Category Archives: Multilateralism

Continuing the Middle Power Narrative

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In early February CWD highlighted, and I described in the Post at Alan’s Newsletter, “Are They All Middle Powers? Or, Are There None!” this emerging Middle Power narrative:

We hoped this session would be an opportunity to examine and critique “Asia’s Future at a crossroads: A Japanese strategy for peace and sustainable prosperity.” This very valuable Report was the outcome of years of work by the ‘Asia Future’ Research Group (Research Group)  co-convened by Yoshihide Soeya, Professor Emeritus of Keio University and Mike Mochizuki of the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University. … The Research Group urged that Japanese policy not be reshaped by the rise in US-China rivalry and the growing geopolitical tensions in the international system generally and in the Indo-Pacific specifically. Alas, that may prove to be quite difficult.

The story of emerging Middle Powers is about to continue with a new Report, this by the Körber Foundation. As noted by Colin Bradford our lead co-chair at CWD in his invitation to CWD participants to join a coming session on March 28th:

Driven by demographic and economic factors and an increasingly self-confident presence on the world stage, emerging middle powers (such as Brazil, India and South Africa) are gaining international influence.

  • ​What foreign policy challenges do emerging middle powers face?  How do they position themselves vis-à-vis China and the war in Ukraine?    And, where do they find common ground with the West, particularly on reforming the international system?

The Report is, “Listening Beyond the Echo Chamber: Emerging Middle Powers Report 2024”. This Report, front and centre in our coming CWD session, presents an intriguing survey and various findings from the following:

The first Emerging Middle Powers Survey polled nearly 1,000 politicians, diplomats, journalists, researchers and private-sector representatives from

India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) as well as from Germany.

The CWD gathering has the good fortune of welcoming Julia Ganter, Programme Director Körber Emerging Middle Powers Initiative to introduce the Report to CWD. In addition we have remarks from:

  • Steven Gruzd, Head, African Governance and Diplomacy Programme, South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), Johannesburg,
  • Manjeet Kripalani, Executive Director, Gateway House Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, and
  • Paulo Esteves, Researcher & fmr. Director, BRICS Policy Center, Rio de Janeiro

The Report identifies the purpose of this research initiative on the part of the Korber:

The aim of our Körber Emerging Middle Powers Initiative (KEMP) is to promote dialogue between Germany and emerging middle powers, such as Brazil, India, and South Africa. With their growing political, economic and demographic weight they are key players for global problem solving and also form the G20 troika in 2024. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that in Germany, among other places, geopolitical perspectives, foreign policy traditions, and national interests of emerging middle powers

are often not assessed in a realistic manner. To address this, the Körber initiative conducts an annual expert survey and facilitates various dialogue formats in cooperation with Gateway House India, the Brazilian BRICS Policy Centre and the South African Institute of International Affairs.

The initiative is valuable in part because it targets three quite important Middle Powers – India, Brazil and South Africa – all large democratic emerging market powers –  that formed IBSA with the Brasilia Declaration in 2003. While overshadowed by the BRICS and now BRICS+, IBSA remains a useful gathering of key EM powers. Moreover, India, last year, Brazil this year, and South Africa in 2025 will each host the G20 Summit. With the troika mechanism these three countries will be influencing the organization and policy initiatives of the G20.

Back to the current Körber Report. The Report opens with a rather surprising conclusion in its Executive Summary:

despite differences among the four countries, there is a common basis for more meaningful engagement and joint approaches for international reform.

The survey findings are varied and interesting.The broad conclusions:

respondents in India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) identify a different foreign policy challenge as most important for each country – climate change for Brazil, relations with China for India, the war in Ukraine and the Middle East for South Africa – as well as international trade for all three. These are global concerns and respondents in Germany share them.

The Report is particularly interesting in highlighting differences of view between IBSA experts and German ones.

