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New Delhi: In a joint statement largely stripped of geopolitical positioning and focused instead on economic issues, the Quad foreign ministers on Saturday (October 31) reiterated the need for unhindered navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, explicitly adding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to the key maritime routes, while announcing over US$85 million in assistance to expand access to artificial intelligence across the Indo-Pacific.

The ministers met in Atlanta on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, which was chaired US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted. It was the third Quad foreign ministers’ meeting this year, after the one in New Delhi in May and Manila in July.

As in May, the statement says only that the ministers look forward to “the convening of the Quad Leaders’ Summit”. It names no host, venue or date, or nor does it indicate whether the summit could take place in the near future.

This matters because the grouping has not held a leaders’ summit since Wilmington in September 2024, and India, as chair, was meant to host one in 2025. 

The US secretary of state had previously said that a Quad leaders summit could be held on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in Manila.

At Atlanta, Rubio said that he hoped “when our leaders meet in November, they will be able to announce some more concrete steps”. 

Geopolitical references missing from joint statement

With the October joint statement titled “Economic Prosperity and Security”, the Quad document had a much narrower focus, omitting the detailed observations on geopolitical hotspots that featured in the previous........

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