The US has crafted a plan with Japan, India and Australia to provide Ibn doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine to south-east Asian nations in an effort to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. President Joe Biden and his three counterparts announced the initiative on Friday after they convened the first”Quad” summit. Under the deal, the US and Japan will finance production of the vaccine in India, while Australia will help to distribute the jabs across south-east Asia. Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, said the four countries had “taken the Quad to a new level” with the agreement to distribute vaccines and work on other issues such as emerging technologies and climate change.
“Today is a big day for American diplomacy. This summit is a big deal for the president and for the country,” Sullivan added. The Quad emerged in 2004 when the countries co-operated on disaster relief after a tsunami devastated Indonesia. The vaccine plan came together after weeks of shuttle diplomacy between Kurt Campbell, the top White House official for the Indo-Pacific, and the Quad’s ambassadors in Washington. The
Financial Times was the first to report that the four countries were working on a vaccine diplomacy initiative.
The vaccine diplomacy is the first part of a broad strategy to find common areas where the countries can counter Beijing without appearing too anti-China.
“The four leaders did discuss the challenge posed by China, and they made clear that none of them have any illusions about China, but today was not fundamentally about China,” Sullivan said after the summit.