This year Japan is hosting the annual meetings of the G7 group, which includes four leading Western European nations (Germany, the UK, France and Italy) plus the USA, Canada and Japan. This group, (sometimes incorrectly referred to as an “organization”) has been in place since the mid-1970s, and provides a forum in which the seven main nations of the so-called “collective West” (itself an increasingly meaningless term) attempt to develop a unified strategy in the face of current international challenges.
For the USA, as the leader of the “collective West”, the most pressing of these challenges is China’s status as the de facto world power number two. Washington’s hostile reaction to that fait accompli has resulted in the development of yet another latest global fault line. As this fault line intensifies, it raises the threat of another world war, one which could easily end up being the last war in human history. Following such a conflict there would be no-one left to participate in any subsequent conflict. Moreover voices on different sides of the fault line are, if not publicly then with little attempt at secrecy, “making plans” for such an apocalyptic scenario.
Closely related to the main challenge mentioned above is another issue of concern for the current US leadership – the ongoing rapprochement between China and the Russian Federation. This tendency has been evident for a long time, and has recently become much more clearly defined. One issue that should be viewed in terms of this trend (as well as from other perspectives) is the way in which the Ukrainian conflict was provoked and the course that that conflict has taken.
It seems unlikely that the conflict can be resolved in geographical isolation from the rest of the world, that is, without any impact on the current radical reshaping of the world order. It is more likely that the resolution of the conflict will represent an important interim stage in the ongoing transition to a new global balance of power.
But, so far, Washington has shown a (counterproductive, as already noted) determination to prevent any such development. This attitude is behind its insistence on the need for participants in international affairs to “follow the rules”. As it is, that statement is hard to disagree with. Certainly, in any kind of community all the members must uphold certain mutually agreed rules. The problem is that the current rules reflect an increasingly outmoded world order, which is already undergoing radical change.
Moreover, whenever “current needs” so require, those rules are flagrantly violated by those who, as victors in previous global conflicts, most recently the Cold War, established them in the first place. And the country that is making every effort to prevent any changes to the convenient status quo is, as already noted, the current leader of the “collective West”.
Of the various options available for liaising with allies and developing joint strategies aimed at preserving at least the semblance of the unipolar world format that arose at the end of the Cold War, the G7 has been the platform of choice in recent months. In the last year this group has served as the main platform for organizing attacks on the allies’ main geopolitical adversaries.
And the outlines of a strategy to prevent any further rapprochement between Russia and China are now clearly evident. Thus, in the concluding documents we read the uncompromising words in relation to “resisting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”. China, on the other hand, receives admonishments. It is as if the G7 nations were trying to tell Beijing “it’s not a good idea to have any dealings with that aggressor state. At least in your relations with Russia you should stick to certain boundaries, which we will set out for you. Otherwise we will extend our reprisals to you as well.”
The issue of “Russian aggression” and the attempts to prevent China from working closely with Russia have dominated meetings between G7 foreign ministers over the last year. Take, for example, the telephone conference between the ministers on December 7, 2022 as well as the face-to-face meetings two and a half months later as part of the most recent Munich Security Conference.
The more-or-less standardized structure of the texts, the main arguments and even the wording tend to be copied and pasted from one document to the other. Thus, in the Communiqué adopted following the most recent meeting of G7 foreign ministers, held from 16-18 April in the Japanese resort town of Karuizawa, in Nagano Prefecture the first paragraph in the body of the text is headed “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.” The text of that paragraph consists of oft-repeated statements and phrases.
But this sizeable document does not limit itself to the situation in Ukraine. The third paragraph (the second, interestingly, is headed Indo-Pacific) is dedicated to China, and the first phrases in the paragraph refer to the “need to work together” with that country. Later on, it states that the signatories are “seriously concerned” – apparently about China’s stance in relation to international affairs. Among other points, the signatories “remind [sic] China of the need to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and abstain from threats … or the use of force.” It should be noted that this “reminder” is being addressed to a permanent member of the UN Security Council, now the most important international organization, in the name of states which have been responsible for bloodshed in various regions and countries around the world on more than one occasion in the last few decades.
Those regions and countries include some of those about which the participants in the Karuizawa meeting have particular “concerns”. Particularly striking is the inclusion of countries and regions such as “North Korea”, “Afghanistan”, “Iran”, “the Middle East and North Africa”, among others.
The G7 foreign ministers dedicated a special meeting to the escalating struggle for influence in the nations of the “Global South”. In connection with that issue, they also discussed the important matter of foreign debt, which is of particular concern to most of these countries mentioned. Take, for example, the situations in Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
It should be noted that the issues discussed in the current cycle of G7 ministerial-level meetings are not limited to foreign policy and diplomacy. In total, the cycle, which began in December 2022, will include about 15 meetings dedicated to a wide variety of current global problems. On April 15-16, in Sapporo, there was a meeting of ministers responsible for the fight against the global problem of climate change. Ever since the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Glasgow, the G7 nations have been engaged in disputes on the issues of decarbonization and the use of nuclear energy.
The implementation of these policies is particularly sensitive for Japan, whose economic success is largely dependent on cheap electricity from coal and nuclear power stations. Those opposed to the Japan’s continued use of both types of power station cite, among other issues, the growing challenge posed by the water from the damaged reactors in one of the two Fukushima nuclear power stations, which is being stored in special containers. These containers, holding a total of 1 million cubic meters, are now full up, and in order to free up space for more water (which is continuously supplied) there is only one option – to release the old water into the ocean.
Both the company operating Fukushima 1 and the government authority responsible for monitoring the safe operation of nuclear power stations insist that before the release of water from the containers begins, in the middle of this summer, it will undergo the necessary cleaning and decontamination procedures. During the conference in Sapporo, the Japanese tried to get written approval concerning the “water purification degree” from their foreign colleagues. They were unable to do this, as Germany, which long ago decided to abandon the use of nuclear power entirely, opposed the issue of such a document.
Among the past and future meetings of G7 ministers, it is worth mentioning events dedicated to issues such as the growing problem of financial and economic turbulence, digitization, the supply of critically important natural materials, and the use of artificial intelligence.
In general, it is more or less clear how the next G7 summit, to be held in the middle of May, in Hiroshima, will end. The venue for this event, by the way has been the subject of a certain amount of discussion, as it is unclear whether or not US President Joe Biden will attend. As reader may remember, there was a similar discussion back in 2016, in the run up to the visit to Hiroshima by then-president Barak Obama.
As for the reaction from the two main “subjects” discussed at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Karuizawa – their conference went almost unnoticed in Russia. In China, on the other hand, the event did not go unheeded, and official reaction was highly negative.
This is hardly surprising, given the fact that despite the final Communiqué’s apparently flattering words about Beijing, it also contains stinging attacks, particularly in relation to the Taiwan problem and the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”