“With the announcement of an ambitious vaccine initiative for Southeast Asia on March 12, the ‘Quad’ has in a sense come full circle. The ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ among four major democratic nations in the Indo-Pacific – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – had its inception in tragedy as a ‘core group’ coordinating relief efforts in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed nearly a quarter million people. So the combined effort by the four countries to again assist the region in the face of another devastating natural disaster – this time, COVID-19 – is something of a return to the Quad’s roots…”

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