US parties find unity in Quad’s potential to counter China in the Indo-Pacific

Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), a non-partisan think tank in Washington, said “squaring off” between Chinese and Philippine vessels as recently as the past week only strengthened the Quad’s resolve and might transition into “actual security cooperation”.

“The next step – and what I would look for – is actual security cooperation, not just sharing information and making information available,” said Fontaine, who served as associate director for Near Eastern affairs at the National Security Council.

Speaking in a CNAS discussion panel on Thursday, he cited the possibility of “logistics cooperation and providing hubs or other abilities for militaries, navies or coastguards from the four countries to operate in and around each other’s territory and waters and things like that”.

According to Fontaine, this approach would result in the expansion of the maritime domain awareness effort into “an actual security cooperation effort”.

“And that would be totally in keeping with the trajectory that the Quad has had, where first it started talking about this stuff, and then it started sharing information, and now it’s hopefully going to start doing things,” he said.

Read the full story and more from South China Morning Post.