2025: A Testing Year for the Quad in a Turbulent Indo-Pacific

The year 2025 proved to be an inflection point for global geopolitics, marked by leadership changes, policy churn, and sharpening great-power rivalry. Nowhere was this more visible than in the Indo-Pacific, the most contested strategic theatre of the 21st century. Amid this churn, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — or the Quad — found itself navigating both continuity and uncertainty, even as the return of “Donald Trump” to the White House reshaped Washington’s foreign policy priorities.

Why the Indo-Pacific and the Quad matter more than ever

The Indo-Pacific has steadily emerged as the epicentre of strategic competition between the United States and China, encompassing critical sea lanes, supply chains, and regional security architectures. For Washington and its partners, maintaining a “free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific” is not just a slogan but a strategic imperative tied to global trade, maritime security, and international norms.

Within this context, the Quad — comprising India, Australia, Japan and the United States — has evolved into a key diplomatic platform. While it is not a military alliance, the grouping seeks to uphold a rules-based order and deliver tangible public goods, ranging from maritime security to infrastructure resilience and disaster response.

Trump’s return and early doubts about U.S. commitment

President Trump’s re-election in 2024 initially triggered apprehension among observers about the future of multilateral arrangements in Asia. His earlier “America First” doctrine had raised questions about whether Washington would sustain cooperative frameworks like the Quad, especially those requiring long-term diplomatic investment rather than immediate transactional gains.

Ironically, Mr. Trump himself was among the architects of the Quad’s revival in 2017, when the grouping was reactivated to respond to growing Chinese assertiveness. That legacy resurfaced quickly in 2025, dispelling early doubts about a possible U.S. disengagement from the forum.

Signals from Washington: the Quad remains a priority

One of the clearest indications that the Quad continued to matter to the Trump administration came early in 2025. The initial Foreign Minister-level meetings of the group were hosted in Washington by U.S. Secretary of State “Marco Rubio”, making the Quad his first major diplomatic engagement.

These meetings, held in January and again in July 2025, sent a strong message that despite shifts in tone and emphasis, Washington still viewed the Quad as central to its Indo-Pacific strategy. However, symbolism alone was not enough to shield the grouping from the broader turbulence of the year.

A missing leaders’ summit and a year of interregnum

Despite sustained ministerial engagement, the Quad failed to convene a leaders’ summit in 2025 — a meeting that was scheduled to be hosted by India. This gap fuelled speculation about whether the grouping had lost momentum or was entering a phase of strategic drift.

Historically, leader-level summits have been crucial for the Quad, which lacks a permanent secretariat or institutional anchor. Since its revival, the group had managed six such summits between 2021 and 2024, the most recent being the 2024 meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, hosted by then U.S. President Joe Biden. In that sense, 2025 marked a pause — not a collapse, but a clear interregnum.

From tsunami relief to strategic convergence

The Quad’s trajectory has never been linear. Originally formed in 2004 in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the grouping initially focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Strategic divergences among members soon led to its dormancy, as countries recalibrated their ties with China and prioritised individual national interests.

The revival in 2017 represented a qualitative shift. The Quad was reimagined as a framework for strategic coordination among like-minded democracies, responding to concerns over China’s expanding footprint in the Indo-Pacific. Since then, its agenda has steadily widened, encompassing security, development, technology, and governance norms.

Operational resilience despite political turbulence

Even without a leaders’ summit, 2025 demonstrated the Quad’s growing operational depth. Several initiatives continued to move forward, underscoring the grouping’s resilience.

• The Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission was operationalised for the first time in June 2025, enhancing Coast Guard-level cooperation.
• The Ports of the Future Partnership, aimed at promoting sustainable and resilient port infrastructure, held its maiden meeting in Mumbai in October 2025.
• The Malabar naval exercise, though not formally a Quad initiative, brought together the four navies in Guam to improve interoperability and maritime coordination.

These developments suggested that while political signalling at the top had stalled, functional cooperation on the ground remained intact.

Why a leaders’ summit still matters

For a grouping as informal as the Quad, leadership-level engagement performs an outsized role. Since the last summit, two member countries have seen leadership changes, including the return of Mr. Trump and the assumption of office by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in October 2025.

Leaders’ summits have historically been the venue where the Quad unveiled new initiatives and articulated shared strategic visions. Recognising this, U.S. Ambassador to India “Sergio Gor” told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October 2025 that diplomatic efforts were underway to hold a leaders’ summit in early 2026.

A grouping under stress, but far from irrelevant

Viewed in retrospect, 2025 was a year that tested the Quad’s cohesion and adaptability. The absence of a leaders’ summit exposed the fragility inherent in an arrangement without formal institutions. Yet, the continuation and expansion of its initiatives highlighted a degree of strategic maturity that did not exist in its earlier iterations.

In a rapidly shifting Indo-Pacific, the Quad’s ability to endure a year of political disruption while still delivering outcomes points to its evolution from a tentative dialogue into a more resilient strategic partnership — one that remains a significant force for regional stability and global good.