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The Changing Shape and Influence of the Informals

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The UN General Assembly’s High Level Week has come and gone. And so has the unique UN gathering – The ‘Summit of the Future’ with the passage of the long anticipated, ‘Pact for the Future’. So, it’s not surprising that those of us concerned with global governance, global order and global summitry have turned our attention to the – Informals and most evidently the upcoming two Summits – the G20 Summit hosted this year by Brazil and the BRICS+ Summit hosted by none other than Russia. As it turns out, the third key Informal, the G7 has already been held by Italy in Apulia on June 13-15th.

The Informals emerged in 1975 with the creation of the G6 then the G7 a year later. While the G7 enlarged to the G7/8 in 1998, with the inclusion of Russia, it returned to being the G7 in 2017 when Russia that had been suspended with its annexation of Crimea in 2014, abandoned the Informal for the G20. The G20 began in 1999 with finance ministers and central bankers. It evolved into a leaders summit with the global financial crisis in 2008. The G20 members in attendance at the first Leaders’ Summit called by George W. Bush were: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The BRICs called their first leaders gathering in Yekaterinburg Russia in 2009. It emerged as the BRICS with the addition of South Africa at the Sanya China meeting in 2011.  These three, the G7, the G20 and the BRICS have remained the key informal annual leaders’ summits. The question remains, however, how effective have these 3 Summits been? Have they been able to shape the global order and advance collective global governance leadership? In other words, have they been effective?

Let me first focus on the BRICS+. This year’s gathering is the first convening of the BRICS+, an enlarged BRICS group. This year’s Summit is significant for the current member enlargement but also for its hosting by Russia. Yes, this year the BRICS+ is hosted by Russia – a pariah for the West due to the Ukraine War. My colleague, Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) published a BRICS+ piece on September 9, titled, “BRICS Expansion, the G20, and the Future of World Order”. On the first point, enlargement, Stewart suggests:

Putin has also invited more than two dozen other countries that have applied for or are considering membership in the expanding club. The gathering is meant to send an unmistakable signal: Despite the West’s best efforts to isolate it, Russia has many friends around the world.

This meeting in Russia will take place in Kazan the capital of Tatarstan. In addition to the original members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, besides all the many invited guest there are the new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), though it should be noted that Saudi Arabia has technically not accepted membership but will attend in any case. Now Stewart’s explanation for this expansion:

No doubt, BRICS expansion evinces a growing global dissatisfaction with and a determination to challenge the structural advantages that advanced market democracies continue to enjoy in a global order that was in many respects made by the West, for the West. Reducing those exorbitant privileges, including by creating alternative, parallel institutions, is the fundamental purpose of BRICS+.

And the prospects of further expansion is highly possible. According to Putin, as described by Stewart:

According to Putin, thirty-four countries have expressed an interest to join the club, “in one form or another.” Some two dozen countries have reportedly applied for membership, among them Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam. More may be waiting in the wings, like Indonesia, which applied and then withdrew its application a decade ago. The most recent applicant is Türkiye, a member of NATO—albeit one that seeks to keep its options open. The group, in other words, seems destined to expand.

So what are the goals and how effective has the current BRICS+ been. As noted above, the BRICS+ members loudly proclaim the need to add the Global South to the major multilateral institutions whether the UN, and especially the UN Security Council, or the major financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF.

At the extreme, according to my colleague Oliver Stuenkel and his co-author Alexander Gabuev in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, titled, “The Battle for the BRICS: Why the Future of the Bloc Will Shape Global Order”:

Putin summarized the agenda of Russia’s BRICS presidency in remarks in July as part of a “painful process” to overthrow the “classic colonialism” of the U.S.-led order, calling for an end to Washington’s “monopoly” on setting the rules of the road.

But the makeup today, and likely in the near future, has its limitations as described by Oliver and his co-author:

But despite its allure, the club must grapple with an internal fissure. Some of its members, chief among them China and Russia, want to position the grouping against the West and the global order crafted by the United States. The addition of Iran, an inveterate adversary of the United States, only deepens the sense that the group is now lining up on one side of a larger geopolitical battle. Other members, notably Brazil and India, do not share this ambition. Instead, they want to use BRICS to democratize and encourage the reform of the existing order, helping guide the world from the fading unipolarity of the post–Cold War era to a more genuine multipolarity in which countries can steer between U.S.-led and Chinese-led blocs.

