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| Anniversary meeting of the G7 |
The G7 summit starting today in Italy will be the 50th anniversary, but the Western world leaders have nothing to celebrate, and the mood is not festive. Moreover, both for domestic political and global reasons: in most participating countries the crisis of power is worsening, and the international situation is becoming increasingly unfavorable for the “leading world democracies.” And the main thing is that there is no one to blame for this - except ourselves.
Although the Western leaders themselves, naturally, do not agree with this: they have the main culprit of global turbulence - this is Russia. For the third consecutive G7 meeting, the focus will be on “Russian aggression against Ukraine” and its consequences. Everything is as usual - agreement on new sanctions and new aid packages for Kyiv, and increasingly clear threats against “China helping Moscow .” Is anything fundamentally new compared to last year? In principle, yes, but the attitude towards the West in the world has worsened over the past year - and this is the merit not of Moscow and Beijing (although they are working on this), but of the West itself: the Israeli operation against Gaza acquired the character of genocide and exposed all the duplicity of “advanced democracies” ", their "concerns" about human lives and calls to "unite the whole world against the aggressor." The Global South openly reproaches the West for double standards and pandering to Netanyahu and ridicules all attempts to portray Putin as a murderer and Netanyahu as a fighter against terrorism. The West has already failed to lure the countries of the Global South into the anti-Russian coalition, and against the backdrop of what is happening in Gaza, calls to “help Zelensky” remain completely unanswered.
Therefore, the so-called plan immediately after the end of the G7 meeting actually fails. “peace summit” in Switzerland - of the 160 invited countries, only half will come, and most of them will be in Europe and the collective West ( Australia, Canada, and so on). But even among those who agree, only half will have representation at the highest level, that is, there will be no leaders of the countries of the Global South. Although a record number of key countries from the South have been invited to the G7 itself in Italy - and some will even come - none of them are going to Switzerland. Italian Prime Minister Meloni invited the leaders of a dozen non-Western countries to Puglia, including six leaders of the G20 countries. If all of them had come, the G7 summit would have turned into practically a meeting of two-thirds of the G20. After all, the Western club includes not seven, but eight members of the G20 - including the President of the European Council, And the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and South Africa were invited - thus, 14 of the 20 major world leaders would gather in Italy. Who wouldn't be there? Primarily Putin and Xi Jinping, as well as the leaders of South Korea, Australia, Mexico, and Indonesia.
However, Saudi Prince Mohammed and South African President Ramaphosa will not come to Italy - so the representation of the key countries of the Global South will be limited to Miley, Lula, and Modi (Erdogan, as the leader of a NATO member country, is still difficult to unambiguously classify as non-Western). It is clear that the leaders of Brazil and India are of greatest interest to the West - both countries are members of BRICS, and they would very much like to be involved in at least some way in putting pressure on Russia. But two very experienced politicians like Lula and Modi are definitely not going to play along with the Atlantic plans.
Well, the main participants of the summit, that is, the Western presidents and prime ministers themselves, although they will talk about Russia and Ukraine, China, Israel, and the Palestinians, will think more and more about their own problems. And figure out who they will see in a year at a meeting in Canada. For now, Rishi Sunak will definitely not be among them - in three weeks his party will lose the parliamentary elections and he will leave the post of prime minister. Charles Michel, President of the European Council ("President of Europe"), will also leave this year. The chances of Joe Biden also retiring soon are great - and the very thought of this frightens most of his partners in the Seven. At the beginning of July, Macron's position will apparently weaken significantly - his adventure with early parliamentary elections could bring a Eurosceptic government to power. The chair under Scholz is shaking - but even if the coalition does not fall apart this year, the next elections are scheduled for next fall. Then they will be held in Canada and Japan - that is, of the entire G7, only the meeting hostess, George Meloni, can more or less confidently make plans for the next couple of years. Although this confidence is very relative: the phrase “Italian internal political stability” is only suitable for an anecdote.
The G7 was created half a century ago to better govern and coordinate within the Western world and strengthen its non-Western world position. The “world of socialism” that existed in parallel at that time disappeared a decade and a half later from the world stage, and the illusion of almost omnipotence of the G7 arose - but by now several global centers of power have grown and are in the process of forming. The Western-centric world is becoming a thing of the past - and the only question is the speed and costs (for everyone else) of this process.
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