These aspects divide [Germany] them from the IBSA respondents, who perceive international trade as a foreign policy challenge, prefer to mediate between Russia and Ukraine instead of supporting either, view the dollar’s dominance unfavourably and are optimistic about BRICS+. But even in IBSA, some are critical of the group’s expansion to include the likes of Iran.

Finally, the Report brings into focus  what Western interests, I suspect, need to understand and to advance more collaborative action:

Understanding the challenges of the West’s partners must begin with an examination of their specific concerns. Brazilian respondents most often cite climate change and the environment as the most challenging foreign policy issue for their country. Indian respondents see China, which their country has a ‘hot’ border with, as the biggest challenge. In South Africa, the most frequently cited issue is maintaining an autonomous foreign policy between the demands and pressures of different major powers, followed by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. … Taking their ideas seriously would show that the West is ready to include them as equals at the new global high table. Ultimately, this shift in thinking will transform the Western echo chamber into a symphony of voices.

The Report is very revealing and I suspect the CWD session will be lively and likely to advance our Middle Power thinking between and among the participants at the CWD.

More on that later I anticipate.

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. Comments are welcome and feel free to subscribe to receive new posts and support my work.

The First Informal Falters

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Yup, a little late in the weekend it is. But then for some Monday is a holiday. Mea culpa, but I was deep into completing a draft chapter for a yet to appear volume – which, in fact is scheduled to be released by 2025. The publication year, by the way, is important. My chapter will be part of a planned edited volume by Edward Elgar Publishing. There will be many chapters, so I am told, that will review and analyze the G7. It will do so on the 50th anniversary of the initiation of the G7 Leaders Summit. Yup, Rambouillet, the acknowledged first G7 Leaders Summit – it was actually, the G6 – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US at that moment in time – met in 1975.  All the chapters, I suspect, will cover aspects of this ‘First Informal’, the G7, and, I suspect, the other Informals as well – that is the G20 and the BRICS.

Wow, the 50th anniversary of this First Informal! Certainly, I was interested in examining the role of the First Informal not to mention the Others.

Unfortunately, as you explore the Informals – indeed the promise of the Informals, you come face to face with the state of effectiveness of this leader-led summit. Has this multilateral instrument been effective?  It is hard not to assess that the Informals have not met the hopes of those initiating and managing this and all of these informal institutions.

The emergence of the Informals reflected in part the fading power of the Formals – the institutions of the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and some others – and the intent to advance collective global governance policymaking . A more cynical view would suggest that these major western powers – the US, UK, and Europeans, not to mention Japan, sought to resolve growing global economic problems in the 1970s impacting them and more broadly the global economy without interference of others in the global economy – newly emerging market economies and more broadly the Global South. As I wrote in the early paragraphs of the draft chapter:

“Beyond just a question of representation, however, there is the continuing question, quite crucial, of the effectiveness of all these Informals.” As I concluded: “… their structures and processes have not led to the desired policy leadership as was hoped by early leaders.

There are various explanations, I believe, in undermining the success of First Informal – and helping to explain the current weakness of it and all the Informals. These ‘forces’ are, I believe, hobbling global governance progress in the current global order. One element, of course, is the lack of  broad representation – this is after all just the G7. But there is more. Recently the United States has focused the G7 on like-mindedness and beyond that, at least in a US view – expressed in part by the statement of Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, that the G7 is:

… the steering committee of the world’s advanced democracies, demonstrating unprecedented unity of purpose and unity of action on the issues that are defining the 21st century.

This US “steering committee” focus on the G7 has arisen at the same time, or in part because of, the return of geopolitics, particularly the growing rivalry and competition between the US and China in international relations. While the US-China rivalry does create tensions in the G7, still these tensions are nothing like that in the G20 with the mix of developed and developing members and most obviously including the US and China and in fact the US and Russia.

The US-Russia tension speaks to the growing global disorder erupting with various regional conflicts. There is nothing more dramatic than in the past two years and more of the Russia-Ukraine war in the heart of Europe. Then there is a more recent but no less dramatic war between Hamas and Israel in the Mideast that is spreading regionally.

