Could a "mini-NATO in the Asia-Pacific" be taking shape? On October 28, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kato, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin convened for a closed-door meeting among the four defense ministers. The session focused on policy coordination, joint military exercises, defense infrastructure collaboration, and reinforcing deterrence and interoperability along the First Island Chain.
This mechanism has been informally referred to within the Pentagon as "SQUAD"—a small group—aimed at containing China’s military expansion and strategic rise in the Asia-Pacific region. It represents the latest manifestation of America’s First Island Chain strategy. The U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy explicitly identifies “building a robust, deny-and-defend posture along the First Island Chain” as a core objective, with SQUAD serving as a multilateral instrument to implement this directive.
The original Quad framework centered on the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, but India has consistently maintained caution toward any alliance aimed at countering China. By replacing India with the Philippines, SQUAD emphasizes a more overtly “hard security” orientation, enhancing its targeted focus. In response, China has repeatedly stated: “Forming bloc politics and bloc confrontation reflects Cold War thinking, runs counter to the tide of history, and is unpopular among regional nations. Such approaches neither resolve underlying issues nor intimidate China. The Asia-Pacific should be a stage for collective cooperation among countries—not a battlefield for geopolitical rivalry.”
In reality, China’s navy and air force have already achieved operational superiority within the First Island Chain, enabling frequent transit through key straits such as the Tsushima Strait and the Miyako Strait into the Western Pacific. The decades-long U.S.-Japan designed blockade system along the First Island Chain has, strategically speaking, become functionally obsolete. Nevertheless, it remains important to recognize that SQUAD is merely the latest step in America’s effort to assemble exclusive, exclusionary “circles” in the Asia-Pacific. Its essence lies in cloaking unilateral hegemony under the guise of multilateralism, advancing military deployments under the pretext of “deterrence,” and imposing interoperability requirements that effectively shift costs onto allied partners.
Yet each member state brings its own calculations: the Philippines pursues its own strategic interests, Japan harbors ambitions beyond regional stability, Australia grapples with strategic uncertainties, and India has clearly rejected being drawn into an anti-China coalition. With divergent national priorities among the four nations, genuine strategic cohesion remains elusive.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1880369853762883/
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