Bombay Biden arrived on Friday to the White House. Because the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has always spoken of his Irish origins, often to express distancing towards the United Kingdom. But, in 2013, he mentioned that, maybe he has a distant family in the Indian city of Bombay. And now the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has taken advantage of him to the White House to inform Biden that, indeed, that is the case. "I have brought the documents" to prove it, Modi said, along with a laughing biden, whose personality 'Abrazafarolas' is always manifested when he meets with foreign heads of government (with the exception of Pedro Sánchez).
So, if Barack Obama had caused urticaria among the European allies of the United States when in 2009 he was self-defined as "the first president of the United States who comes from the Pacific" - since he was born in Hawaii - Joe Biden seems ready to be presented as The first president of the Indian, despite the fact that the bonds between the biden of Delaware and the Bombay Biden seem to be from the end of the eighteenth century.
It is not a casual statement. Obama launched in 2010 "the turn towards the Pacific". A decade later, Biden has reinforced him with the Aukus - the new Defense Pact with Australia and the United Kingdom - and has taken him an ocean further, to the Indian. The new vision of the US world was revealed this Friday afternoon - night in Spain - when the Square Safety Dialogue (known as 'Quad') held its first meeting of Heads of State and Government in Washington. There were Biden, Modi, Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, and the Australian Scott Morrison. In its 17 years of existence, the 'Quad' had only once had a 'virtual' meeting, again at biden instances, last March.
The jump in the relationship between the four countries is one of those events that activate the salivary glands of experts and geopolitics fans. And they do not lack reasons. In the 'Quad' are the first (USA), third (Japan), and sixth (India) greater Earth economies, and two nuclear powers (US and India), with a total population of 1,750 million people. In front of them is China, the second largest economy in the world, also nuclear power, and with 1,400 million inhabitants.
Beyond the numbers, the quad formalization also represents a change of historical dimensions by India. Until the nineties, that country was within the movement of the non-aligned, a group of developing countries that in theory tried to stay on the margin of the dispute between the USSR and the US but that, in practice, tended To be closer to Moscow than Washington.
Now, Apple, Amazon and Wal-Mart have their hopes for future growth in that country, which is already the second largest Facebook market in the world, the largest European steel (Arcelor, with plants in Asturias) is Indian capital, and New Delhi has since 2005 a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. But the acceptance of the 'Quad' is also an exercise of humility by Modi, which has seen how the Covid-19 devastated India to the point that the country has had to accept, for the first time in 16 years, international aid for Combat a natural catastrophe. The embrace of 'Quad' reveals that India's ideas as 'Lord of the world' and 'self-sufficient' - that Modi had set as a goal for the country -, are unintendable. New Delhi can not be solo, and less when China is surrounding it with trade agreements with its neighbors: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon, Burma, Nepal, and, from the arrival of the Taliban, Afghanistan.
But, who thinks that we are facing the birth of a new military organization like NATO is wrong. The 'Quad' is less than the Atlantic Alliance, since it is not an organization and does not even have a secretariat. But, too, it has a much greater field of action. In fact, he was born by a natural phenomenon: the 2003 tsunami, which caused 225,000 dead in fourteen countries. On the basis of international cooperation after the catastrophe, Japan proposed, with the support of the Government of George W. Bush, create, with India and Australia, in 2007 the 'Quad', with the idea of promoting "a free Indo-Pacific , prosperous, inclusive, and based on rules ".
And that's where this forum is more than NATO. This forum is not limited to defense, but also, to cooperation in areas such as the fight against climate change, the defense of the environment, and cooperation on sustainable development, all issues that remain outside the agenda of The infrastructure megaprojects that China uses to extend its influence in Asia.
For example, after the telematic meeting of March, the four members agreed that India would produce one billion doses of vaccines against VOCID-19, which would be paid by the United States and Japan, and distributed to the countries of the region. The objective was evident: to present an alternative to the vaccines that China was delivering to many developing countries. The brutal 'second wave' of the Covid-19 in India, however, has meant a delay of months in the plan. Now, after today's meeting, there is no doubt that there will be more initiatives.
Date Of Update: 24 September 2021, 16:00
