Let's say you have to sort out some issues in your neck of the woods. Maybe it's a school thing, maybe a charitable endeavor, maybe a local celebration. You might reach out to other interested individuals and invite them to a local Starbucks, or gather at someone's home over coffee to hash out the details. Someone might write down a few key thoughts, then head home and draft an email which they send around to make sure they got the basic facts right. Then you all would put into effect whatever plan of action you decided on over crumb cake.
When you're talking nation states it's basically no different, just more formal. Last week it was the top diplomats of four Asia-Pacific nations that got together to talk about their common interests and challenges. Japan, Australia and the United States sent representatives to New Delhi to meet with their Indian counterpart. And because there can really be no diplomacy without a name for the alliance, they call themselves the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or for the purposes of team jackets, the Quad.
The Quad follows in a long line of global affinity groups that are no different than Princeton University's Women of Color caucus, Ramapo College's Pride at Work collective or Trinity College's Knitting club. The goal is to bring like-minded people together to advance their common interests. Just as with those groups, the Quad has meetings (such as this one at the Raisina Dialogue, billed as "India's premier conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community"), activities (in this case, joint naval exercises) and takes positions on issues of interest (they do it in diplomatic speak, but more or less it amounts to "we gotta do something about China.")
That alliance joins such other organizations such as the Group of 7 or the G7, the G10, the G15 and yes, the G77. Each of these groups of nations regularly send representatives to hash out monetary and other policies. Of note is that almost none of the names are accurate, as members have been added again and again. The G10 now has 11 members, the G24 has 28, and the G77 has 134. One has to hope that they are better at economics than they are at branding.
In that light, the Quad are leaders. The group was originally founded around the geographic conceit of nations with beachfront property bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, the concerns of the pandemic meant that there were other nations in that region that also wanted to join, namely New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam. They were welcomed to the table, but it caused a conundrum: what do you call yourselves? The Seven Ups? Then a year after that addition, Brazil and Israel were also invited to participate even though the closest those countries come to the Pacific is wearing board shorts. Trying to think ahead as more members were added, rather than Fast and Furious 9 (which had already been taken), they went with Quad Plus. Sounds a bit like HBO's new channel, but at least it doesn't limit them.
It's a challenge for any organization as membership and focus changes. More than ever, in a world where policy pronouncements take place via tweet, the short-form handle of an organization needs to mean something. That said, the United Nations are anything but, and NATO has members nowhere close to the North Atlantic. And then there's the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, a group which has nothing to do with Guam. Rather, the name comes from the first letter of member countries Georgia, Ukraine Azerbaijan and Moldova. Delegates to meetings have to be very careful when booking their plane flights, or will wind up 6800 miles off course.
New alliances like the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and facilitated by China, will challenge both international order as well as the bloggers. And in that case, if the founding parties involve the one country between them that is virtually a land bridge, Kuwait, then naming might become a real issue. For while the formal name of the new alliance might be the Sino-Middle East Compact or some such diplo-speak, it would likely wind up on Twitter as their initials: SICK.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't have a nickname. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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