By: Lindsey Ford
It’s been an unexpected week for multilateral diplomacy, at least by 2025 standards. On the heels of a reasonably drama-free NATO Summit, Quad Foreign Ministers put on a unified face in their July 1 meeting, issuing a productive joint statement that should put to bed any suggestions that the Quad may fade into irrelevance. There is much that feels reassuringly familiar about the joint statement, which maintains significant continuity in its overall tone and content. However, a close review also points to notable shifts that could erode the group’s regional influence over time. This brief highlights the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Quad joint statement.
The Good: There are many things to commend the 2025 joint statement, but the most important is its clear emphasis on ensuring the Quad evolves into a more action-oriented and focused organization. The Quad, like many start up organizations, had a period of rapid growth over the past several years. The result was a sprawling array of working groups—on everything from space cooperation to counter-terrorism—that had become increasingly difficult for the four countries to effectively manage. Under the new Quad rubric, this wide-ranging list has been pared down to four focused priorities—maritime and transnational security, economic prosperity and security, critical and emerging technology, and humanitarian assistance and emergency response. This new format makes ample sense and will allow the four countries to focus on generating real momentum behind important efforts such as the new critical minerals partnership, the Quad logistics network, and a coordinated initiative on subsea cable resilience. Coordinating multilateral deliverables is an arduous task at the best of times. Quad ministers deserve credit for their effort to ensure the group avoids the ‘talk shop’ label that has so bedeviled other Asian regional organizations.
Also commendable was the statement’s strong language on shared regional security challenges, including the South China Sea, the DPRK’s missile program, and Myanmar. At a time in which it has sometimes been unclear whether the United States and its allies could still find common ground—much less a common voice—it will no doubt be a relief to many partners to see such a surprising degree of continuity in the Quad’s regional security language.
The Bad: What was problematic about the joint statement was not the language that was included, but the language that was noticeably absent. Unlike recent Quad meetings at both the leaders and ministerial level, this year’s joint statement made no mention of the wars in Ukraine or Gaza, pointedly avoided any reference to the importance of the UN Charter, democracy, or human rights, and dropped any mention of equality for the region’s women and girls—all present in previous joint statements.
It may be easy to dismiss these shifts as inconsequential—after all, previous U.S. administrations have often adapted their language and messaging—but we shouldn’t underestimate the potential these changes have to diminish the Quad’s unique voice and influence. It matters when the region’s largest democracies are silent on global conflicts that could set precedents elsewhere in the world. It matters when the region’s largest democracies have nothing to say about their commitment to the UN Charter and its principles, even as Beijing attempts to alter the meaning and interpretation of that document. And it matters when the region’s largest democracies fail to acknowledge the inherent right to equality that women and girls across the Indo-Pacific region deserve to enjoy. The Quad is not just a group of four Indo-Pacific countries with shared interests. Since its inception, a core part of the Quad identity has been that it brings together four of the region’s largest and most influential democracies. At a time when Beijing is attempting to paint itself as the protector of the global order, the Quad’s democratic voice is one that continues to matter.
The Ugly: What was perhaps most unfortunate in the recent joint statement was the clear diminishment of the Quad’s ability to provide regional public goods in some of the areas that matter most. The Quad’s work on health security has been impactful and life-saving. Collectively, Quad countries provided hundreds of millions of doses of free COVID vaccines to nations across the Indo-Pacific. And during the September 2024 Quad Summit, Quad countries committed to a new cancer moonshot initiative that aimed to dramatically reduce one of the leading causes of cancer death for women in the Indo-Pacific. Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration’s flip flop on vaccine safety seems likely to be the death knell for these life-saving initiatives.
Equally troubling was this year’s sparse and paltry coverage of regional disaster relief. While humanitarian assistance and disaster relief remains a core plank of the Quad agenda, it was disappointing to not see it highlighted more explicitly in the joint statement. The Quad was formed in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and natural disaster response has long been a unique part of the Quad “brand.” Yet the Quad fact sheet cites a mere $30 million of combined assistance in response to Myanmar’s devastating March 2025 earthquake. For comparison’s sake, Quad countries collectively pledged well over a hundred million dollars and numerous logistical assets to the Philippines in the aftermath of 2013’s Typhoon Yolanda—a similarly deadly disaster.
It is good news that humanitarian assistance and emergency response activities will remain a Quad priority. For a region whose residents are five times more likely than those anywhere else in the world to be impacted by natural disasters, this work alone will continue to give the Quad enduring relevance. Unfortunately, making this commitment on the same day that humanitarian workers mourned the official end of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) creates a deeply awkward juxtaposition. More importantly, it raises real questions about the future of the Quad’s collective relief work. The United States has long served as the financial and logistical backbone for large Indo-Pacific disaster relief operations, a role that could not have been executed effectively without USAID and its implementing partners. When the next Indo-Pacific disaster hits, will the Quad be able to rise to the occasion without it?
Lindsey Ford is Senior Fellow for the Foreign Policy & Security program at ORF America.