ExclusiveQuad summit plan turns uneasy as India pushes ahead without top leaders: sources
Trump foresees a ‘big, fat hug’ from China’s Xi Jinping as New Delhi mulls a face-saver Quad meet-up without the US president
A stretch of awkward diplomacy is unfolding in the Indo-Pacific.
The move is seen as a way to smooth India’s ruffled feathers on several counts.
“It’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig,” said Sourabh Gupta of the Institute for China-America Studies, a think tank in Washington.
“The outcomes in practice will not be worth the paper on which they are written,” he added, calling it “more farce than tragedy”.
The Quad, an informal strategic grouping that also includes Australia, Japan and the United States, was revived in 2017 during the first term of US President Donald Trump and has often been viewed as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in the region.
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