{"id":73860,"date":"2022-07-15T11:00:34","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T01:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73860"},"modified":"2022-07-15T13:12:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T03:12:41","slug":"g20-foreign-ministers-meeting-almost-pointlessness-but-irreplaceable-in-the-margins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/g20-foreign-ministers-meeting-almost-pointlessness-but-irreplaceable-in-the-margins\/","title":{"rendered":"G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting: almost pointlessness but irreplaceable in the margins"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting on 8 July in Bali was almost certainly a harbinger of the G20 leaders\u2019 meeting scheduled for later this year, and a graphic illustration of why the G20 in the current circumstances is both teetering on the brink of pointlessness and incidentally irreplaceable.<\/p>\n

Ending without a joint communiqu\u00e9 and group photo, the central meeting sent two clear messages. The world will lose nothing by G20 members not boycotting the event. But nor will it likely gain anything from a meeting bound to be marked by bitter disharmony and drama. Not even a communiqu\u00e9. Or a photo.<\/p>\n

On that measure, the Bali meeting was a failure. That wasn\u2019t Indonesia\u2019s fault. No host could have done any better at cushioning the clash of values and interests currently defining relations among the G20\u2019s members, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s attack on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The meeting just made that clash more graphic. Just like at the G20 finance ministers\u2019 meeting in Washington in April, a protest walkout took place. But this time the walker was Russia\u2019s Sergei Lavrov, professing his indignation at Western ministers\u2019 \u2018frenzied\u2019 condemnations of his country\u2019s behaviour as that of \u2018aggressors, invaders, occupiers\u2019. Evidently the truth hurt.<\/p>\n

Not content with one theatrical, fuming march from the room, Lavrov reportedly also left the premises just before Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, addressed the room virtually as a special guest.<\/p>\n

Not that Lavrov enjoyed a monopoly on such moves. Unwilling to sit anywhere near him, G7 ministers had absented themselves from a welcome dinner held the night before that he had happily attended. This time the condemnation came from the walker himself<\/a>, who chided his erstwhile G8 counterparts for their bad manners. \u2018This,\u2019 tut-tutted the minister whose troops are firing missiles into schools, residential buildings and shopping malls, \u2018is how they understand protocol, politeness and code of conduct.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pressed for her reaction to her G7 counterparts\u2019 manners, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi was more interested in underscoring her intention of ensuring her guests\u2019 comfort. \u2018We are trying to create a comfortable situation for all,\u2019 she insisted, adding that she understood \u2018the situation because once again, everyone has to feel comfortable\u2019.<\/p>\n

How comfortable Marsudi was with her Russian guest\u2019s behaviour, however, can only be the subject of speculation. But presumably she would at least have been nonplussed by Lavrov\u2019s absence from plenary discussions on the food price inflation and insecurity caused by Russia\u2019s invasion and blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, as German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has disclosed.<\/p>\n

After all, she and her president, Joko Widodo, had visited Moscow less than a fortnight earlier not only ostensibly to persuade Putin to give peace a chance but also to allow Ukrainian wheat to make its way to a hungry world, including millions of noodle-loving Indonesians. That her other guests were so determined to stress that Russia had stopped neither its brutality nor its blockade despite Widodo\u2019s \u2018peace mission\u2019 must have sat uncomfortably with Lavrov\u2019s assertion<\/a> in his own speech that Russia would \u2018continue to make a significant contribution to ensuring access to food and energy resources\u2019\u2014presumably by shipping more of its own wheat and what it\u2019s allegedly stolen from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

According to the Russian news agency TASS<\/a>, however, Lavrov enjoyed the sympathy and support of his country\u2019s other G20 partners. Russia\u2019s foreign ministry issued a statement dutifully conveyed by TASS claiming that there had been \u2018sober assessments of the objective causes\u2019 of the prevailing global economic shocks that were principally the fault of \u2018the West\u2019, and that \u2018many partners gave a clear signal that it\u2019s unacceptable to isolate Russia\u2019. The same source indicated widespread support for Russia\u2019s contention that \u2018a polycentric structure of the world order and the democratization of global governance\u2019 were necessary, along with \u2018a broader engagement of dialogue on multilateral platforms to solve the problems of developing countries\u2019.<\/p>\n

