Bollywood dances, music, glitter, razzmatazz, the beautification of New Delhi (which over several months rendered nearly 300,000 homeless), an invitation to the African Union to join the Group of Twenty, even beige scarves for every head of state and government in New Delhi’s excessive heat — India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had it all worked out.
Economist Ashoka Mody thinks India is broken. India’s rulers and mainstream analysts disagree. India is shining. Modi’s government, understandably, used the summit for marketing itself at home and abroad. Home is crucial because Modi’s BJP is eyeing a third straight win in next year’s national elections. There are also five state elections scheduled before that. The BJP lost four of the seven state by-elections just a day ahead of the G20 summit and is facing its most formidable challenge so far from INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), an alliance of 26 opposition parties led by the Congress.
Abroad is easier. India has an expanding market, its economy is growing at slightly upwards of 6%, it has an educated workforce, a developed digital ecosystem, 108 unicorns, is attracting foreign investment and being wooed by most. Diplomatically, it has also successfully played the role of Global South’s voice. And so far, it has balanced relations with Russia, the US and the EU through the war in Ukraine.
The United States (also the EU) needs India as it grapples with the war in Europe and peer competition with China, the world’s second largest economy and a G20 member-state. But just like Modi went into the summit on back of bad electoral news, the US President Joe Biden landed in Delhi with approval ratings at just 38%.
Whether one chooses to select facts in favour of shining India or broken India, G20, a multilateral grouping, is not about the strengths and weaknesses of individual member states but the forum itself. Put another way, highlighting India’s diplomacy does not mean much for the question about G20’s relevance.
Under Xi, China is asserting itself, not only diplomatically but also militarily. Its rise and its approaches in the South and East China Seas, as also its ambition to play on the world stage, imbricate with a nationalism that lives with the memory of China’s century of humiliation.
China’s President, Xi Jinping, decided to stay away from the summit for undisclosed reasons. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, was absent because of an ICC warrant for his arrest. Many Indian and American analysts have chosen to turn this around by arguing that Xi staying away from the G20 summit is a Xi problem, not a Biden-Modi problem. Ironically, this argument, whether one supports or rejects it, is a strong, though perhaps unwitting, signal of what’s now wrong with the G20 forum, a situation likely to exacerbate as geopolitics continues to weigh heavy on the grouping.
There’s a somewhat simple way of analysing the continued relevance or otherwise of G20: does the grouping retain its fidelity to the original objectives? G20 started in 1999 as an intergovernmental forum to discuss and coordinate economic policies among the world’s largest economies. The need for such a forum was felt after the July 1997 financial contagion that started from Thailand and spread to the entire southeast and right up to South Korea.
With currencies tumbling and foreign exchange reserves depleting, the slump sent shock waves across the Asian markets. The biggest concern was the spillover effect. Earlier, in 1994-95, experts had analysed the Mexican crisis that ripped through Latin America. The cascading effect, so the argument went, required coordination to offset future crises.
The idea birthed G20. The grouping was to serve as a forum for international economic cooperation. At that point the mandate was narrow, perhaps even realisable, if the grouping could pick up early warnings of trouble in member countries’ markets and fiscal policies. The Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the world’s twenty richest economies would come together to discuss global economic and financial issues and coordination strategies. Then came the 2007 financial crisis in the US. By 2009, the forum was upgraded. It became a gathering of heads of state and governments and was designated the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.”
How the G20 could have prevented America’s subprime mortgage crisis is of course another issue!
Somewhere along the line, however, G20’s scope was extended and it got involved “in shaping and strengthening global architecture and governance on all major international economic issues”. That, in and of itself, might not have been a problem. But while the richest economies were trying to prevent the recurrence of another financial contagion, something else was happening: realpolitik.
Cooperation requires working towards common goals. The various Leviathans have to come ashore, sit around the campfire and share the meals. No amount of deft diplomacy can help strengthen global architecture and governance if there’s no campfire and sharing of the meals.
Hobbes had argued that unless people got “themselves out from the miserable condition of warr (bellum omnium contra omnes)” and submit to a common “Power”, no one would be safe. The world cannot have a common “Power” but states, societies, organisations and groups have sought, even if not always successfully, to create mechanisms that use a combination of laws, norms and coercion to contain the selfish passions of the powerful in favour of cooperation.
To be precise, the world wasn’t Eden; nor has the serpent just appeared. External predations and internal conflicts have ravaged many states in the past two decades. But there was a sense that the era of interstate rivalries and potential wars was over, at least for the developed world. That was not to be. As Thucydides argued, there are structural factors that lead to wars, “conditions in which otherwise manageable events can escalate… and produce unimaginable consequences”.
China has come a long way from Deng Xiaoping’s “hide your strength and bide your time” philosophy. In October 2017, speaking to the Communist Party, Xi made clear that China was ready for world leadership and for promoting its economic model around the world.
Under Xi, China is asserting itself, not only diplomatically but also militarily. Its rise and its approaches in the South and East China Seas, as also its ambition to play on the world stage, imbricate with a nationalism that lives with the memory of China’s century of humiliation.
The summit failed to agree on a phase-out of fossil fuels. Ironically, just the previous day a UN report had advocated the drawdown “indispensable” to achieving net-zero emissions. Ditto for aiding emerging markets.
The United States, used to being the sole hegemon since the breakup of the Soviet Union, cannot allow peer competition. But while this peer competition is now a central tenet of the rough beast threatening global cooperation, it’s not the only factor. Russia has brought war to Europe. Who is responsible and how and why it happened depends on which side of the fence one is and whether such analysis relies on a snapshot view or a longitudinal design.
Much is being made of India’s “success” in finding common ground for the joint statement. Sort of amazing because that statement was possible only because it skirted the Russia problem.
There are other issues too. How successful has G20 been in dealing with rising inflation, mounting debt and climate emergency. The UN says 54 countries need debt relief. That’s nearly a fifth of the global population, poor and most vulnerable to climate change.
The summit failed to agree on a phase-out of fossil fuels. Ironically, just the previous day a UN report had advocated the drawdown “indispensable” to achieving net-zero emissions. Ditto for aiding emerging markets. As Laura Carvahlo noted after last year’s Bali Summit, “the central banks of advanced economies are raising interest rates while international financial institutions are failing to provide sufficient relief, liquidity, or climate financing”. Even a positive development like “the official launch of the global pandemic preparedness fund hosted by the World Bank” has been “criticised for its limited scope” and inadequate funds.
Carvalho was on the money when she argued that “It is increasingly hard to justify perpetuating the existing multilateral approach if the system cannot deliver for the most vulnerable. Why are these life-and-death decisions being put in the hands of the G20 if their summits conclude with so little to show?”
The day the leaders began arriving in Delhi, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sat down with Al-Jazeera and listed a number of challenges facing the international community: accelerating climate change, multiplicity of wars and conflicts, growing poverty and hunger, and the risks from new technologies. He stressed that the multilateral institutions of the post-World War II era were passé and needed to evolve to meet new challenges.
“If we are indeed one global family, we today resemble a rather dysfunctional one. Divisions are growing, tensions are flaring up and trust is eroding, which together raise the spectre of fragmentation, and ultimately, confrontation.”
He is right. Given what Mearsheimer called the “tragedy of great power politics”, it is safe to argue, unfortunate though it is, that G20 is not only becoming irrelevant but could likely become moribund going forward, the pageantry notwithstanding.