World leaders are meeting in Brazil for a G20 summit that looks set to usher in a new era of “transactional” geopolitics driven by national self-interest rather than international consensus.
Agreement will be sought on issues such as trade, climate change and international security. But many observers are “bracing for a shift in the global order”, said Reuters, with the return to power of US president-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened a global tariff war and a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
European leaders are “waking up to an uncomfortable new reality”, said the Financial Times (FT): “transactional geopolitics is back”.
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Trump, who will take control of the White House in just over two months, “prefers bilateral negotiations and quid pro quo arrangements” to multilateral frameworks such as the G20 and “his acolytes are already laying the groundwork for his regime”.
In a sign of how the US election has already emboldened Trump’s allies, French President Emmanuel Macron met arch-libertarian Argentinian President Javier Milei on Sunday in a “last-ditch attempt to stop him derailing” this week’s summit, said Politico.
Milei, who last week became the first foreign leader to meet Trump in person following his election victory, had threatened to block a joint G20 communique that referenced taxing the super-rich, climate change policy and gender issues. Negotiators managed to salvage the draft statement by adding a footnote saying that Argentina does not agree with some of the points. But the drama has “frustrated counterparts” because “Milei has little regard for multilateral institutions like the G20, and few qualms about irking world leaders with whom he disagrees”, Bloomberg said.
They also see in Milei the “impending shadow of Trump’s impact on other governments and the future crumbling of global pacts aimed at aligning economic policies in the spirit of compromise”, said the FT.
Diplomats drafting a joint statement have also “struggled to hold together a fragile agreement” on how to address the escalating Ukraine war, “even a vague call for peace without criticism of any participants”, sources told Reuters.
Keir Starmer has implored fellow leaders to “shore up support for Ukraine” even as the consensus around standing united against Vladimir Putin appears to be “fracturing” and the Russian president looks “emboldened”, said Sky News.
What next?
With the US represented by “lame duck” Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping is set to be a “central player” at a summit riven with geopolitical tensions, said Reuters.
This week, Starmer will become the first PM in six years to meet his Chinese counterpart. The meeting is part of what he calls a new “pragmatic approach” to try to advance economic ties and galvanise progress on challenges such as climate change.
While diplomacy always requires a degree of pragmatism, what will worry Western leaders is that a world in which “countries pick and choose their stance on individual issues depending on a narrow vision of national benefits rather than through multinational compromise” could lead to a “more permanent fracturing of groups like the G20”, said the FT. These alliances have long served as a bridge between the West and developing nations, but a shifting world power balance is increasingly being seized upon by rivals such as China and Russia to “strengthen alternative groupings and undermine western alliances“.