As described by the President and the CEO of the International Crisis Group (ICG), Ero Comfort and the ICG Executive Vice President, Richard Atwood (2024) in a recent FP post:

Worldwide, diplomatic efforts to end fighting are failing. More leaders are pursuing their ends militarily. More believe they can get away with it. … So, what is going wrong? The problem is not primarily about the practice of mediation or the diplomats involved. Rather, it lies in global politics. In a moment of flux, constraints on the use of force—even for conquest and ethnic cleansing—are crumbling.

And then there is uncertainty of US commitment to the multilateral order as we watch the possible return of a second Trump presidency. Even without that the current Biden Administration has too often exhibited a tepid commitment to a multilateral order.

All these forces have weakened the actions of the Informals and the broader multilateral initiatives. Multilateral weakness is a threat to the current global order and raises the prospects of growing harmful global disorder.

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter, a Substack Post – https://substack.com/@globalsummitryproject

Image Credit – Japan’s Office of the Prime Minister

Troubles with Global Summitry

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We are definitely in the midst of Global Summitry gatherings. With the BRICS Summit just recently ended, we are deep into the G20 weekend gathering in New Delhi. So much commentary has accompanied these summitry gatherings. But I caution casual observers and readers: there are way too many assessments and conclusions drawn by all those folks that unfortunately barely pay attention to Global Summitry through much of the year. You can see this in the various ‘hair on fire’ commentaries in the assessments and consequences of the actions of key players in both the BRICS and now especially with the G20. Too many declarations of the G20 demise; firm conclusions that China and Russia would block any consensus statement that sought to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine; the fragmentation of global summitry with the rise of the BRICS plus and the demise of the G20 with leaders from Russia and China choosing to absent themselves from summit.

Now don’t get me wrong, the geopolitical pressures, particularly rising US-China competition and opposition and condemnation of Russia for its unprovoked aggression on Ukraine are impactful. The geopolitics has seemingly hindered the G20 in advancing global governance policies. Yet the global governance agenda and goals remain. Look at the G20 agenda as described by Damien Cave in the NYT:

The agenda in New Delhi includes climate change, economic development and debt burdens in low-income countries, as well as inflation spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. If members can reach consensus on any or all of these subjects, they will produce an official joint declaration at the end.

In the ‘hair on  fire’ camp here is a piece by Alec Russell in the FT

The countdown to the talks was dominated by news that Xi was not going to attend. This was widely seen as a major blow to the G20, and an acceleration of the shift to a world in which a China-led bloc is facing off against a US-led one, with many countries hovering in the middle.

But the collective global governance effort has not been stymied. Indian efforts to reach consensus have proven successful. The G20, thanks to India, has released the Declaration a day early. Our good fortune. As described by the Indian Sherpa the Declaration was:

… a complete statement with 100% unanimity” that highlights India’s “great ability to bring all developing countries, all the emerging markets, China, Russia, everybody together at the same table and bring consensus.

He went on:

Urging adherence to the United Nations Charter, the New Delhi statement says: “All states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state. The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.

So there we are, a consensus statement has been issued. As often is the case, the document was not short, some 29 pages of declaration plus pages of annex.  Nevertheless it ended on a ‘high note’:

81. We reiterate our commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for global economic cooperation and its continued operation in the spirit of multilateralism, on the basis of consensus, with all members participating on an equal footing in all its events including Summits. We look forward to meeting again in Brazil in 2024 and in South Africa in 2025, as well as in the United States in 2026 at the beginning of the next cycle. We welcome Saudi Arabia’s ambition to advance its turn for hosting the G20 Presidency in the next cycle. We also look forward to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024 as a symbol of peace, dialogue amongst nations and inclusivity, with participation of all.

But a reading of the Declaration raises again the question: what success has in fact been achieved? As Caves points out:

But how much progress has the G20 made toward its ambitions? And what can be expected from this year’s meeting in India on Saturday and Sunday? … Then what? Often, not much, when it comes to real-world results. Most of the grouping’s joint statements since it formed in 1999 have been dominated by resolutions as solid as gas fumes, with no clear consequences when nations underperform.