There clearly are differences in the view of its members as to what this Informal is designed to accomplish. And evidently not all members are equal. In particular China exerts strong influence on the original members and it, along with Russia, have pushed for expansion notwithstanding Brazil and India’s reticence:

Brazil and India are therefore wary of the BRICS’ hardening orientation. Both were initially opposed to China’s push to expand the group, which Beijing first proposed in 2017 under the rubric of “BRICS Plus.” Brazil and India were keen to retain the club’s exclusivity, worried that adding more members to the bloc would dilute their own influence within it. In 2023, China stepped up its diplomatic campaign and pressured Brazil and India to support expansion, mostly by casting their resistance as tantamount to preventing the rise of other developing countries. Keen to preserve its own standing in the global South, India dropped its opposition, leaving Brazil no choice but to go along with expansion. Brazil did lobby against adding any overtly anti-Western countries—an endeavor that failed spectacularly when Iran was announced as one of the new members that year.

It appears that the BRICS+ has taken on what appears to be a growing anti-western tilt and in the extreme case an anti-US position. In particular Russia, given its experience of US and European sanctions since the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine has urged the toppling of the US dollar dominance according to Alexander and Oliver:

In this fight against the Western “monopoly,” Putin identified the most important campaign as the quest to weaken the dominion of the dollar over international financial transactions. This focus is a direct result of Russia’s experience with Western sanctions. Russia hopes that it can build a truly sanctions-proof payments system and financial infrastructure through BRICS, involving all member countries.

But what has the BRICS accomplished beyond expressing distaste for the current global order leadership.

Stewart targets what he sees as the goals of the BRICS+ on the differences within:

On its face, BRICS+ is a formidable economic bloc,comprising half of the world’s population, 40 percent of its trade, and 40 percent of crude oil production and exports. The coalition can use this leverage not only to demand a more equitable international order but also to act on those ambitions, for instance by establishing a parallel energy trading system, deepening commercial links among members,creating an alternative system of development finance, reducing dollar dependence in foreign exchange transactions, and deepening technology cooperation in fields from AI to outer space. Expect BRICS+ to seek opportunities in each area.

Stewart also applauds various group actions:

Like the G7 and G20, the BRICS group has launched an expanding array of initiatives and partnerships across multiple issue areas, from energy to health to sustainable development. The result is an impressive and increasingly dense transnational latticework of networked minilateralism, with a heavy focus on South-South cooperation.

Yet the major collective BRICS efforts have been limited. In fact, we have two only: the New Development Bank (NDB) and a currency swap arrangement, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) which has remained unused notwithstanding all the discussions of an alternative to the US dollar. As to the NDB it has not had a major financing impact with many criticizing it for relying too much on private financing. For an insightful discussion of the BRICS please listen to the podcast I undertook with York University’s Gregory Chin, “Summit Dialogue, S2, Ep 7, An Interview with Gregory Chin on the BRICS+ and the New Development Bank”

Frankly the collective efforts have been at best works in progress with far more rhetorical expression than practical implementation. As Stewart remarks:

To date, BRICS has been more effective at signaling what it is against—namely,continued Western domination of the architecture of global governance—than what it stands for.

And Alexander and Oliver further note:

In this fight against the Western “monopoly,” Putin identified the most important campaign as the quest to weaken the dominion of the dollar over international financial transactions. This focus is a direct result of Russia’s experience with Western sanctions. Russia hopes that it can build a truly sanctions-proof payments system and financial infrastructure through BRICS, involving all member countries.

The talk of de-dollarization is rife but the dethroning of the dollar is nowhere to be seen at the moment. So that is a first look at the expanded BRICS.

What then is the current status of the G20? First it should be noted the G20 has enlarged as well with the addition of the African Union in 2023. A key strength of the G20, unlike the G7, is that the G20 includes advanced economic and Global South members. In principle this wider membership corrects for the skewed membership of the G7 where no significant Global South members are present. This evident avantage has however fallen to the tensions generated in a far more geopolitical tense international system. Stewart reflects on the impact of the rising geopolitical tensions:

Of particular concern is the future of the Group of 20 (G20). Even before BRICS expansion, it had become a microcosm of growing global rifts. A further hardening of these divisions would undercut the G20’s fundamental raison d’être: namely, to help bridge gulfs between—and leverage the capabilities of—important countries that are not inherently or necessarily like-minded.

