Despite a string of various assessments voiced by various politicians and experts of the recent G20 summit in Hamburg, with all of its shortcomings and drawbacks, what we’re in witnessing is a pretty impressive unity of world leaders. More than two thirds of the world’s population live in the countries represented by the countries participating in the G20 that account for up to 85% world’s GDP and 75% of world’s trade. The G20 has enough legitimacy to play the role of a mediator that makes decisions on the future vectors of international processes.
The multipolar nature of the G20 allows its members to introduce at least some order in the complex developments that are taking place across the world, the world that faces major economic and political challenges on the monthly basis. If there is at least some chance that the globalization will be beneficial for every human being on the planet, this goal can only be achieved through repeated G20 meetings.
Therefore, it hardly surprising that a special attention was paid to the results of the recent G20 summit, along with the behavior and declarations voiced at the summit by the representatives of world’s leading powers, especially the United States. This is why the isolationist approach shown by Donald Trump at this meeting attracted everyone’s attention, leading some observers into noting that the G-20 summit has turned into a G19 meeting.
Strangely enough, the contemptuous disregard shown to the G20 and the multipolar community shown by Donald Trump is being shared by Western warmongers, while they remain confused at what ideals, goals and principles they are allegedly defending.
The US role at the G20 summit, a forum of the world’s most powerful economies that Washington once dominated, is somewhat consistent with what Trump sees as his mandate for a nationalistic, “America first” foreign policy.
As it’s been noted by the CNN, international players are now forced to deal with a capricious American President keen to redefine the West in his own nationalist image, who goes against multilateral international politics.
The blind determination with which Trump tried to escape any climate change obligations along with repeated attempts to reserve the US right to introduce protectionist measures have almost jeopardized the signing of the final communiqué. Unfortunately, the US president has once again shown that he couldn’t care less about the global agenda, while making contradicting statements about what the US seeks to achieve.
In fact, this modern American isolationism professed by Trump became obvious in Poland before the G20 summit, where the President who has tried to impose a ban on travel by residents of six predominantly Muslim nations to the US, and halted refugee admittances, voiced his critique of European leaders who have permitted Muslim immigration crisis which, he believes, has threatened the so-called “Western values”.
On top of all, at the end of the meeting in Hamburg, Trump declined to give a traditional end-of-summit press conference, leaving it to leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron to give their take on developments with no push-back from the US side.
The broad language appeared to of the final communique seems to be an attempt to show that Washington is somehow still in the same boat with the G20, even though leaders recognize there are broad differences of approach.
It’s been noted that Washington’s step back has left other nations, especially Germany under veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel, to take up the banner of traditional Western leadership — a stunning scenario given Washington’s decades-long role as a leading global player.
In spite of the isolationist approach that Trump has shown to the world, the remaining 19 players seem to be determined to find a way to approach today’s most pressing problems, while establishing new forms of world’s governance. No matter how hard the US President would dream about creating his own little G1, the world will carry on addressing the critical challenges it faces without the US.
It is also clear that there are sharp differences emerging on what exactly the West, the block of liberal and democratic nations that have dominated global politics since World War II, should stand for. However, the time we still have to prepare for future challenges the world must spend in active work instead of careless waiting of the capricious of the US President, since it may be easier to address certain issues without the dominant grip of Washington, which seems to be more interested in advancing its own interests instead of dealing with the issues at hand.