{"id":56403,"date":"2020-06-04T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=56403"},"modified":"2020-06-03T21:55:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T11:55:14","slug":"trumps-expanded-g7-could-be-good-for-australia-but-bad-for-multilateralism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/trumps-expanded-g7-could-be-good-for-australia-but-bad-for-multilateralism\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s expanded G7 could be good for Australia but bad for multilateralism"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

US President Donald Trump\u2019s suggestion to reporters aboard Air Force One on the weekend that this year\u2019s G7 meeting be expanded to include Russia, India, South Korea and Australia appears to be more than a presidential thought bubble.<\/p>\n

The media has reported<\/a> that Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been consulted over the initiative and is eager to participate.<\/p>\n

The obvious interpretation of the US president\u2019s invitation list is that it was designed as a snub to China, which is the major economic power conspicuously not included.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also an affront to the G20, which describes itself as \u2018the premier forum for international economic cooperation\u2019 and includes all of Trump\u2019s invitees, plus China and the six most significant emerging economies.<\/p>\n

As host of this year\u2019s G7 meeting, Trump can invite whomever he wants. Last year\u2019s host, French President Emmanuel Macron, invited both Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his G7 summit in Biarritz.<\/p>\n

However, Trump\u2019s comments appeared to imply a permanent expansion to the G7, which he said was a \u2018very outdated group of countries\u2019, adding that he didn\u2019t think it \u2018properly represents what\u2019s going on in the world\u2019. He suggested it should be a G10 or G11.<\/p>\n

Expanding the G7\u2019s membership was considered in late 2008 and early 2009 as its members grappled with coordinating a global response to the financial crisis. France\u2019s Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy\u2019s Silvio Berlusconi were adamant that the G20, which had been established as a finance ministers\u2019 forum in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, was not up to the job.<\/p>\n

They urged a G14 or G15 that would include Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea, but not Australia. The G20 also included Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which were smaller economies but were important for the global financial system.<\/p>\n

Furious lobbying by then prime minister Kevin Rudd, particularly of US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, won the day for the G20. It was elevated to a leaders\u2019 forum, with Rudd arguing that, alongside the other emerging nations, China would be more responsible and accountable than would be the case if its membership were simply tacked on to an essentially Atlantic institution.<\/p>\n

The G20\u2019s achievements during the financial crisis can be overstated: countries broadly pursued their own interests rather than the common global good in stimulating their economies, and their promises to eschew the protectionism that had deepened the 1930s depression were widely disregarded.<\/p>\n

Since the crisis, the most ambitious attempt to use the G20 to stimulate the global economy came with Australia\u2019s chairmanship in 2014 when members committed to structural reforms to boost economic growth. Again, the promises weren\u2019t kept and monitoring of their performance was ultimately abandoned.<\/p>\n

A virtual meeting of G20 leaders in March promised to \u2018do whatever it takes\u2019 to respond to the Covid-19 crisis but failed to include any concrete steps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A meeting of G20 finance ministers held alongside the International Monetary Fund\/World Bank meetings in April suspended US$11 billion in sovereign debt repayments for the poorest countries through to the end of this year, but there was criticism that this fell short<\/a> of what was needed.<\/p>\n

That agreement included China offering debt relief for the first time. China has also donated to an IMF-sponsored US$17 billion increase in the fund\u2019s poverty relief and growth trust, which has also won support from Japan, the UK, France, Spain, Canada and Australia, although not the United States.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the major contribution of G20 summits has been to provide an opportunity for meetings of major leaders on the sidelines that have brokered deals on issues of significance, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s initiative at the 2012 Mexico summit on Syria\u2019s chemical weapons that forestalled military action by US President Barack Obama. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping used the G20 summits in Buenos Aires in 2017 and in Osaka last year to broker temporary truces in their trade war.<\/p>\n

In an election year, the Trump administration has no desire for truces and is only interested in international summits to pursue its agenda against China.<\/p>\n

A virtual meeting of G7 foreign ministers held alongside the G20 summit in March concluded without a statement because US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sign anything that didn\u2019t refer to the \u2018Wuhan virus<\/a>\u2019,\u00a0while a meeting of G20 health ministers in April broke down due to bickering<\/a> between the US and China over the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s far from certain that this year\u2019s G7 meeting will take place. It was originally scheduled for this month, but Trump wanted a physical meeting, not a video link, and decided to postpone it after Merkel said she wouldn\u2019t fly to the US. He said at the weekend it could be held in September but may also be postponed until after the US election on 3 November. The G20 summit is scheduled for 21 November in the Saudi capital Riyadh.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that the European G7 members, France, Germany and Italy, would oppose Trump\u2019s proposed expansion of its permanent membership, notwithstanding their stance in 2008\u201309, as they don\u2019t share the US desire to isolate China and would see the expansion as diluting European influence. England and Canada have already declared their opposition to Trump\u2019s proposed invitation to Russia to rejoin the group, from which it was expelled in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea.<\/p>\n

It may be that a great era of summiteering, which was closely linked to globalisation, is drawing to a close. Australia had a hand in the formation of APEC in 1989 and its elevation as an annual leaders\u2019 summit from 1993. As well as its role in cementing the G20 as a leaders\u2019 summit in 2009, Australia, under Rudd, was also instrumental in expanding the East Asia Summit to include the leaders of Russia and the US in 2011, to ensure there was a forum for all major powers with a stake in Asia\u2019s future to come together.<\/p>\n

Trump skipped the 2018 APEC summit and last year\u2019s meeting was cancelled due to unrest in the host country, Chile. He has not attended East Asia Summit meetings and may now be cooling on the G20. There\u2019s no shared vision on the future composition or mission of the G7.<\/p>\n

As a geographically isolated nation with a small population and economy, Australia\u2019s national interest has always been served by the strengthening of global institutions that facilitate dialogue and the setting of rules for international commerce.<\/p>\n

Australia will always be the loser in a world where the exercise of power becomes the dominant medium for international relations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump\u2019s suggestion to reporters aboard Air Force One on the weekend that this year\u2019s G7 meeting be expanded to include Russia, India, South Korea and Australia appears to be more than a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":955,"featured_media":56405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1428,672,1296,467],"class_list":["post-56403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-donald-trump","tag-g20","tag-g7","tag-multilateralism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s expanded G7 could be good for Australia but bad for multilateralism | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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