G20: Greatest show on earth
There is a feast of “virtual” global diplomacy this month, with three major summits. While the BRICS and APEC leadership events are eye-catching, it is the
G20 that will steal the show in terms of overall importance.
First, just look at the cast list. World leaders will attend from Saudi Arabia (this year’s hosts), China, Germany, India, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Russia, Brazil, the UK, South Africa, Turkey, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Argentina, Mexico, the EU, and presumably the US too unless Donald Trump has a post-election temper tantrum. Collectively, these powers account for about 90 percent of global GDP, 80 percent of world trade and 66 percent of the global population.
Second, this month’s event, amid the most serious global crisis since the international financial shock of just over a decade ago, has the potential to be the most important G20 since the 2009 meeting in London. Then, with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the chair, the G20 coordinated a $1 trillion stimulus package to rescue the international economy. A third reason for the G20 event’s importance is that, given the reduced emphasis on the G7 this year with the US in the chair, there has been a vacuum at the heart of global diplomacy. Trump wanted to convene an in-person G7 event, but that was foiled by the pandemic and no alternative “virtual” 2020 event has been announced.
While the G20 summit therefore has much importance, a key challenge will be forging consensus around a powerful package of measures to tackle the pandemic. To be sure, some steps have already been taken. The G20 has committed to do “whatever it takes” to minimize the economic and social damage from the coronavirus crisis, restore global growth, maintain market stability, and strengthen resilience. It also agreed to assess gaps in pandemic preparedness and increase funding for research and development in funding for vaccines and medicines.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged G20 leaders to unite to find joint solutions to the pandemic and “ignite a new global movement” to ensure it never happens again. He told them: “You have to come together to confront the defining health crisis of our time. We are at war with a virus that threatens to tear us apart — if we let it.”
As the pandemic affects virtually every nation across the globe, there are worries by states outside the G20 about the club’s composition, which was originally selected in the late 1990s by the US along with G7 colleagues. Former Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr
Store has argued that it undermines the UN’s universal sense of multilateralism.
This issue was also picked up by Brown, in the context of the coronavirus. He has urged the G20 and the UN to work much more closely together to tackle the pandemic.
Nevertheless, while the G20 is imperfect and has not yet lived up to some of the expectations of it, it continues to be a forum highly prized by its members, as the Saudi-hosted session will show.