‘Solid as gas fumes’. Well, in many respects the Declaration is no more than a statement of collective progress – what have we collectively identified as worthy of committing to and implementing. And, I did note, in an earlier Substack Post, Not Simply the Pace of Summitry that Leaders and their official are working toward commitment but:

So, let me at least raise in this Post, what I believe is the ‘continuum of action and commitment’ available to leaders in these various Leaders’ Summits. This continuum identifies the extent to which global governance policies have been secured. We move from the aspirational, often set out in the leaders’ declarations or communiques all the way to implementation by a country. What is evident from the continuum is that these folks are governmental leaders. And, as a result no matter what the communique announces, individual leaders’ may, or may not, actually implement a collective wish set out in a declaration.  This is well beyond just the aspirational.

The continuum, as I see it, is:  Consultation/ Cooperation/ Coordination/ Collaboration – the 4Cs of global governance progress, as I see it. Distinguishing between these concepts can be quite difficult. And of course, beyond this is, collectively achieving the actions, proposals and policies that are set out in the communiques, or announced at the Leaders’ gatherings.

And that is paydirt. Collectively achieving the actions set out in all these Summit Declarations – implementing policy in other words – is global governance success. Such implementation lies generally at the national political level, although there are instances where international organizations do in fact implement.

Bottom line: it requires a lot more than a statement in a Leaders’ Declaration to achieve global governance progress. But a number of us are watching including my colleagues at the CWD process.

This Post was originally uploaded to my Substack – Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to subscribe.

Image Credit: Al Jazeera

 

 

‘The Decline of US Hegemony and its Consequences for the Global Order’ – A Roundtable at the International Studies Association

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ISA 2023: Exhibit, Advertise, and SponsorSo, the International Studies Association (ISA) just concluded in Montreal  after a visibly energetic in-person gathering following several years of virtual meetings only.

I was fortunate enough to chair the roundtable. All sorts of good folk attended including panelists: Arthur Stein, UCLA, Lou Pauly, University of Toronto, Yves Tiberghien, University of British Columbia, and Kyle Lascurettes, Lewis and Clark College. Unfortunately, our colleagues, Janice Stein could not join but I was fortunate enough to receive her speaking note and I have tried to reflect some of her thinking with the notes from other colleagues.

What didn’t surprise me, of course, during the session was the recognition from all that we have a fraught period of transition in the international system. There is the obvious Russian aggression against Ukraine and the challenge by Russia to some of the basic tenets of the current order – most notably territorial integrity and national sovereignty. There is also the obvious growing leading power tensions between the US and China and the growing threat of confrontation and conflict especially over Taiwan that currently stock the relationship. There was the obvious attention to US determination to sustain dominance even in the face of a dramatic power transition with the emergence of China and more broadly the Global South – India and other Indo-Pacific nations including Indonesia, etc. and other Southeast Asian states and then, of course, the return of Lula to Brazil.

But raw geopolitics did not dominate the discourse of the Roundtable. Equally significant in our discussions was the acknowledgement of the continuance of the intergovernmental institutions and collective actions of states to advance global order and achieve collective action within the framework of the current and evolving Order. While some decried the faltering of the global institutions, nevertheless, there was general acceptance that regional and other informal order-based institutions continued advance policies in various ways. AS one of my colleagues Kyle Lascurettes noted: “There is a truly global rules-based order that stands a good chance of outliving American hegemonic decline. But the so called “liberal” or “Western” rules-based order is and will be in trouble.” Indeed, the liberal order or the Liberal International Order (LIO) disappeared, I’d argue with the Global Financial Crisis” in 2008 but the Global Order does indeed remain. And, as Yves Tiberghien focusing on the dramatic power transition suggested: “today is a time of disruption and transition – a special phase. Major shocks, change, crises, innovation will take place over the next 1-2 decades … Also shift in awareness. Western dominated order was an anomaly of last 200 years, with a rise phase for 300 years before that. Return of multiple voices all over the world. Return to a diverse, polymorphic, poly polarity.” As Jagannath Panda recently wrote in an EAF blog on March 20, 2023:  “Obituaries of the US-led liberal international order may be exaggerated, but the shift towards multipolarity is in motion.”