 

Among the biggest uncertainties is what impact the BRICS+ will have on the role and functioning of the G20, which will hold its own summit in Rio de Janeiro on November 18–19 under this year’s chair, Brazil.Since the G20’s elevation to the leader level in 2008, one of its ostensible comparative advantages has been that it provide a setting for flexible coalitions of consensus to emerge that transcend rigid blocs.

 

The expansion of BRICS certainly has the potential to exacerbate these dynamics, by splitting the G20 into opposed G7 and BRICS+ factions.

Though much anticipation was paid to the G20 broad membership, the geopolitical and now the ant-Western tensions reflected in the BRICS+ may hobble the very needed collective global governance efforts ascribed to the G20.

We will come back to the G20 as we approach the G20 Summit scheduled for November 18th and 19th, in Rio de Janeiro as we look to take the measure of G20 effectiveness.

Image Credit: LinkedIn

This Post was originally posted at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/the-changing-shape-and-influence?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

 

More than Just Sustaining the G7 – The G7 at 50

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The 50th annual G7 meeting was just held in Apulia Italy as leaders work, so they say, to coordinate economic policy in the context of rising geopolitical tensions. It  seems at this 50th G7 gathering, however, it is far more about geopolitics, and the shadow of Trump, than it is about global governance policy efforts.

The G7  leaders, the U.S., UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, and France have been tasked with host Italy to discuss in various sessions:  climate change, migration, and international development, as well as a discussion on AI led by Pope Francis. But that is not the ‘heart’ of summit discussions at this G7. It is rather discussions on Russia and the Ukraine War. Most pertinently, G7 leaders reached agreement to utilize Russia’s seized assets, most of which were frozen in the EU financial system, to provide a loan of up to $50 billion in support for Ukraine.

And there was a heavy emphasis, identified in the G7 Leaders’ Communique, of China. The Communique took on China for its continuing support for Russia. As noted by FT contributors Henry Foy and James Politi:

The joint statement at the end of their summit in Italy included a far tougher stance towards China than in the past, exposing the escalating frustration both in the US and Europe with Beijing’s critical support to Russia during the war in Ukraine.

 

We will continue taking measures against actors in China and third countries that materially support Russia’s war machine, including financial institutions, consistent with our legal systems, and other entities in China that facilitate Russia’s acquisition of items for its defense industrial base.  In this context, we reiterate that entities, including financial institutions, that facilitate Russia’s acquisition of items or equipment for its defense industrial base are supporting actions that undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine. Accordingly, we will impose restrictive measures consistent with our legal systems to prevent abuse and restrict access to our financial systems for targeted individuals and entities in third countries, including Chinese entities, that engage in this activity. We will take robust action against actors who aid Russia in circumventing our sanctions, including by imposing severe costs on all those who fail to immediately cease providing material support to Russia’s aggression and by strengthening domestic enforcement and stepping up our business engagement to promote corporate responsibility. We call on financial institutions to refrain from supporting and profiting from Russia’s war machine. We will take further steps to deter and disrupt this behavior.

Concluding on China, the FT suggested G7 leaders no longer underestimated China’s strategic actions toward Russia and economic ones toward all the G7 countries:

A second person familiar with the talks said: “The era of naivety towards Beijing is definitely gone now and China is to blame for that, honestly. … “China is everywhere in the G7, to be frank,” said a senior EU official. “The question we have is how to calibrate our actions to take in response.”

For analysts and officials the G7 Communique expressed much about taking on China and heightening the ‘new Cold War’ rhetoric. A good example,  David E Sanger of the NYT and author of New Cold War: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s  Struggle to Defend the West.

The point here is the noted diminishment,  if not outright absence of global governance policy expression and leadership. At the G7. Of course it is not that the leadership didn’t identify collective economic policy. How could it not in ever too long annual Statement – yes 36 pages – which started with a series of presumed priorities including a long list of notable global governance priorities:

Engaging with African countries, in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership. As they work to deliver sustainable development and industrial growth for their people, we are advancing our respective efforts to invest in sustainable infrastructure, including through the PGII, and we launched the Energy for Growth in Africa initiative, together with several African partners.

