Since the resurrection of the Quad in 2017, also dubbed Quad 2.0, the United States has released three National Security Strategies (NSS), each referencing the Quad with varying levels of emphasis. China has been the central driver behind the Quad resurgence, and the NSS addresses Beijing extensively, and the language used in these documents has evolved over a period of time. The evolution of the Quad is seen as closely tied with China’s policies in the Indo-Pacific. 

The NSS 2025 of the second Trump administration marks a pivotal shift from prior strategies, prioritizing “America First” and calling for “burden sharing and burden shifting” rather than explicit great-power competition. It takes a more transactional tone and seeks to “rebalancing” the economic relationship with China. This strategy also focuses on the Western Hemisphere and domestic issues like immigration over broad global leadership.

The Quad received a brief mention as quadrilateral cooperation with India, Japan, and Australia on Indo-Pacific strategy with no reference to ASEAN, AUKUS or future summits. The less focus on the Quad, coupled with the cancelled Quad Leaders’ Summit 2025 in India, highlights the growing uncertainty in the United States’ alliance commitment. However, China remains a key concern, but it is framed as an economic challenge, which reflects a more restrained and pragmatic tone than in previous strategies.

Reset In Strategic Focus 

The NSS 2017 of the first Trump administration introduced the Quad as an emerging cooperative framework. The Quad was an aspirational goal intended to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and to manage the growing geopolitical contestation in the region. The NSS 2017 ended the era of benign engagement with China, labelling it a “revisionist power.” It stated that Beijing used “economic inducement” and “implied military threats to persuade other states” to reorder the Indo-Pacific. The NSS 2025 document led to a direct reset and heralded a new era of “principled realism.” This strategy majorly focuses on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations. Thus, the Quad’s support was necessary to deal with assertive policies of China in the Indo-Pacific region and militarization in the South China Sea.

However, the NSS 2022 was more vocal as far as Quad is concerned. The document refers to the “revitalized Quad” and holds that it brings four countries to address the regional challenges. This is a crucial evolutionary point as it expanded the scope of the Quad beyond security and China to provide tangible benefits and included “combating COVID-19 and climate change, deepening cybersecurity partnerships, and promoting high standards for infrastructure and health security.” It also talked about the United States creating a “latticework of strong, resilient, and mutually reinforcing relationships” that intend to prove that “democracies can deliver for their people” a better model than the autocracies. This document framed China as the “most consequential geopolitical challenge,” having the intent and technological power “to reshape the international order.”  The competition with China is most pronounced in the Indo-Pacific, and the 2020s is a “decisive decade.” The Quad and other alliances are focusing on this systemic competition and a vehicle to out-compete the authoritarian model of China.

But in NSS 2025 the specific reference to the “Quad” appears less central as compared to its 2022 prominence. The document emphasized the allies assuming primary responsibility for their own region even as it identified the Indo-Pacific as a key economic and geopolitical battleground. It reiterates that alliances and strengthening partnerships “will be the bedrock of security and prosperity long into the future” and underscores their role in preventing domination by a single competitor nation. The United States also shifts towards “presidential diplomacy” to manage regional conflicts.

Less Upfront About China

To maintain its economic security, the United States will “reindustrialize its economy” and “re-shore industrial production” to ensure that it is “never again reliant on any adversary” for critical products. The lethality here is economic, and China is framed as an economic adversary and “non-hemispheric competitor.” The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine aims to deny China the ability to “position forces or other threatening capabilities” in the western hemisphere. However, this greater focus on the western hemisphere risks creating strategic space in the Indo-Pacific, potentially allowing China to expand its regional influence. It will also erode deterrence and put intense pressure on regional players, undermining cohesion in the free and open Indo-Pacific region. Prima facie, the NSS 2025 is less upfront as compared to the first Trump administration NSS of 2017 in dealing with China, focusing on “flexible realism” and “non-interventionism,” avoiding imposing “democratic or other social change” on other nations.

This is clear that Quad is a reactive entity. It reflected on how China is perceived in the subsequent documents. China’s “revisionism” led to its resurrection in 2017. The “democratic delivers” in 2022 came up due to the “authoritarian model.” The Chinese “predatory economic policies” pushed for a radical reshoring of supply chains in 2025. Therefore, the prevailing strategic environment demands institutionalization beyond personality-driven politics and proactive work on areas such as supply chain resilience, climate change, maritime security, disaster response, critical and emerging technology, etc. In this context, China’s growing influence necessitates four Quad nations, the United States, Japan, Australia, and India, aligned despite their different domestic politics.

The NSS 2017 document states that the Quad was a tool to support India’s emergence as a “leading global power” and a defence partner. However, today India faces a dual challenge. On one hand, United States transactional policies strain its bilateral relations and introduce uncertainty within the Quad framework. On the other hand, Trump’s Corollary reduced the United States’ focus on South Asia. Consequently, India is now navigating a space where it must balance its “strategic autonomy” against the increasingly transactional United States while simultaneously managing China amid ongoing United States-China flux.

Regional Security Provider

The evolution of the Quad since 2017 in these documents reveals that the United States mentions its limitation in dealing with China. It began as a bold assertion of American power in 2017 and has become a pragmatic admission in 2025 that the United States can no longer maintain the balance in the Indo-Pacific region alone. But the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine emphasizes United States' intent to physically deny Chinese influence in its neighbourhood, which contrasts sharply with Quad’s goal of maintaining an open order in the Indo-Pacific. 

Hence, the Quad is now no longer just a strategic choice, but a structural prerequisite for broader American interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The success of the Quad will depend on whether it can move beyond being a China-reactive group to a proactive regional security provider, especially as the 2025 strategy moves towards a more transactional “burden-sharing” model.

(The author is a Research Scholar, Department of Political Science, Pandit Prithi Nath College, CSJM University, Kanpur, India. His research focuses on Indo-Pacific security, maritime strategy, and Sino-India relations. Views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at aamir.ir@outlook.com )