Apart from the Modi-Trump meeting, away from the main theatre at the French coastal resort of Biarritz, this year’s G7 summit has been a non-event, if ever there was one. The chief significance of the interaction between the Prime Minister and the US President was the latter’s unusual swingback, couched in the assurance that he will not mediate in the India-Pakistan kerfuffle, as Pakistan desires and India doesn’t. Mr Trump’s change of stance is arguably no less a comedown for him as well.
This is at once a diplomatic setback for the likes of Imran Khan and a bolster of sorts for Narendra Modi, indeed a setback for Pakistan in the aftermath of the rebuff at the Security Council, not to forget the uncertainty at the International Court of Justice. For the rest, the collective grandstanding achieved little or nothing and the seven worthies are now riveted to next year’s edition at Trump’s golf resort in Florida. From the seaside to the golf resort, the ambience must be suitably salubrious; but the comity of nations must await a measure of forward movement on the part of the seven powers at the high table.
No progress was achieved on the contentious issues, notably the wild fire in Brazil’s Amazon forests and climate change in the wider canvas, the US equation with Russia, and the trade war with China, to mention but a few irritants. In the immediate perspective, there is no possibility of an international intervention to douse the raging forest fire. Almost as a matter of form, the G7 leaders pledged to do something about the burning Amazon, with a combined down-payment of Euro 20 million, significantly less than the cost of the summit, and a particularly paltry sum in view of what was generally agreed to be an existential threat to the planet.
Not much was achieved in Biarritz, but that is nothing new. To avoid the embarrassment of the previous year in Quebec ~ when Trump disowned the carefully crafted joint communiqué soon after boarding Air Force One ~ French President Emmanuel Macron, the host in Biarritz, did away with the traditional statement altogether. If there was no document, there was, more accurately, nothing to sign. Which is not to ignore the semblance of common endeavour by the world’s larger industrialised democracies.
They have furnished what has been styled as a “declaration” ~ intrinsically a signal of intent on the storm centres, notably Iran, Ukraine, Libya, Hong Kong and terms of trade. Small wonder that critics have binned the document as thinner than the single page it was printed on. President Macron has passed the baton to President Trump, who will host next year’s summit and in his election year. In the interim, the US President appears to have soured the collective mood when he pressed the case for admitting Vladimir Putin back in to the club, to make it the G8 once more. The Europeans, with the exception of the Italians, were outraged. Putin was ejected in 2014 for breaking the rules of the post-war world… by ignoring borders and annexing Crimea.