Quad members to use interoperable military technology, such as P-8 aircraft, to supplement maritime domain awareness efforts that are already underway, initially in the Indian Ocean region. The initiative has the potential to make maritime surveillance cooperation, which currently occurs only episodically around Malabar naval exercises, a more routine feature of strategic cooperation.<\/p>\n Mirroring the U.S.-India partnership, this initiative demonstrates that the Quad partners still hold significant common interests, even in the face of political volatility and competing strategic priorities. And they still have an institutional foundation, through the Quad\u2019s refocused agenda and working groups, to build upon. IPMSC should help to counter threats from coercion or illegal activity, which would benefit littoral countries in the Indian Ocean region.<\/p>\n But critically, it also demonstrates how Quad partners can focus on developing specific, strategically useful capabilities that they lack\u2014which makes the Quad more modest, but also more realistic.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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