Almost the first thing Anthony Albanese did after becoming PM was to jump on a plane for a QUAD meeting in Tokyo. He was accompanied by Andrew Shearer, the head of the Office of National Intelligence. Ever since, Albanese has been in the grip of our intelligence services which have been effectively colonised by the CIA and other US agencies. Diplomacy has been put in the freezer.

The QUAD has a confusing history:

QUAD may go the way of SEATO – a paper tiger that lasted from 1954 until its inglorious end in 1977.

The QUAD was launched in 2007 in Tokyo by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. It made little progress, but was resuscitated when Abe returned to power in 2017.

Some comedians have described the QUAD as Abe’s great achievement and Albanese has described Abe as a giant on the world stage. But was he?

Abe and his faction was known for its anti-Chinese stance. That hostility to China was no surprise. Abe inherited that view from his grandfather, Noboru Kishi, a former prime minister of Japan who was indicted for war crimes for his activities during WWII in Manchuria. The monster of Manchuria.! Yet Kishi became prime minister despite his record!

With the US at his back, Japan, through Abe and others, has been able to indulge the country’s anti-China sentiment. Japan is the spear-carrier for the US in North Asia like Australia is becoming in the South. Japan is often described as an unsinkable US aircraft carrier.

So Japan, under the influence of Abe and others in Japan, has been a keen supporter of the anti-China QUAD “alliance”.

Another member of QUAD is India which, unlike Japan, has had a long........

© Pearls and Irritations