Six of the G7 countries are members of NATO, while the seventh, Japan, is dependent on its defence on the United States. All, including Japan, can be broadly classified as the West. If the narrative in recent years has been that political and economic power has decisively shifted towards Asia and the West no longer dominates the world as it did traditionally, that recognition seems to be missing from the inordinately long communiqué that the G7 summit in Germany has issued. It is imperial in tone, carrying a sense that the G7 has the power to decide and dispense.
After the 2008 financial crisis the G7 led by the US felt the need to enlist the cooperation of major economic powers outside the West to stabilise the global financial system through coordination of national policies. Besides India, China, the second largest economy, was included in a G20, which was raised from the existing Finance Minister to Summit level. Today, China is treated as an adversary, and the harshness of G7 communiqué on China on the trade front as well as on human rights, means that the G20 format can no longer serve the US agenda as before. The G20 summit will be held in Indonesia this year but its cooperative core has already been eroded, including with the loose talk to expel Russia from G20, as it was from the G8 earlier, and the West collectively withdrawing its MFN status.
Even if expulsion can only be done with consensus, these developments bode ill for G20’s future and India’s role in it. Ukraine has been invited to the summit as a counter to President Vladimir Putin’s presence, if he eventually attends. The aim is not only to provide President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a stage for his well-rehearsed performances, but to promote an engineered narrative that the West is not responsible for the spike in oil prices, food and fertiliser shortages, disruption of supply chains and global inflationary trends by weaponising finance, imposing energy bans and prosecuting an open proxy war against Russia. It is supposedly all Russia’s fault, which shows either how much the West has fallen prey to its own propaganda or its confidence that it can control the narrative as it likes, and even if it is contested it does not really matter as the rest of the world is not in a position to develop a counter-narrative with global reach.
To say that at a time when the world is threatened by division and shocks the G7 stand united, is to ignore the role of the West itself in administering repeated shocks to the international system with military interventions and regime change policies. We see how the “rules-based multilateral order” which the communiqué invokes has been violated by the kind of sanctions imposed on Russia and unwillingness to accept responsibility for their punishing secondary consequences for the developing countries.
Apart from a lengthy stand-alone statement on Ukraine which excludes any compromise or the need to explore a diplomatic solution, besides completely ignoring that the views of large sections of the international community that do not concord with those of G7, the communiqué itself imputes directly or by insinuation Russia’s aggression against Ukraine for the gamut of problems facing the international community.
The obsession with Russia is such that in the paragraphs relating to climate change, energy, just transition, global economy and finance, aggravated impact of Covid-19, trade and supply chains, employment, foreign and security policy, food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, non-proliferation, the existence of 100 million refugees, Afghanistan, war on women and girl rights, illicit finance, trafficking in human beings, sexual and labour exploitation, kleptocracies undermining democracies, digitalisation, Russia’s war on Ukraine is brought in one way or another. Russia’s information war is decried whereas the world is experiencing the effectiveness of the West’s information war against Russia that includes the banning of Russian media in Europe and elsewhere.
G7 is seeking to rope in the rest of the world in its revived Cold War agenda against Russia. While during the Cold War the US felt the need to accommodate the Soviet Union on some fronts, treat it as an equal on security issues and avoiding a direct open conflict with it was a strategic choice, after the Soviet collapse Russia ceased to be treated as an equal and the security architecture was progressively altered in favour of the US with the relentless expansion on NATO and the repudiation of the ABM and the INF Treaties.
Today, the US seems less inhibited in taking grave risks by declaring an economic war against Russia, with the proxy wars of the Cold War era in distant geographies now being fought on Russia’s doors. Russia’s leader is being treated as a war criminal for the kind of military aggression which the West has committed several times itself, with less justification in purely security terms. For the communiqué to say that G7 is ready to “reach arrangements together with interested countries and institutions and Ukraine on sustained security commitments to help Ukraine defend itself” raises the question about which countries other than those already in the West’s fold are being considered.
For the communique to talk of “supporting Ukrainian reconstruction through an international reconstruction conference and plan drawn up by Ukraine” without a plan for peace is not only premature but a reversal of priorities. Imposing “severe and enduring costs on Russia to help bring an end to this war” is not a realistic approach. It has not worked elsewhere in the world and, besides that, it implies that the rest of the world will continue to be punished in the bargain.
It is not Russia’s aggression alone that is impeding global recovery; equally, it is the energy sanctions and their fallout that are responsible for this. Energy supplies to Europe have been disrupted not for economic reasons but geopolitical ones, and price caps are unlikely to work. It is not clear how the G7 “commitment to phase out dependency on Russian energy, without compromising on our climate and environmental goals” is a workable proposition with the German decision to temporarily reopen its coal fired plants and Europe preferring to reject Russian gas for import LNG through tankers across the Atlantic. How will “the goal of accelerating the phase-out of domestic unabated coal power” be achieved?
To blame “hunger and malnutrition” to “Russia’s weaponisation of grain” is pure propaganda. Russia is a far bigger exporter of grains than Ukraine, but because of financial and port sanctions it cannot export freely. Ironically, India cannot export from its MSP stocks even to the WFP because WTO’s approval is needed and is not forthcoming. Western companies are also cornering available grain for hoarding and speculation, which is why India has banned exports of grains by private Indian traders.
Making “progress towards an equitable world” hardly seems to be the leitmotif of the G7 summit. The invitation to India, Indonesia, Senegal, Vietnam and South Africa should not cloud the reality that the world is seeing a new phase of unilateralism, this time not of the US alone but of the transatlantic alliance. The first phase of unilateralism was opposed even by some European countries. It gave birth to the Russia-India-China dialogue and BRIC (and BRICS subsequently) focused on multi-polarity and a non-Western vision of global governance.
Today the fracturing of the world is deeper, with Russia and China deepening their strategic ties under US pressure. The colour given by the West to this phenomenon as one pitting democracies and autocracies is self-serving propaganda. China was built up by the West when it was an autocracy, which it still is, and Russia was opposed as one. The driving force was geopolitics and economics, not democracy.
India should look upon its participation in the G7 meeting realistically. It is not a favour. With the new fractures in global polity building up, the challenges to Western power will grow. This gives India space to manoeuvre, without having to choose sides, although the weightage we give to various forums in our national interest can be different.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two interventions at Eylau were thoughtful. Recognising that the G7 meeting was taking place amid an atmosphere of global tension, he emphasised the path of dialogue and diplomacy, reiterating India’s position. He reminded his interlocutors that the impact of this tension is not limited to Europe, noted that the rising prices of energy and food grains were putting at risk the interests of the developing countries, and in that context mentioned India’s supply of food grains to many needy countries. A far cry from the times when India was surviving on US food aid! He stressed on availability of fertilisers and invited the G7 countries to cooperate in increased production of fertilisers in India for the food security of G7 countries!
His remarks at the session on climate energy and health were equally apt, reminding G7 of India’s role, capacities and its huge market for clean energy technologies, as well as the scale that India can provide for every new technology to make technology affordable for the whole world. This is in line with his policy of positioning India as a constructive world leader on climate change and health issues.
Kanwal Sibal is former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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