The Quad Plus: Towards a Shared Strategic Vision for the Indo-Pacific

The volume, focusing on an important strategic area in the world, the Indo-Pacific region, showcases the attempts in 2013 to reinvigorate efforts for the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue involving India, USA, Japan and Australia that came together for a Track II dialogue to discuss their common security interests. The papers presented at the dialogue, which included the Philippines and Indonesia as well, are here offered in a revised form. Analysts and experts examine the challenges to the region and the manner in which the democracies of the regions have been meeting the challenges. They cover issues of regional Asian security, maritime multilateral security cooperation, and Indo-China border disputes and an active US role in relation to it. One of the papers asserts the US national interests in the South China Sea and the need for it to protect them by bringing out a National Strategy for the South China Sea.