QUAD leaders to welcome 'major maritime initiative' for Indo-Pacific at Tokyo Summit 2022

The QUAD leaders, who are meeting for the second in-person summit in Tokyo, will also be welcoming a "major maritime initiative" called the  Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). US President Joe Biden, newly-elected Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, who is hosting the other three in his country, will jointly announce the initiative.  

According to the fact sheet published by the White House ahead of the QUAD leaders summit, following the “close consultations” with regional partners, IPMDA will be offering a near-real-time, integrated, and cost-effective maritime domain awareness picture. It also said, “This initiative will transform the ability of partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region to fully monitor the waters on their shores and, in turn, to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The White House stated, “QUAD countries are committed to contributing to the region’s maritime domain awareness—a fundamental requirement for peace, stability, and prosperity—through an investment in IPMDA over five years. The partnership will innovate upon existing maritime domain awareness efforts, rapidly bringing emerging technologies to bear for the greater good of the Indo-Pacific community.”

More about IPMDA among QUAD leaders

The initiative, IPMDA would build a faster, wider, and more accurate maritime picture of near-real-time activities in partners’ waters. According to the White House, the common operating picture of IPMDA would “integrate three critical regions—the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region—in the Indo-Pacific”.  

“The benefits of this picture are vast: it will allow tracking of “dark shipping” and other tactical-level activities, such as rendezvous at sea, as well as improve partners’ ability to respond to climate and humanitarian events and to protect their fisheries, which are vital to many Indo-Pacific economies,” stated White House. 

The common agenda of QUAD leaders to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific has been reiterated by them multiple times over the course of their meetings, both in-person and virtually. During the press remarks ahead of the summit, US President Joe Biden averred that the “US will be a strong, steady & enduring partner in the Indo-Pacific. We are Indo-Pacific powers. As long as Russia continues the war, we are going to be partners and lead a global response. We stay together for the shared values & vision we have.”

Image: AP/PTI/Twitter