Psephy's ~ologies: A comment on the Quad

Sunday, May 29, 2022

A comment on the Quad

Another grouping for the region

This week which saw the election of a new government in Australia, was also the stage for several major diplomatic plays in the region.

US President Biden visited South Korea before landing in Tokyo for a key bilateral dialogues with PM Kishida on Monday. By Tuesday the two were joined by Indian PM Modi and new Australian PM Albanese.

I was able to submit a commentary piece to the Interpreter via the Lowy Institute.

I'm posting the link here, for the record.

Albanese steps cautiously through the Quad wrangle, 27 May 2022

The Interpreter

In case you're wondering...

Thank you for visiting. My blog is like many others, mostly a way to extend my conversations on Twitter and/or comment on all the politics as the need arises. Politics is broadly defined here and, as I get older, I am trying to philosophise about life and politics--hence the '~ologies' (the 'psephy'--silent p--is short for psephologist, one who analyses elections).
At present, I'm seeking to find better ways for us, the electors, to engage with those, our elected. I am concerned about where too much apathy towards our politicians might lead us. I actually think the onus is on our elected representatives to engage with us as well.
I'm doing this via explorations of the idea of the 'social contract', espoused most famously by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, but flavoured by others including Machiavelli, Hume, Locke, Kant, Mill, Arendt and Maruyama. These philosophical threads weave their way through all my posts here...they are ideas we need to revisit.

I am also a passionate educator and, after some three decades in Australia and in Japan, you'll find I have a bit to say about that too. In April 2016, I relocated to Tokyo to take up a position in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law at Musashino University. I'll be teaching Japanese politics and peace studies to Japanese students, in Japanese. These views are my own and any resemblance to actual events is likely to be coincidental. But such are our constructed lives and opinions.