And what then do we have as the Global Order, and how will it advance. Arthur Stein recalled the fragile nature of the Order, which he described for me in his opening chapter of my 2008 edited volume – Can the World be Governed? The global order, he wrote then, and repeated at our Roundtable was:  ‘a weakly confederal world’. As he said at the time (2008, 52) : ”In fact, one could argue not only that multilateralism is an existential reality but that weak confederalism is the nature of modern reality.”

So the LIO has faded,  and what remains is the global RBIO (rules-based international order). Weaker and less collaborative – indeed as Arthur pointed out, the low hanging fruit of cooperation has passed and it is and will be increasingly difficult to reach collaborative solutions . But as Yves points out that there is continuing support for aspects of the Order including with China where Yves notes the significant China support for COP15 the Conference on  Biodiversity where the multilateral conference came together to agree on a new set of goals to guide global action through 2030 and to halt and reverse nature loss and the recently concluded agreement on the text for the critical High Seas Treaty. The challenge for the leading powers is to maintain a forward collaborative thrust, and as Lou Pauly warned, it is critical for the US to accept: “The challenge is to overcome perennial tendencies toward either insularity or spasmodic over-extension, toward temporizing on necessary decisions, toward shifting the costs of adjustment to the relatively poor internally, and toward exporting the rest of those costs to other countries.” It will not be easy; and Arthur reminded us that American domestic politics has been a problem since 1919 and continues today with the failure to approve through the US Senate, international agreements and the often strained effort to use executive power.

As Janice Stein alludes to in her notes: “Plurilateral and minilateral institutions – from AUKUS to IPEF to Trade and Technology Councils will be the principal sites of innovation. I have called this process “taking it offsite.” New institutions are being stood up, led by the willing, who set rules and invite others to join if they wish. One could argue that we are entering a period of start-up innovation in the creation of new, smaller, more flexible, and more focused institutions.

Although Janice may be a touch pessimistic over multilateral collaborative action, the Global Order has its worked cut out for it to avoid great power conflict and achieve critical global governance policies in climate, global finance, global health and much more.

 

Image Credit: ISA

Focusing on the China-West Dialogue Project (CWD); Advancing Global Governance; and Improving US-China Relations

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Now, turning back to the Global Summitry Project (GSP) and the Vision20 – collective efforts of Yves Tiberghien, Professor of Political Science and Konwakai Chair in Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Colin Bradford, nonresident Senior Fellow from Brookings  and myself, the Director of the Global Summitry Project. We have initiated various research initiatives.

A critical major effort over some three years has been the China-West Dialogue Process (CWD). The CWD has been Co-Chaired with Colin Bradford, the lead Co-Chair of the CWD and myself. This initiative has held some twenty plus virtual gatherings and many participants are set to gather in person for the first time in years at the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin May 15-16th <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/?utm_source=MASTER_Verteiler&utm_campaign=33fe63ffef-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_11_10_44_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f4e08bb85-33fe63ffef-447373003> to focus on US-China relations and assess how the G20 can advance critical, and dramatically needed global governance issues – global debt management, climate change policy, global food security and health security.

What is required, however, and is currently missing, is that the two leading powers turn their minds to such critical global governance policy efforts – both bilateral and multilateral.  From the beginning the CWD has targeted first Trump policy and now Biden foreign policy. Trump Administration officials made it clear that ‘engagement with China’ born in the Nixon Administration was at an end. Both Administrations called for competition though not for conflict. The outcome so far, especially for bilateral relations has been dismal.

