If you haven’t had your fill of strategic triads and political quads, here is the latest offering, the Group of Three, involving the United States, China and Japan. Senior officials from the three countries are preparing for their first ever triangular consultations this month.

Of all the new groupings that we have seen in recent years, the G-3 is probably the most impressive. It brings together the world’s three largest national economies (the European Union does not count) and the most important powers of the Asia-Pacific, the region of the future.

All those analysts who saw the G-2 — the vaunted global condominium of America and China — as somewhat premature are likely to be a little more deferential to the G-3. The preliminary indications are that the G-3 forum is aimed at alleviating the fears in Tokyo that it might be marginalised amidst growing engagement between Washington and Beijing.

The G-3 will also be seen as trumping the idea of the Asian democratic quad — the US, India, Japan and Australia — working together to shape the Asian security architecture. After just one meeting of senior officials, the quad seemed to fade away.

All those Indian foreign policy traditionalists who were objecting to the democratic quad as an American design to contain China will now find that it is New Delhi that will have to cool its heels when Washington and Tokyo cozy up to Beijing.

The July meeting of the G-3 and the resurrection of the forgotten G-2 — US and Russia — next week in Moscow should bury any residual romanticism in New Delhi about balancing Washington through the BRICs and SCO.

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