But events moved so fast over the intervening two years that that not only did the Quad leaders meet by video link on Saturday,they also announced an immediate initiative to provide an extra 1 billion doses of COVID vaccine to needy nations and a four-part,longer-term work agenda. The Quad,said Modi,had “come of age – it will now remain an important pillar of stability in the region.”

Only one man could have achieved this transformation of the geopolitics of the Indopacific region,from ocean foam to a Coalition spanning two oceans in two years. Xi Jinping,China’s dictator.

“They are only there because of China,” says the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s director,Peter Jennings. “Well done,Beijing.”

The vaccines outcome was “a stunning coup” in the words of Mike Green,an American Asia expert who served in the George W. Bush White House. Supplying an extra billion doses for nations of South-East Asia by the end of 2022 addresses their most urgent need. It gives the Quad a constructive first mission. And it pits the group against China in a game of vaccine geopolitics.

For the US,this is a big change from Trump’s “America First” mantra. “If we have to compete,at least millions of Asians and others in developing nations will benefit from it,” former US diplomat Bob Manning reflected.

The summit,says Mike Green,“should also silence the many critics of this grouping of countries”.

Green explains in the journalForeign Policy that it had long been “en vogue for so-called realists to pooh-pooh the Quad as ideologically driven and overly provocative towards China. But then Chinese President Xi Jinping began bullying everyone.“

“With Washington’s credibility waning and its options limited,the Biden team just played its one high-value card to the greatest possible effect.”

So what next? The Australian military strategist Hugh White,one of the sceptics who’d thought the Quad would come to naught,concedes that he was wrong:“I don’t think you can call the first summit an insignificant event.”

However:“We are right to see China as a risk to Australia diplomatically and even strategically. So great idea,guys,but it’s not going to work.” For two main reasons.

First,because he thinks it’s too late. “This sounds like melodrama,but the South China Sea has been the Berlin of this new cold war,” he tells me. “The Soviets started to press the West at Berlin,and the West pressed back. In the end,the West convinced the Soviets they were willing to fight a nuclear war to stop them taking Berlin.“

But when Beijing started grabbing South China Sea territories from its neighbours starting with the Philippines,the US and its allies let them:“The Philippines said,do you mind if we borrow the Seventh Fleet for the weekend,and the US said ‘no’. China won”.

So Berlin has already been taken in the contemporary cold war? “They have taken a few suburbs at any rate,” says White.

Second,White argues that the Quad nations lack the will needed to halt China’s next steps. “Their joint statement showed just how nervous they were about declaring their purpose – the word China wasn’t mentioned.

“I’m pessimistic because what’s required will be very much like what was used to contain the Soviet Union. There has to be a very clear conviction to make it clear to Beijing that an attempt to change the status quo will be met with force.“

The Quad nations are too ambivalent,says White:“We all want to contain China,but none of us want to damage our relationship with China”,hoping for more trade and investment with Beijing as well as co-operation on climate change and other matters.

But just as the sceptics wrote off the Quad prematurely in the past,might they be repeating their mistake? China’s aggression forged the Quad. Further aggression from Xi could harden the Quad. History is in the making.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.