"The Quad's resilience lies less in its summits than in its functional cooperation." Critically examine in light of the grouping's turbulence in 2025.

The Quad (India, Australia, Japan and the US) is an informal grouping with no treaty and no secretariat. In 2025, Washington's shifting priorities and strained India–US ties meant that the leaders' summit India was due to host [1] never took place. Yet the grouping kept functioning. That broadly supports the statement, with real caveats.

Functional cooperation: the source of resilience

• Ministerial continuity: Foreign ministers met in Washington on 21 January and 1 July 2025, and in New Delhi on 26 May 2026 [2]. A year without a summit was not a year of silence.
• Interest-based deliverables: The Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework (May 2026) [2] serves every member's supply-chain needs, whoever governs Washington.
• Maritime track: Maritime security and domain-awareness work continued at the New Delhi meeting [3]. It builds on IPMDA, the Quad's most practical output.
• Wider agenda: EAM Jaishankar said the talks covered energy, fertiliser availability and critical minerals [4]. These are public goods that a new government finds harder to drop than a security communiqué.
• Lesson of Quad 1.0: The 2007 Quad had no such working tracks and went dormant for a decade.

Limits: why summits still matter

• Agenda-setting: Big launches need leaders. Wilmington (2024) adopted four documents, including the Wilmington Declaration [1]. Ministers can sustain projects but rarely start large new ones.
• Dependence on political will: Without a treaty base, one capital's mood can freeze the calendar. India also lost the host's chance to shape outcomes.
• Capacity versus labels: "Upgraded" initiatives may only be relabelled unless they are backed by funds, assets and data-sharing.
• Signalling: Without summits, ASEAN partners and rivals read drift. Strategic credibility flows from the top.

The Quad is therefore weak at the summit level but steady at the working level. Functional cooperation keeps it alive, and summits give it direction and visibility. India should push for a fixed annual foreign ministers' calendar and route surveillance data through IFC-IOR. It should also keep IPOI and its ties with ASEAN running alongside the Quad. That would make the Quad a durable contributor to a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific without diluting India's strategic autonomy.