Let me explain what the G20 did not decide (and why it has lost relevance). Fabbri’s analysis (Limes)
The G20 as seen by Dario Fabbri, analyst of the geopolitical magazine LImes
Rome, for the first time, is the theater of the G20 which in this edition will focus on three themes: the Covid-19 emergency, in particular the management and spread of vaccines around the world, the climate crisis and the post-pandemic global recovery .
The G20 of absences: from Putin to Kishida
In the film “Ecce Bombo” Nanni Moretti wondered if his participation or his absence from a party would be noticed more. Dario Fabbri , analyst of the geopolitical magazine Limes, has no doubts about the defections to the G20. "In the G20 underway at EUR, defections are more important than presences: there will be no Russian President Vladimir Putin, there will be no Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping (he only made a video link, ed ), there will be no new Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida or Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ”.
Fear of the spread of the virus
Formally it is the fear of the spread of the virus that induces absent leaders to miss the appointment and the virus. "Particularly authoritarian leaders leave their country of origin with great difficulty because you never know what can happen in their absence and move only for the issues that matter , obviously the G20 does not count – remarked Fabbri in his weekly point on the YouTube channel of Limes -. Yet they once did. So either before they were safer or before the G20 mattered more, probably the truth is somewhere in between ”.
Why has the G20 lost its relevance in recent years?
According to Fabbri, there are three reasons why the G20 has lost strategic importance: “The first reason is a more antagonistic attitude of the challenging powers towards the USA compared to the end of the 1990s – explains the expert -. When the G20 was envisioned in 1999, the world was dominated by the US in a more placid way. China had not even joined the WTO and its commercial and economic downturn was fully embryonic, Russia at the time was barely seeing the lights of the Putin era. The idea of participating in the Washington consensus was undoubtedly the most seraphic of all the actors ”.
The decline of the BRICS
The second reason that would have overshadowed the reach of the G20 would be linked, according to Fabbri, to the decline of the BRICS. "In the G20 of these years the myth of the so-called BRICS had been established, one of the nonsense of our time imagined by a finance expert who had first put together the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and then South Africa – says the Limes analyst -. All these subjects are in the G20, too bad they have nothing in common , not even remotely and moreover they are no longer on the rise, almost none of them. Or let's say that their rise has become tepid in recent years ". So the G20 would no longer be an opportunity for these countries to show themselves to the world and be seen on the rise.
The post-pandemic world
The third reason relates to a fact of life: in the post-pandemic world we see each other in person only if strictly necessary. “Lastly, the fact that in the post-pandemic phase all international meetings must have a real response to ensure that those who participate in them push themselves to travel. This is the reason that has held back the main leaders of the countries – continues Fabbri -. Moving today, beyond internal issues, means taking risks. Especially because the Chinese vaccines and the Russian Sputnik are not Western ones, so we think about it once more ”.
The "dream" themes of the G20 in Rome
The G20 of these hours focuses on two main themes: the fight against the pandemic and the environment. " With the fight against the pandemic we are in a fairly dreamlike environment , cooperation on this issue is very difficult to obtain, indeed there is above all competition regarding vaccines and not only between the main powers – adds Fabbri -. The other major theme that will characterize the G20 in Rome is the environment. When a summit designed to tell the destiny of the world focuses on the environment, its decline is inevitable for all to see. Because there is in no way a less universal question of the environment ”.
Brake to climatic overheating and stop carbon emissions
The goal of the current G20 is to convince participants to accept that global warming must stop and that by mid-century carbon emissions will have to be zeroed in all G20 countries. According to a provisional draft of the G20 conclusions on climate , anticipated by Reuters , the powers have pledged to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees , as required by the Paris agreements, but there are no specific commitments nor the reference to 2050, previously indicated as the deadline within which to bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero . This testifies to the difficulty of finding a compromise between the West and the Asian powers on cutting emissions and fighting climate change. “ India has already said that it cannot accept them , so did China and so on – Fabbri points out -. Yet this has become the main topic of a summit that was really wanted to be really important and pretends that there is agreement among humanity on this issue ”.
Environment: the weapon that the powers wield against each other
According to Fabbri, the “environment” theme would be used by the main powers against each other to hit each other. “There are great powers that directly support global warming , such as Russia, or want to use it against others, see the United States, or they are completely disinterested in it, see India – concludes Fabbri -. The feeling is that multilateral forums of this type centered on a placid world that coagulated around the USA are losing their relevance in a physiological way and this signals to us the issues they tend to deal with and will deal with in the future. The bilateral meetings that take place during the summit remain more relevant and that this year in Rome will be even less due to the defections of the great leaders who should have been in the capital ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/g20-fabbri-limes/ on Sun, 31 Oct 2021 05:39:51 +0000.