As my Co-Chair Colin Bradford wrote on March 7th: “The strategic competition between the US and China is real and must be accepted and managed. But the confrontational narratives of this binary relationship are dominating and weakening global leadership and governance and present a threat to the global order.”   As the Editorial of the NYTimes, today, March 12th, urges: “Americans’ interests are best served by emphasizing competition with China while minimizing confrontation. Glib invocations of the Cold War are misguided. It doesn’t take more than a glance to appreciate that this relationship is very different. Rather than try to trip the competition, America should focus on figuring out how to run faster, …” <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/opinion/china-us-relationship.html?referringSource=articleShare>. Competition is not the problem for the Biden Administration; but collaborative policy making certainly appears to be. And current policy has made it more difficult. All one needs to do is to examine the interaction of the Biden Administration and the Chinese Government and Party on “balloon gate”. As Paul Herr of the Chicago Council identifies in his post at EAF: <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/03/12/ballooning-mistrust-in-the-us-china-relationship/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter2023-03-12> “Washington and Beijing’s response to the appearance of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States in February 2023 illustrates several aspects of the current US–China relationship that will make it very difficult to reverse the downward spiral in bilateral ties. The episode displayed mutual distrust, latent hostility, a failure to communicate and the adverse impact of internal politics on how the two sides deal with each other.”

As the CWD has identified at the GSI CWD Website – <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/> “The CWD’s fundamental goal is to help reshape the narratives and behaviours of US-China relations from friction to function by engaging other middle and major powers and emerging powers in a reframed China-West relations in G20 processes and other public forums. The aim of the Project is to identify new political dynamics that yield more productive relations in the international system.” At the CWD has identified, and noted by Colin Bradford on March 7th: “The CWD has concluded that the G20 is the most important platform for profiling and actualizing these alternative political dynamics in the year-long official G20 processes, which could enable convergence on systemic threats and ease geopolitical tensions.”

It is a challenging  goal in the face of current difficult US-China relations – but crucial for settling global order relations that have become ‘so rocky’ and unsettled in the last several years.

March 12, 2023

 

Indonesia’s G20 Win: behind-the-scenes gatherings and unity in a time when global governance needs it most – and now to India

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Dominating our smartphone screens, televisions, and front pages were photos of Justin Trudeau, Xi Jinping, Joe Biden, and Giorgia Meloni in traditional Indonesian attire, participating in a ceremonial mangrove tree planting event and gathering late night to discuss the missiles that killed two Poles, contemplating potential next steps using NATO’s Article 4. These leaders are – whether they want to be or not – celebrities. They are simultaneously praised and critiqued depending on who is watching them. Yet, what is not seen by mainstream audiences, perhaps even those more politically astute, is the intricate machine of behind-the-scenes work taking place throughout 257 meetings between December 2021 and December 2022 under Indonesia’s presidency of the G20 Summit.

In 2011, the Director of the Global Summitry Project, Alan Alexandroff, wrote about the notion of the G20 not being solely about its leaders, but rather surrounding the Leaders’ Summit an array of complementary “personal representatives, ministers, other officials, IFIs, IOs, [and] global regulators that make the G[20] system work – or not”. Whether the G20 is successful (a subjective term, in any case), is a different conversation.

Alexandroff’s Iceberg Theory of Global Governance positions the G20 Leaders’ Summit at its tip, but the vast bulk of the iceberg is situated below the surface, and often goes unnoticed by the majority of observers and experts.

This underwater all-encompassing mass is formed by numerous assemblies: from Ministerial meetings regarding health, environment and climate, women’s empowerment, trade investment and industry, the energy transition, development, labor, research and innovation, and tourism; to Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governor meetings, Finance-Health Deputies meetings, joint Sherpa and Finance Deputies meetings, individual Sherpa meetings, Foreign Ministers meetings, G20 Digital Ministers meetings, and Education Ministers meetings; and lastly, engagement group gatherings (including the U20, B20 on climate/energy, integrity, compliance, and business leaders; the T20, with numerous recommendations from think tanks around the world, the Y20, with priority areas on digital transformation and youth empowerment, and the L20 Employment Summit).

