https://sputnikglobe.com/20230909/is-the-g20-obsolete-in-an-increasingly-multipolar-world-1113206820.html

Is the G20 Obsolete in an Increasingly Multipolar World?

Is the G20 Obsolete in an Increasingly Multipolar World?

Sputnik International

You can count the number of cases in which Western governments have been genuinely interested in Africa’s wellbeing on the fingers of one hand. However, the sharp drop of Western influence on the continent is forcing former colonial powers to try rebranding themselves.

2023-09-09T04:00+0000

2023-09-09T04:00+0000

2023-09-09T09:19+0000

g20

world

brics summit 2023

russia

china

european union (eu)

african union (au)

financial crisis

multipolar world

sergey lavrov

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The first step in this rebranding can be seen at the upcoming G20 Summit in New Delhi, which will see the African Union admitted as a permanent member of the organization – on a par with the European Union. Will that be enough to heal old wounds? Probably not, especially considering that the G20 meeting takes place after last month’s historic BRICS Summit in South Africa. The event brought together countries from across the Global South and announced the admission of six new members into BRICS, including two African countries - Egypt and Ethiopia. Hard to see how the G20 tops that.It turns out that Western-centric groups are beginning to cede global leadership to the multipolar world organizations, mostly led by Russia, China and India. Is this trend taking over the politics of the G20? And what are the prospects for the G20 in a future world stage?Summit Without Putin or XiThe G20 Summit in New Delhi will take place without the leaders of Russia and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will head the Russian delegation, while Premier Li Qiang will head the Chinese one. As both leaders were among the main actors of the recent BRICS Summit, this turn of events may be regarded as a bad omen for the upcoming summit. Although Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted that Putin and Xi did not coordinate the refusal to attend the New Delhi Summit, the absence of these two leaders will be extremely significant.Tony Kevin, former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia and former career officer of the Australian Foreign Ministry, as well as the author of two books on Russia, ‘Return to Moscow’ (2017) and ‘Russia and the West’ (2019), highlighted to Sputnik that “the Russian President Putin and the Chinese President Xi have both sent a very clear signal by not attending the meeting."In turn, Dr. Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, claimed that the decision of the leaders of Russia and China not to attend the G20 "will indeed dampen the significance of this summit."Who Created the G20?The G20 originated in the late 1990s when Asian countries were in the grip of a massive financial crisis. The West did not know how to react to it. Then, the G7 finance ministers, at a conference in Berlin in 1999, officially took the initiative to expand the circle of countries to discuss financial policy issues by inviting a number of large states, without which it was impossible to solve global economic challenges. However, the finance ministers of the United States and Canada primarily made the decision on which countries would join the G20.In other words, the collective West, led by the United States and Canada, created a group of countries that would face global challenges. And they were supposed to do this in the interests of the West.Initially, the G20 was called upon to discuss world economic problems - India has reminded its partners of this several times during preparation for the upcoming summit. But for several years now, the West has been trying to push through political issues on the platform. This became especially noticeable during the 2022 summit on the Indonesian Bali Island.Perhaps the most sensitive point was the West's desire to discuss the Ukrainian issue at the summit. Thus, it was in 2022 when the Russian special military operation was nevertheless mentioned in the G20 final declaration. This year, India has refused Ukrainian President Zelensky the right to participate in the summit, despite calls from Western countries. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Russia will not agree to accept the upcoming G20 summit’s declaration if it ignores Russia's stance on global crises.Clash of Civilizations?However, not only the Ukrainian issue may become a bone of contention this year. There is a great deal of points that Western and non-Western countries look at from diametrically opposed angles. There is a high risk that the New Delhi summit will turn into a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations to some extent.He also noted that the main problem is “Western arrogance”:Moreover, the Australian ambassador supposed that “there is a very real fear that the Western powers led by the US are going to try to manipulate the meeting to produce language intended to be unpleasant for Russia and China."Decline of the Old International Relations SystemThe problems experienced by the G20 may seem to be a consequence of changes in the system of international relations. It is obvious that the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations, which was created at the end of the Second World War, finally went to the dustbin of history with the start of the Russian special military operation and the subsequent shifts in world geopolitics.Hence, old international institutions, which were predominantly oriented towards the West, should gradually fade into the background and lose influence. All the last events point to the fact that the G20 is going to be one of them.According to Kevin’s point of view, G20 as a concept is rapidly being overtaken by the very developments over the last few months in building genuine multipolarity.In turn, the G20 status and its significance have diminished in recent years, pointed out Dr Baohui.The G20's ReplacementTherefore, the world order is changing; the old international institutions are fading into the background. And which ones will lead in the nearest future?It seems that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already given the answer to this question.Apparently, we saw this trend at this year's SCO and BRICS summits: both organizations continue to expand rapidly, gaining both economic and geopolitical weight on the world stage.Nevertheless, Kevin suggested that the G20 still has a chance for a second wind.For this, the G20 will still have to take some example from the development system of the multipolar world organizations. Whether the notorious “Western arrogance” will allow this to be done - time will tell.

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