The G7 summit starting today in Italy will be the 50th anniversary, but the leaders of the Western world have nothing to celebrate, and the mood is not festive. And for both domestic and global reasons: the crisis of power is worsening in most of the participating countries, and the international situation is becoming increasingly unfavourable for the “world’s leading democracies”. And the main thing is that there is no one to blame for this but themselves.
Although Western leaders themselves naturally do not agree with this: they have the main culprit of the global turbulence – Russia. For the third consecutive G7 meeting, the focus will be on “Russian aggression against Ukraine” and its consequences. It’s business as usual – agreeing on new sanctions and new aid packages for Kiev, and increasingly clear threats to “China helping Moscow”. Nothing fundamentally new compared to last year? In principle yes, but the attitude towards the West in the world has deteriorated over the past year – and this is not the merit of Moscow and Beijing (although they are working on it), but of the West itself: the Israeli operation against Gaza has acquired the character of genocide and exposed all the duplicity of the “advanced democracies”, their “concern” for human lives and their calls to “unite the whole world against the aggressor”. The Global South openly rebukes the West for its double standards and indulgence of Netanyahu, and laughs at all attempts to paint Putin as a murderer and Netanyahu as a fighter against terrorism. The West has already failed to lure the Global South into an anti-Russian coalition, and amid what is happening in Gaza, calls to “help Zelenskyy” remain unanswered.
This is why the so-called “peace summit” in Switzerland, scheduled immediately after the G7 meeting, is actually failing – only half of the invited 160 countries will come, most of them from Europe and the collective West (Australia, Canada, etc.). But even among those who have agreed to attend, only half will be represented at the summit, meaning there will be no leaders from the Global South. Although a record number of key Southern countries have been invited to Italy for the G7 itself – and some will even attend – none of them are going to Switzerland. Italian Prime Minister Meloni has invited the leaders of a dozen non-Western countries to Puglia – including six G-20 leaders at once. If all of them had come, the G7 summit would have been virtually a meeting of two-thirds of the G20. After all, the Western club includes not seven but eight members of the G20, including the President of the European Council. And the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Africa were invited – so 14 of the 20 major world leaders would have gathered in Italy. Who wouldn’t be there? First of all, Putin and Xi Jinping, as well as the leaders of South Korea, Australia, Mexico and Indonesia.
However, Saudi Prince Mohammed and South African President Ramaphosa will not come to Italy, so the representation of key countries of the Global South will be limited to Miley, Lula and Modi (Erdogan, as the leader of a NATO member country, is hard to classify unequivocally as non-Western). It is clear that the leaders of Brazil and India are of the greatest interest to the West – both countries are members of BRICS, and they would very much like to be involved at least in some way in pressurising Russia. But two very experienced politicians like Lula and Modi are definitely not going to play along with Atlanticist plans.
But the main participants of the summit, i.e. Western presidents and prime ministers themselves, although they will talk about Russia and Ukraine, China, Israel and the Palestinians, will be thinking more and more about their own problems. And to estimate who they will see a year from now at the meeting in Canada. So far, it is clear that Rishi Sunak will definitely not be among them – in three weeks’ time his party will lose the parliamentary elections and he will resign as prime minister. Charles Michel, President of the European Council (“President of Europe”), will also leave this year. The chances of Joe Biden’s imminent retirement are also high – and the mere thought of it scares most of his G7 partners. In early July, Macron’s position is likely to weaken significantly – his adventure with early parliamentary elections may bring a Eurosceptic government to power. The seat under Scholz is wobbling – but even if the coalition does not break up this year, the next elections are scheduled for next autumn. At the same time they will be held in Canada and Japan – that is, of all the “G7” can more or less confidently make plans for the next couple of years only the hostess of the meeting, Giorgia Meloni. Although this confidence is very relative: the phrase “Italian domestic political stability” is suitable only for an anecdote.
“The G7 was created half a century ago to better manage and coordinate within the Western world – and to strengthen its position in the non-Western world. The then parallel “world of socialism” disappeared from the world stage a decade and a half later, and the illusion of the G7’s almost omnipotence emerged, but several global centres of power have grown and are in the process of being formed. The West-centred world is becoming a thing of the past – and the only question is the speed and costs (for everyone else) of this process.
Petr Akopov, RIA