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Since his election as President of the United States, Joe Biden has not missed an opportunity to announce that “America is back”. The underlying message from the G7 summit just concluded in Cornwall could be summed up as “the west is back”. The goal of the gathered leaders was to show unity, purpose, and leadership in tackling the problems of the world and reaching out to the world at large.
This was the first meeting of the G7 nations summit – the US, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Canada and Italy – since the outbreak of the pandemic and the defeat of Donald Trump. But while the leaders gathered in Cornwall were shown a lot of ambition, the summit leaves behind big questions about whether the delivery of the G7 will coincide with its rhetoric.
This delivery issue builds on many of the major issues the G7 addressed, including vaccines, climate, and the effort to create an international infrastructure unit to rival China and the belt initiative.
In the case of vaccines, the G7 does promised to deliver one billion doses to the developing world in a year. But that number that sounds awesome may still be too small and too late. The World Health Organization has dit the world needs 11 billion vaccines to effectively fight Covid-19. And a release that can take 18 months will mean many more deaths and a long time for new vaccine-resistant strains of the virus to develop.
Competition with China was the underlying theme of much of the G7 summit. But the Chinese government is likely to promise more vaccines in the world at large than the G7. However, doubts about the efficiency of Chinese vaccines may mean that it is a mixed blessing.
The G7’s determination to back down against China’s growing global influence was most evident in the group’s support for a Western alternative to China’s belt and road initiative to build infrastructure around the developing world. The idea is that the Option G7 it will offer higher environmental standards and more transparency in lending and governance.
But it is also likely to offer much less money, a point at which the G7 statement becomes remarkably inaccurate. Meanwhile, Chinese banks and companies are already working hard on benchmark projects around the world, such as building a new capital of Egypt.
Beyond the announcements and headlines, there is the deepest question about the real union of the Western world in its decision to oppose Chinese power. Even on the margins of the G7, it was clear that the language used by the United States and Japan was noticeably stronger than the rhetoric of Europeans.
The four nations invited to join the G7 in Cornwall, particularly India and Australia, are clearly important to any effort to organize the democratic world to confront China. But speaking just before the G7 summit, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, stressed out the need for Europe to maintain its “independence when it comes to our strategy towards China.” That sentiment would be shared by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and even, to some extent, by Boris Johnson. An exasperated first official of an allied nation describes the British Prime Minister as “still wanting to have his cake and eat it in China”.
The G7 cannot avoid the reality that Chinese cooperation is essential to tackling climate change. What the assembled leaders tried to do in Cornwall was to provide leadership to the global effort. They announced ambitious plans to shut down polluting coal-fired power plants as soon as possible and to protect 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030. The official statement was inevitably a bit of a detail. But the suspicion remains that practical steps to achieve these goals may not be forthcoming.
After Cornwall, Biden’s next stop is a NATO summit in Brussels, followed by a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The G7 statement highlighted asking an investigation into the use of chemical weapons on Russian soil, in addition to condemning Russia’s tolerance of ransomware attacks launched from its soil. The hope is that Putin will be impressed by the Western signs of determination and unity in Cornwall and Brussels.
This year’s G7 summit certainly contrasted sharply with the Trump years, when the U.S. president seemed much more interested in igniting divisions with former allies than in showing unity. Even Johnson, Trump’s friend, was probably sincere when he described Biden as a “breath of fresh air” for the Western alliance.
Putin – and Chinese President Xi Jinping – will note that things have clearly changed in the Western alliance, with Trump leaving the White House. But will Russian and Chinese leaders be intimidated or punished? Maybe not yet.
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