IMPRI

In less than six months, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—the Quad—is back in action. After its virtual summit in March, this month end will see the leaders of four major Indo-Pacific nations converge in Washington to deliberate on matters of common concern and also signal to China that the platform that Beijing once described as “sea foam" is not only not dissipating, but also gearing up to play a more ambitious role. If the March summit was about laying out an expansive agenda for a still-nascent grouping, the September summit is likely to be about operationalizing the common vision of the four like-minded democracies as they chart their policy priorities in an ever-so-turbulent Indo-Pacific region.

Marking the eastern and western contours of South Asia, the countries of Bangladesh and Afghanistan are separated by more than just a geographical distance of 2,474km. Endowed with similar inheritances of an experience of war, extremist threat, and governance by fledgling democracies, the two Islamic countries could not be more distinct from each other than they are today.