It would be hard to contest that the G20 indeed has been a platform that has developed and advanced key collaborative actions toward policies and priorities, from the Leader Declaration identifying the Pandemic Fund, the Financial Intermediary Funds for Pandemic Prevention, which employs the World Bank and World Health Organization.

The incoming G20 Troika – Indonesia, India and Brazil – will mark a unique shift in global governance deliberations. It will be led by three Global South countries with emerging large market economies hosting the year-long activities. The hosting will pass from India in 2023, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025.

We anticipate this three-year spread of Global South presidencies will tackle issues that have been brushed to the side or missed in other G20 Summits. This is certainly a significant step in the effort to construct a multilateral network to seek mutually beneficial responses to growing challenges impacting all countries.

The Financial Times released an article following Indonesia’s Leaders’ Summit, deeming its outcomes “remarkable”. Russia, represented by its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, seemed isolated on the world stage as China put forth a more neutral stance in its support towards Moscow. Xi commented that his administration “resolutely opposes attempt[s] to politicize food and energy issues or use them as tools and weapons”.

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Constructing an Inclusive Order: Avoiding Fragmentation and Worse – Disorder

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Two summits completed and another off in the distance, but impacted by these just completed summits. A crowded summit schedule has begun.

The statements were voiced and the Leaders’ Communique issued by the G7 at Schloss Elmau to be followed by more speeches and statements and the issuing of the “Strategic Concept”  a once ever ten year statement by NATO at Madrid.

What have we learned from this G7 and the NATO gatherings? Let me first focus on the G7 Summit. Well, first it is relevant that we take into account the position expressed by one of the longstanding observers of the summit process, Sheffield’s Hugo Dobson. As he concluded, along with his colleague Greg Stiles in Global Policy , reflecting their review of the German G7 and in particular the Leaders’ Communique:

In summary, and despite what we have tried to do here, beware reading too much either positively or negatively into a single summit document. Rather, this communiqué should be placed in the context of a network of summits – most immediately the NATO Summit in Madrid later this week and looking further ahead to the Indonesian-hosted G20 Summit later this year.

And it is a summary and caution well worth heeding. Nevertheless, the tone is worth further comment. The G7 took the time and the Communique to underscore their self characterization as a democratic forum. In their Communique opening the G7 declared:

 As open democracies adhering to the rule of law, we are driven by shared values and bound by our commitment to the rules-based multilateral order and to universal human rights. As outlined in our Statement on support for Ukraine, standing in unity to support the government and people of Ukraine in their fight for a peaceful, prosperous and democratic future, we will continue to impose severe and immediate economic costs on President Putin’s regime for its unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine, while stepping up our efforts to counter its adverse and harmful regional and global impacts, including with a view to helping secure global energy and food security as well as stabilising the economic recovery. 

 

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Struggling to Keep UN Multilateral Institutions Relevant

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She sought to put her best foot forward in her first appearance following her controversial visit to China. In the opening moment of her statement Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reflected the positive aspects of her trip:

Let me start by thanking the Government of China for its invitation. For the first time in 17 years, a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has been able to travel to China and speak directly with the most senior Government officials in the country, and other interlocutors on key human rights issues, in China and globally I appreciate the Government’s efforts in making this visit happen, particularly the arrangements for my virtual meeting with President Xi Jinping.

She has received dramatic criticism from the human rights community. As identified in the NYT, the comments from Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch dismissed the Commissioner’s efforts: “That mandate requires a credible investigation in the face of mountains of evidence of atrocity crimes, not another toothless dialogue.”  A second comment by Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch underscored the harsh negative view expressed by the human rights community (NYT, June 13, 2022) : “There was no condemnation from Madame Bachelet even remotely commensurate with the severity of the atrocities being committed in Xinjiang, … She gave up her most powerful weapon for a back room dialogue which will be meaningless.”

