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G20 and global disorder

THE G20 summit provides a vivid illustration of the contemporary global governance disorder.

No doubt the meeting to be held in St Petersburg on September 5-6 will correspond to the dismal pattern. 

The initial idea of expanding the membership of the G7/8 to integrate rising key global players was a good one.

But it was badly executed and has since been immune to innovation and reform. Three problems stand out.

The first is the over-representation of Europe in the context of 21st century global realities and trends.

Not only have the four European members of the G7 – the UK, France, Germany and Italy – hung on tenaciously to their seats, but they contrived to get another one for the European Commission.

Thus five out of the 20 members, or one-quarter, are from the EU.

This, as with many other international institutions including the IMF and the UN Security Council, illustrates Europeans' inability to understand and adjust to what is no longer an Atlantic-centric world.

It de-legitimises the G20 and the spirit of global governance generally.

Having said that, no clear, solid, alternative governance structure is emerging.

The Brics soufflé is in the process of decomposition and will soon be thrown into the dustbin of history.

Debatable impact

The second issue is the debatable impact of the G20 on the global economic and public policy agenda.

Perhaps the G20 meetings in 2008/09 helped to stave off protectionist forces that might have emerged from the global financial crisis and ensuing recession.

Since then, however, the ritual of including in the final G20 communiqué words to the effect that trade ministers would be instructed to conclude the WTO Doha Development Agenda before the end of the year was no more than that: ritual, which has recently been abandoned.

Nor can the upcoming St Petersburg summit be expected to forcefully or effectively address a number of the other big global public policy challenges: climate change, financial volatility, economic and geopolitical rebalancing, and, arguably most pressing of all, water, food and energy security.

The third worry is the extent of tensions and conflicts between G20 members at the moment.

The iciness of the US-Russia relationship can be gauged from President Obama's refusal to have a pre-summit tête-à-tête with his host, President Putin, due to the Snowden affair.

Russia and China are also at loggerheads with the US over Syria and Iran.

Japan's relations with its two neighbours, China and South Korea, are arguably the tensest they have been since the end of World War Two owing to territorial and historical disputes.

Sino-Indian relations are acutely tense, with a potential major conflict arising over water security and the Tibetan plateau.

India and China also have territorial disputes. New Delhi is weary of Beijing's courting of Islamabad and sees itself potentially surrounded by Chinese fleets through the establishment of ports in the Indian Ocean known as the "string of pearls".

Cauldron of the Middle East

As to the cauldron that is the Middle East, while G20 members Saudi Arabia and Turkey are more or less on the same page in respect to Syria, their positions on the recent coup in Egypt are diametrically opposed, with the former favouring the coup and the latter condemning it.

Argentina, meanwhile, is still smarting from the Falklands/Malvinas war and has expressed solidarity with Spain in the latter's spat with the UK over Gibraltar.

And Brazil and Indonesia, though not engaged in any particularly acute tension with specific G20 members, can nevertheless be deemed to be economically hostile to the collective membership and spirit of the G20 by espousing increasingly protectionist policies.

This leaves only four G20 members – Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Australia – that, at the moment, would appear to be at peace with their peers.

What concrete and constructive outcome can be hoped for in St Petersburg? Probably nothing, so expectations should be very low.

Should the G20 then be scrapped? Probably not. To quote from the famous quip attributed to Winston Churchill: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war".

Of course jaw-jaw does not necessarily prevent war. There was a lot of jaw-jawing in the 1930s, yet a truly calamitous global war still broke out.

After World War Two there was a great deal of institutional development and innovation in global governance.

While these structures served the world well for over half a century, the transformative new global realities require profound reform of global governance institutions.

One must seek to ensure that this process of reform, unlike in the 20th century, will take place before rather than after the outbreak of a cataclysm.

For that reason alone, jaw-jawing at G20 summits must continue. But one must also hope fervently that the pattern of the 1930s will not be repeated and that, sooner rather than later, discourse will be substantive and outcomes constructive and effective.

 - Fin24

*Jean-Pierre Lehmann is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at IMD and Founder of The Evian Group at IMD. Views expressed are his own.

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