Just a few weeks ago, Anthony Albanese and his closest advisers thought the possibility of a meeting of the Quad leaders taking place before the end of the year was remote in the extreme. Officially titled the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the group includes Albanese, Donald Trump, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Sanae Takaichi. In theory, the Quad leaders meet annually.

Last year, a blow-up between the hot-headed US president and the hardliner Modi stalled momentum. Talks due to take place in India were quietly cancelled. The 2023 summit was also put off at short notice, as Joe Biden faced a debt ceiling crisis in Washington.

One seasoned diplomat observed that meetings of the Quad foreign ministers, designed to fill the vacuum, were happening with such regularity in recent years that they risked drawing attention to the fact the leaders clearly had other priorities.

But, amid furious preparation for Albanese’s next big overseas trip, a Quad summit has somehow been scheduled for later this month in Manila.

After flying to the Turkish resort city of Antalya for the Cop31 climate summit on Tuesday, the prime minister will head to the Philippines for talks with south-east Asian leaders next weekend. There, before he heads to China, he is expected to sit around a table with Trump, Modi and Takaichi.

In the wake of Tuesday’s US congressional elections, the trip holds even more significance than usual. Just how a diminished Trump acts on the world stage will be fascinating, especially if the rumoured three-way meeting with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin goes ahead........

© The Guardian