The G20 Summit 2023: Shaping a Multipolar World and Addressing Global Challenges

2023-09-07 19:30:00

Friday Sep 8, 2023

A fortnight after the 15th BRICS summit in South Africa, which took historic decisions that created movements in global politics, the capital of BRICS founding member India is set to host the 18th summit of the world’s largest economic bloc, the G20. On September 9 and 10, representatives of nineteen countries and the European Union will meet in Delhi. The G20 was formed in 1999 to include Asian, African, and Latin American countries that began to advance economically when the Asian financial crisis of 1997 began to negatively affect the capitalist countries. In 2008, while trying to recover from the economic collapse, the economic recession hit all the capitalist countries. (The first high-level meeting of the G20 was also held in the United States that year). At the time of the G20 Leaders Summit, in 2008–2009, the bloc had been able to bring the global economy in crisis to some extent. In 2016, it was announced that the United States and China would sign the Paris Climate Agreement at a high level in China. However, the apparent unity at the beginning of the organization was gradually lost and the conference announcements began to turn into water lines. Damian Cave, in an article written in the New York Times on September 6, 2023, argues that the G20 will make big announcements, but the result will be disappointment. He cites two examples. First, in 2021 Rome announced at a high level that it would stop funding foreign coal-fired power plants as part of efforts to curb global warming. However, nothing has been said about investment in coal plants domestically. As a result, coal-fired power generation in 2022 has increased significantly. Second, the tax reform agreement announced in 2021 itself has not yet been implemented. Big announcements come in every conference but implementation is very weak. The reason for this is the economic changes that took place in the third world countries during this period. During the period from 1999 to 2008, there were two important developments in global politics. First, the occupation policy implemented by the United States on the strength of the unipolar world that existed at that time not only weakened that country economically, but also started to develop hostility towards American policies in other countries. Second, countries like India, China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. started emerging as economic powers. With this, the multipolar world order became stronger. The book written by the Indian American author Fareed Zakaria titled “The Post-American World: The Rise of Others” is to indicate this phenomenon. The transformation of the G20 into a summit of heads of state in 2008, the formation of BRIC in 2009 (as BRICS in 2010) and moves towards a multipolar world were creative reflections of that economic and political change. The world is looking forward to see what progress will be made. According to the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar himself, the Delhi high-level meeting is taking place in a very tense environment, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, global warming, trade disputes, food security, India-China dispute. The slogan of the Delhi Conference is “One Family, One Future” and it has been announced that priority will be given to the problems of the developing poor countries known as Southern Hemisphere countries. The formation of a multi-polar world, environment, lightening the economic burden of nations, fuel security and digital technology are the main agendas of this conference. If you look at the preparations for the conference, you will understand that there are some other targets through such a mega conference. Never before has there been any other international conference in India where political agendas of the ruling party have been hidden. The G20 annual meeting, which was supposed to be hosted by India in 2021, was shifted to 2023. The nineteen members of the G20 excluding the European Union are divided into five groups. The 2020 conference was held in the first group, Saudi Arabia. India in the second group was supposed to hold the conference in 2021. However, Italy of the fourth group was requested to host the conference in 2021 to be held in the 75th year of independence. But India decided to host the G20 summit in 2023 after Indonesia, the fifth group, also hosted the 2022 summit. There is strong criticism that it is ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections. The Guardian newspaper from London wrote that the G20 conference was given an election campaign. After the lotus bloomed on the G20’s official symbol, the G20 announcement, slogans and advertisements were placed against a background colored with the BJP flag. Recently, in the invitation to the dinner given by the President of India to the leaders participating in the G20, for the first time in the history of India, he was called Bharat Rashtrapati instead of the President of India. The central government’s efforts to turn the Delhi conference into a mega event will be tarnished by the absence of President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s second largest economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin had already announced that he would not be attending. The President of Mexico will not attend the meeting. China’s President Xi Jinping’s absence from the conference could affect the conference on at least four levels. First, it may not be possible to issue a joint statement that everyone agrees on. Second, the opportunity for de-escalation through talks between the Indian Prime Minister and the President of China on issues including border disputes is gone. Third, China may send a message that it does not attach much importance to the G20. Fourth, with leaders including the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain no longer able to hold talks with China’s President Xi Jinping, efforts to ease the existing contentious issues in global politics have also become unlikely. Since its inception in 1999, the G20 has been able to issue a joint statement at every meeting. However, none of the official ministerial meetings held before the summit so far have been able to reach an agreement on issues like Ukraine, climate change, renewable energy etc. In the event that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin do not come to the conference, if they do not reach a consensus on these issues, the joint statement may not be issued for the first time in the history of the conference. To protect the capitalist world order, the G20 manages 80 percent of global wealth and 75 percent of exports, and covers 60 percent of the world’s population, but such a strong organization has not been able to develop the countries outside the G7 or democratize the international political and economic institutions that control the world order. Nothing but lip service has been done on the issue of climate change affecting poor countries. For all this, developing countries are still fighting outside the G7. The G7 countries seek not to strengthen efforts towards that goal, but rather to undermine such efforts from within the G20. As part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Plan, capitalist countries have expressed their disagreement with India’s proposal to set aside five hundred billion dollars for poverty alleviation, education, clean energy and climate change in developing poor countries. The G20 is a capitalist strategy to preserve and maintain the existing world order, not to enable an alternative world order. (The author is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Asian Institute for China and IOR Studies) Read on deshabhimani.com