 

Acting to enable countries to invest in their future and achieve the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs), recognizing that reducing poverty and tackling global challenges go hand in hand.We are doing our part to achieve better, bigger and more effective Multilateral DevelopmentBanks, making it possible for the World Bank to boost its lending by USD 70 billion over the next ten years. We are calling for action from the international community to address debt burdens.

 

Reinforcing global food security and enhancing climate resilience, including by launching the Apulia Food Systems Initiative.  https://www.g7italy.it/wp-content/uploads/Apulia-G7-Leaders- Communique.pdf 2

 

Reaffirming our commitment to gender equality. Together with International Financial Institutions, we will unlock at least USD 20 billion over three years in investments to boost women’s empowerment.

 

Taking concrete steps to address the triple crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, including by submitting ambitious 1.5°C aligned Nationally Determined Contributions. We will spearhead global efforts to preserve forests and oceans, and to end plastic pollution.

 

Affirming our collective commitment and enhanced cooperation to address migration, tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities that it presents, in partnership with countries of origin and transit. We will focus on the root causes of irregular migration, efforts to enhance border management and curb transnational organized crime, and safe and regular pathways for migration. We launched the G7 Coalition to prevent and counter the smuggling of migrants.

 

Deepening our cooperation to harness the benefits and manage the risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will launch an action plan on the use of AI in the world of work and develop a brand to support the implementation of the International Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems.

 

Fostering strong and inclusive global economic growth, maintaining financial stability and investing in our economies to promote jobs and accelerate digital and clean energy transitions. We also remain committed to strengthening the rules-based multilateral trading system and to implementing a more stable and fairer international tax system fit for the 21st century.

 

Acting together to promote economic resilience, confront non-market policies and practices that undermine the level playing field and our economic security, and strengthen our coordination to address global overcapacity challenges.

But this was a gathering where Russia-Ukraine and then China’s support of Russia dominated, so we are told, leader discussions. As note by David Sanger in the NYT: 

But the change in views about China reached far beyond the questions swirling around an endgame in Ukraine. European countries that had worried a few years ago that the United States was being too confrontational with China, this year signed on to the communiqué, with its calls for more robust Western-based supply chains that were less reliant on Chinese companies.

A CSIS report led by John Homre and Victor Cha urged that the G7 expand its membership and “foster a more stable and predictable world order.”

This CSIS report speaks to the global need to elevate the Group of Seven (G7), a bloc of industrialized democracies—the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union—to foster a more stable and predictable world order.

The authors urge an enlargement of the Group – suggesting:

… Australia and South Korea. They bring significant capabilities to the nine priorities identified by G7 leaders, are like-minded partners, and display the trust and reliability required of G7 members.

 

The G7 should establish a formal leader-level outreach mechanism to the Global South and middle-power economies to demonstrate inclusivity and confer legitimacy on the body as a global governance institution. The outreach partners should include the African Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, the G20, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

But realistically that is not where the G7 is. It is about critical geopolitical matters to Europe and the United States. If anything, any long view of this Summit – 50 years on – and for a number of us one can cast back to 1975 and Rambouillet, this Informal is much shrunken and quite isolated.

It is worth noting Paul Poast’s assessment in WPR of the G7 at this 50th year:

While the group has evolved, its long-term survival is once again unclear. There are concerns that Trump’s disdain for international cooperation could return in 2025. Nations in Europe, notably Germany and France, are witnessing a far-right resurgence, which could also undermine the G7’s coherence as a gathering of the liberal democratic world’s leading nations. For that matter, this year’s host, Italy, is currently governed by the far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party has its origins in the country’s fascist movement.

 

Hence, there are once again questions about the summits’ future, let alone whether they will produce more iconic images and momentous outcomes. In short, it’s unclear if the G7 will make it through another five, let alone another 50, meetings.

The shadow of Trump – and his possible return – explains many pronouncements by the current G7 Leaders. Diminished and ‘in a crouch’ seems to best define today’s G7. But even so, it is fair to say that our gaze shifted long ago to the G20. Trump, no Trump, key Middle Powers represent a significant presence and influence in the G20. That’s where to turn our gaze and focus.

Image Credit: Organizer

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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