Page:Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States (February 2022).pdf/16



The United States is making new investments in U.S.-ASEAN ties, including by hosting ASEAN leaders for a historic U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit—the first-ever to be held in Washington, D.C. We are committed to the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum, and will also seek new ministerial-level engagements with ASEAN. We will implement more than $100 million in new U.S.-ASEAN initiatives. We will also expand bilateral cooperation across Southeast Asia, prioritizing efforts to strengthen health security, address maritime challenges, increase connectivity, and deepen people-to-people ties.

We will continue to build a strategic partnership in which the United States and India work together and through regional groupings to promote stability in South Asia; collaborate in new domains, such as health, space, and cyber space; deepen our economic and technology cooperation; and contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific. We recognize that India is a like-minded partner and leader in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, active in and connected to Southeast Asia, a driving force of the Quad and other regional fora, and an engine for regional growth and development.

We will strengthen the Quad as a premier regional grouping and ensure it delivers on issues that matter to the Indo-Pacific. The Quad will play a leading regional role on COVID-19 response and global health security, delivering on its investment to provide an additional one billion vaccines to the region and to the world. It will advance work on critical and emerging technologies, driving supply-chain cooperation, joint technology deployments, and advancing common technology principles. The Quad will build a green shipping network, and will coordinate the sharing of satellite data to improve maritime domain awareness and climate responses. Its members will cooperate to provide high-standards infrastructure in South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands and will work to improve their cyber capacity. The Quad Fellowship will formally launch in 2022, recruiting its first class of 100 students from all four countries to pursue graduate degrees in STEM fields in the United States beginning in 2023. The Quad will continue to meet regularly at the leader and ministerial levels. 16