Quad Foreign Ministers Meet in Tokyo to Discuss Maritime Security and Cyber Defence

Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, collectively known as the ‘Quad,’ gathered in Tokyo on Monday to discuss maritime security and initiatives to bolster cyber defences.

The meeting, attended by Australia’s Penny Wong, India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Japan’s Yoko Kamikawa, and the U.S.’s Antony Blinken, followed security discussions between Tokyo and Washington on Sunday. During these discussions, the allies identified China as 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 her opening remarks at the start of the Quad talks. “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 emphasized the importance of enhancing cybersecurity capabilities and providing training opportunities in maritime security to protect and develop prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.

On Sunday, the U.S. announced plans for a significant overhaul of its military command in Japan to improve coordination with Japanese forces. This move was part of several measures addressing what the U.S. and Japan described as an “evolving security environment,” citing threats from China’s increasingly assertive 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 noted 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 their meetings in Tokyo, Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will hold security talks with another Asian ally, the Philippines, as the Biden administration seeks to counter an increasingly assertive China. Blinken recently met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Laos, reiterating that Washington and its partners aim to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to a U.S. readout of the meeting.

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