Military Literature Festival: ‘India should shed hesitation and embrace QUAD to tame China’

Underlining military manoeuvres and challenges from China, security and foreign experts at the Military Literature Festival (MLF) on Saturday suggested that India must shed hesitation and adopt a more aggressive approach by embracing quadrilateral security dialogue or QUAD to tame the dragon.

Former Chief of Naval Staff Sunil Lanba (retd) was among the panelists discussing “The QUAD: The emerging Indo-Pacific naval alliance”. Lanba explained the genesis of QUAD as a club of four nations comprising India, US, Japan and Australia.

“Forged in wake of coordination amongst these four democracies during the 2004 tsunami, the ambitious grouping went into limbo owing to Australia’s reluctance to antagonise China then. It’s prominence in 2017 has been a response to China’s assertiveness in the region,” he explained.

Former ambassador Shyam Saran revealed that it was the US which in fact had wanted to play down the group’s significance because it did not want to lose out on China and Russia’s support for pushing the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Vice-admiral Pradeep Chauhan said China considered India as one of its target of military assertion, a challenge our establishment had so far not been familiar and comfortable dealing with.