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The Missing Mechanisms – Examining the Current Summitry Cycle: Rome G20 and Glasgow COP26

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So many summits recently: from the Rome G20 Summit, to the Glasgow COP26 Summit, to APEC, and finally the East Asia Summit. It is the crescendo of the annual summitry cycle. And, this year, 2021, was particularly noteworthy. In this summit cycle we had in person leaders gatherings at the Rome G20 Summit, immediately followed by the 5-year COP ‘check-in’ with many G20 leaders flying off directly to the Glasgow Summit following the Rome G20 Summit. It is not a surprise given the importance of these summits that colleagues have been attracted to assessing the advances, or the limitations of these gatherings and then more generally to examine the overall effectiveness they present of multilateral leadership.  One of the key assessments, not surprisingly, is to determine whether these summits, and therefore the multilateralism underpinning them can meet the rising global governance challenges facing the international system. Prime Minister Draghi who chaired the recently concluded G20 Rome Summit had this to say about multilateralism, and inferentially the G20:

“Multilateralism is the best answer to the problems we face today. In many ways it is the only possible answer,”  he said in his opening comments on Saturday. 

 

From the pandemic, to climate change, to fair and equitable taxation, going it all alone is simply not an option. We must do all we can to overcome our differences”.

Yet the judgements from the experts have generally been measured, even rather downbeat, over the current G20 and COP26 and other summitry efforts. Broadly there is recognition of some material advances in the global governance agenda, especially concerning climate change efforts but the fundamental – and many would argue the urgent and necessary collective actions – seem to elude global summitry policy making. And, most agree that more global order needs are just out of reach. Here, my colleague Yves Tiberghien in East Asia Forum (EAF)  had this to say about the G20 and the critical multilateral efforts:

The G20 is currently unable to function as the incubator for the reform of global governance institutions that the world needs to manage global markets and pressing systemic risks. It is proving unable to manage the great frictions between established and emerging powers.

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Which Countries are Middle Powers – And Why are They Important to the Global Order? Part 2

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The growing geopolitical tensions in the international system, in particular  between the United States and China and also with Russia, have led to a chorus of voices urging on middle powers to greater efforts in maintaining  and even strengthening a rules-based order. Roland Paris in a major Chatham House Brief titled: “Can Middle Powers Save the Liberal World Order?” pointed at various urgent calls from international experts:

Gideon Rachman, a Financial Times columnist, has proposed a ‘middle-powers alliance’ to ‘preserve a world based around rules and rights, rather than power and force’. Two eminent American foreign-policy experts, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, have also called on US allies to ‘leverage their collective economic and military might to save the liberal world order’.

The urgency and calls for middle power action rose perceptively, of course, with ‘America First’  from the Trump Presidency and from the failure of the leading powers – the United States and China – to organize global governance efforts to tackle the global pandemic. Indeed the global pandemic has seemingly ‘lit a fire’ under experts and officials issuing a rising chorus of calls for greater middle power action in the face of leading power failure. An  evident instance is a recent article from  Foreign Affairs from our colleague Bruce Jones from Brookings titled:“Can middle powers lead the world out of the pandemic? Because the United States and China have shown that they can’t”.

In Part 1 of this Post series we attempted to identify which states experts were referring to when they issued the call for middle power action. We ended up with a variety of categories. There were the traditional states, Canada, Australia and maybe South Korea and Singapore. There were states that fell within the top 20 economic powers  – way too many states but lots of familiar powers. And then there were all those states , identified by Jeffrey Robertson in his insightful article: “Middle-power definitions: confusion reigns supreme” in the Australian Journal of International Affairs (2017. 71(4): 355-370, with an interest in and “capacity (material resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.)resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.) to work proactively in concert with similar states to contribute to the development and strengthening of institutions for the governance of the global commons.” And in fact there seemed to be a bit of a marriage between middle powers and multilateralism in the newly created “Alliance for Multilateralism” created by the foreign ministers of France and Germany that umbrellaed at its creation some 40 states.

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