Last month, world leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries met for the year’s annual summit in Biarritz, France. The forum was not only attended by G7’s members — France, the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the European Union — but also by India, Spain, Australia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Egypt, Chile, and Senegal, who were invited by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Historically, the group (initially G8 including Russia) was an informal bloc of liberal democracies created to discuss issues like international security, international economic governance, and energy and environmental policies. The rather homogenous mix of members was initially intended to promote a sense of collective decision-making, yet consistently failed to include crucial emerging world powers from Asia and Africa.
After the removal of Russia from the G8 in 2015 as a response to the country’s annexation of Crimea, leaders projected that the new G7 would be able to facilitate collective action a lot better, since the group was more “like-minded” in terms of their policymaking objectives and national interests. Donald Trump, however, in his debut trip around the world as the US President, undermined the unity of the G7 on a variety of issues. The distance between his government and the others in the bloc was obvious, as reflected by his comments on climate relief and trade. At the year's G7 Summit in Sicily, Trump announced that the US would not be recommitting to the 2015 Paris Agreement, hinting that they would be withdrawing from the agreement. As a response, the other members were compelled to take an unusual step, singling out the US from the issue in the final communiqué presented at the end of the summit.
This move at the Sicily summit led to a rather unprecedented statement made at German leader Angela Merkel's campaign rally a few days later, where she raised doubts about the cohesiveness of traditional transnational alliances. She stated that Europe "must take our own fate into our own hands", following her disappointment in Trump's positions on trade, climate change, and NATO.
Year after year at the G7 summits, the reality of trying to aim for a 'lowest common denominator' as a system of merely keeping processes alive has been reflected. The end results and communiqués are comprised of a set of rather mundane statements, and while they suggest that the values of liberal democracy and a rule-based world order must be maintained, concrete policy suggestions are not addressed.
Samir Saran of the Observer Research Foundation has opined that the Biarritz Summit served as evidence of a failing liberal international order, as the leaders of the group no longer seem to have the will or the vision to sustain it. There seems to be a deep ideological division among the group’s members, especially with regards to issues of trade, climate change, and growing tensions with Iran, Russia, and China. This has also been reflected in the past two summits — at Charlevoix and Sicily respectively — where the joint political communiqués traditionally presented after deliberations at the summit were bland at best.
Many blame Trump's idiosyncratic behaviour for the changing state of affairs at the summit, but he represents what is now being considered the new political 'normal'. Erratic decisions such as the announcement of the US-Japanese trade deal, Macron's invitation of the Iranian Foreign Minister to the conference, and new UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's intention to "talk tough" to the European Union, all underscore a gloomy new reality where Western powers are grappling with contentions stemming from the individual whims of individual leaders. As this pattern increases, it seems that this phenomenon will live past Trump and continue to influence agendas and decision-making at such conclaves.
The presence of India and others at the recent summit as observers also marks the G7's acknowledgement of a new world order. What is interesting to note, however, is that the same group that ousted Russia for violating international laws and infringing upon the territorial integrity of Ukraine welcomed India to the summit with open arms, despite its recent decision on Kashmir and the resounding Russian support of the move.
Macron’s suggested reform of revoking the issuance of the joint political communiqués traditionally presented after deliberations at the summit comes across as refreshing, but is more representative of an acknowledgement that the proceedings of the summit are failing to lead to tangible outcomes. The failure of the international community to properly intervene in the Amazon fire crisis is a testament to this: not only did Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro reject the $20 million foreign aid offered by the G7, his position was supported by the US, the UK, Spain and others, resulting in an ugly and public spat between Bolsonaro and Macron.
From what it seems, the G7 is too weak a platform to sustain multilateral dialogue as the power dynamics of the international community are shifting. If just one Trump is able to shake the summit to its core, is it really ready to accommodate Xi Jinping's China, Narendra Modi's India, or consider reinstating Vladimir Putin's Russia? The Biarritz conference, if anything, showcased the G7's importance in acting as a space for successful bilateral dialogue, especially for Modi whose talks with Trump and Johnson were heavily publicized in the country as an international 'win' over Pakistan. Yet, the G7's importance as a multilateral forum is diminishing, especially for its original members, whose ideological leanings are becoming increasingly threatened in the space. The proposed scrapping of the joint communiqué seems to have opened a window for the dissolution of the forum, and only time will tell whether it can withstand the growing dissent within.
References
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Cillizza, C. (2019). Donald Trump's story on skipping the G7 climate meeting makes no sense. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/donald-trump-g7-climate-change/index.html
Desk. (2019). Our views exactly the same: Russia backs India’s Kashmir stand. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/our-views-exactly-the-same-russia-backs-india-kashmir-stand-1592518-2019-08-28
Saran, S. (2019). Seven plus one: India at the G7 | ORF. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://www.orfonline.org/research/seven-plus-one-india-at-the-g7-54838/
Shukla, S. (2019). Why G7 summit is unlikely to bring about structural reforms despite host Macron’s push. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://theprint.in/world/why-g7-summit-is-unlikely-to-bring-about-structural-reforms-despite-host-macrons-push/281062/
Smale, A., & Erlanger, S. (2017). Merkel, After Discordant G-7 Meeting, Is Looking Past Trump. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/world/europe/angela-merkel-trump-alliances-g7-leaders.html?_r=0
The G7 and the Future of Multilateralism. (2019). Retrieved 3 September 2019, from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/g7-and-future-multilateralism
Image Credits: Time