Tag Archives: G7

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

Puzzling over BRICS Enlargement

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As Global Summits go, and besides the leader-led summits, G7 and the G20, there is nothing with greater presence, and possible impact in international relations, than the BRICS. As noted by Ndzendze, Bhaso, Siphamandia Zondo (2023) in their recent article in The Conversation on the state of the BRICS: 

What began in 2001 as an acronym for four of the fastest growing states, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), is projected to account for 45% of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms by 2030. It has evolved into a political formation as well.

It is the political impact that is most interesting and, I would say, somewhat puzzling. For the BRICS club – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – all are members of the G20.  Like the G20, and for that matter the earlier created G7, the BRICS represent a ‘leaders club’ that is a leader-led global summit that has an annual meeting of those leaders – the centerpiece of the year-long hosting by one member or another. In some respects the BRICS are unique in what the group is not. That is, unlike the G7, the BRICS members have no  evident ideological dimension – neither democratic nor autocratic. Instead it appears to see itself as focused on opposition to US hegemony in the current global order and they appear to demand a greater development focus and attention to the Global South. Again, as pointed out by Bhaso and Zondo: 

Crucial to this was these countries’ decision to form their own club in 2009, instead of joining an expanded G7 as envisioned by former Goldman Sachs CEO Jim O’Neill, who coined the term “Bric”. Internal cohesion on key issues has emerged and continues to be refined, despite challenges. … Ever since, the grouping has taken on a more pointedly political tone, particularly on the need to reform global institutions, in addition to its original economic raison d’etre. 

Now, it is not that there haven’t been efforts to enlarge these informal leader-led institutions  – to draw in the systemically important Global South players – China, India, Brazil – and other regional powers, Turkey and Indonesia for instance.  Obviously, the G20 is the evident case. Still, it would seem that the BRICS members resisted absorption in the G20, indeed, just at the G7 members – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the U.S., and also the EU, failed to wind up the G7 and ‘live’ in an enlarged G20 after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008. Though there has been constant academic and expert discussion over absorption, enlargement and continuing separation, there continues to be both a G20 and a G7 a G20 and a BRICS. Again my SOAS colleagues focussing on the BRICS suggest: 

Some may even bring destabilising dynamics for the current composition of the formation. This matters because it tells us that the envisioned change in the global order is likely to be much slower. Simply put, while some states are opposed to western hegemony, they do not yet agree among themselves on what the new alternative should be.

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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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