The final international appointment for Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who has resigned ahead of schedule, was his September 20–23 trip to the United States.

On the significance of the latest Quad summit

Both leaders were faced with the task, urgently and in the most appropriate venue, of tying up any loose ends in relation to the functioning of the project that they initiated during the remaining few weeks of their tenure. And despite the not infrequent perception of the Quad configuration (particularly of late) as an “obscure group of secondary importance” given the scale of the processes unfolding in the Indo-Pacific region, the results of the summit held on September 21 this year in Wilmington, Delaware, tended to suggest quite the opposite.

Especially if the directions outlined in the extensive final document adopted at the end of the summit actually come to fruition. Significantly, the document contains no saber-rattling declarations, and this is entirely consistent with the hybrid nature of the struggle between the main participants in the current stage of the “Great World Game.”

In this regard, it should be noted that its main focus is much more on the issue of developing favorable positions in the countries of the Global South. Japan has been increasingly active in these countries in recent years, and Quad could become another important tool for Japan to spread its influence there.

However, the importance of the military-political element in Tokyo’s foreign policy is also becoming more and more noticeable. The base of this element remains the US-Japanese military and political alliance, and Fumio Kishida and Joe Biden once again reaffirmed the need to strengthen this relationship during a meeting between the two leaders held on the sidelines of the Quad summit. Both leaders had emphasized the importance of this issue six months earlier, during a state visit to the United States by Fumio Kishida.

Fumio Kishida also had one-to-one meetings with the Prime Ministers of........

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