Lavrov no doubt emphasised Western culpability for all these problems, Russia\u2019s credentials as the developing world\u2019s champion, and the advantages of \u2018polycentricity\u2019 in his meetings with \u2018counterparts from Asia, Africa and Latin America\u2019 on the event\u2019s margins. How many actually bought such self-serving misdirection remains unknown, but it probably registered sweetly in the ears of those most inclined to cast international affairs in a similar, doctrinal light, including a few among Marsudi\u2019s own lieutenants in Indonesia\u2019s foreign ministry.<\/p>\n

Others also took full advantage of the opportunity for sideline meetings, not least both the United States and China. Their own bilateral meetings, judging by official US statements, were both extensive in their subject matter and \u2018candid\u2019. But subsequent critical remarks from each about the other suggest that however welcome their meeting was as an avenue for discussing opportunities for more bilateral cooperation on such matters as climate change, global health and food security, their divisions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, among other issues, remain as deep and entrenched as ever.<\/p>\n

For different reasons, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi\u2019s meeting with Widodo<\/a> on 11 July in Jakarta was almost as significant if far less candid. Besides expressing China\u2019s appreciation for Indonesia\u2019s able and \u2018wise\u2019 chairing of the G20, as Marsudi explained to Indonesia\u2019s media, Wang praised Widodo\u2019s peace mission to Ukraine and Russia. The pair also discussed a raft of bilateral commercial and health sector issues, as well as progress on projects partially funded under China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative, including the controversial and troubled Jakarta\u2013Bandung high-speed railway project.<\/p>\n

From an Australian perspective, Foreign Minister Penny Wong\u2019s sideline meeting with Wang in Bali was another welcome development, if merely a first, tentative step in the direction towards a relationship restored at least to a level that China has with most other liberal democracies.<\/p>\n

The Bali meeting also afforded an opportunity to stage a meeting of MIKTA, the grouping of Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey and Australia, on the margins. According to the Mexican foreign ministry<\/a>, the participants discussed the war in Ukraine and \u2018mechanisms to assure the availability of, and trade in, grains and fertilizer, along with the theme of migration\u2019.<\/p>\n

What good this side meeting achieved remains to be revealed. But if the original rationale for MIKTA was the unique role that these non-G7, non-BRICS countries collectively might create for themselves in conceiving and steering solutions to critical global issues in the context of the inherent tensions arising from the G20\u2019s eclectic mix of political systems and developed and emerging economies, the need for actually doing that has surely never been more urgent.<\/p>\n

Hopefully such a disparate minilateral grouping can rise to the challenge. Its members should try. Doing so would help preserve the G20\u2019s credibility, and that\u2019s in all their interests. But it\u2019s easy to be sceptical that it can. It\u2019s even easier to predict that it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The Bali meeting would therefore appear to have been more valuable for what happened around it than within it. That may well be the same story come November when the leaders gather and hold their own bilaterals on the margins.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not enough to give a ringing endorsement for a body whose achievements, thanks to its widening internal divisions, have been few in recent times and risk being non-existent this time. It may not be enough to dispel whatever doubts have arisen and strengthened in capitals about the G20\u2019s worth\u2014doubts that in some were there from the beginning.<\/p>\n

But given the dire, disorderly state of international affairs today, its marginal meetings should probably be reason enough even for the major powers to persist with it until such time as conditions are more conducive for the constructive cooperation that marked the G20\u2019s earliest years\u2014a moment that seems inconceivable so long as Putin reigns in the Kremlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting on 8 July in Bali was almost certainly a harbinger of the G20 leaders\u2019 meeting scheduled for later this year, and a graphic illustration of why the G20 in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1241,"featured_media":73861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[285,672,8],"class_list":["post-73860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-foreign-policy","tag-g20","tag-indonesia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nG20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting: almost pointlessness but irreplaceable in the margins | 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\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/g20-foreign-ministers-meeting-almost-pointlessness-but-irreplaceable-in-the-margins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting: almost pointlessness but irreplaceable in the margins | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting on 8 July in Bali was almost certainly a harbinger of the G20 leaders\u2019 meeting scheduled for later this year, and a graphic illustration of why the G20 in the ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/g20-foreign-ministers-meeting-almost-pointlessness-but-irreplaceable-in-the-margins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-07-15T01:00:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-07-15T03:12:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/GettyImages-1241767499.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"665\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Engel\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"David Engel\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/g20-foreign-ministers-meeting-almost-pointlessness-but-irreplaceable-in-the-margins\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/GettyImages-1241767499.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/GettyImages-1241767499.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":665,\"caption\":\"08 July 2022, Indonesia, Nusa Dua: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives at the G20 Foreign Ministers Summit in Indonesia and will be received by Retno Marsudi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia. 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