America wants G20 on a leash

The United States has redefined the agenda of the G20 summit to focus on its own strategic and economic priorities, sidelining broader issues of development and climate change.

The US presidency has shifted the G20's focus from a forum for global cooperation to a tool for advancing American interests, excluding key issues like climate change and the Global South.

This shift has sparked criticism for ignoring the priorities of developing nations and violating the group's consensus rules.

Shift in priorities

The US State Department announced its intention to assert specific priorities, limiting regulatory barriers to investment and encouraging transparent governance to foster global competitiveness.

The agenda now includes energy independence, resilient supply chains, and safe navigation through critical international waterways like the Straits of Hormuz.

The US also wants to accelerate digital advancement and artificial intelligence (AI) policies while protecting security, privacy, and intellectual property.

These issues are important to address collectively, but they are not the only ones that matter to the global community.

Contrast with previous years

The contrast between the Chair’s statement on the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting issued by India in 2023 and the statement issued under the US presidency is illuminating.

In 2023, the issues covered were insufficient progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, and uneven pandemic recovery.

The 2023 statement also affirmed the rules-based, non-discriminatory, multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core, and the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement.

The US Chair’s statement talks of taking the G20 “back to basics,” but these “basics” cannot be defined unilaterally by one member.

Energy and trade focus

The US statement refers to rising energy costs, glossing over Washington’s own role in driving them higher through sanctions on Russian oil and gas and attacks on Iran.

The phrase “far too often governments have placed barriers to energy production and punished their own people with higher costs” seems to be an indictment of some European countries.

However, it does not apply to developing countries who have become hostage to Washington’s own policies of sanctions to exclude the flow of Russian and Iranian oil.

The statement also references “weaponization of normal food supply chains,” a move directed at Russia, while ignoring that oil and financial sanctions have been part of US economic coercion.

Consensus and diplomacy

The G20 Foreign Ministers meeting at the end of October was marred by arbitrary decisions and undiplomatic behavior.

The US had no authority to exclude South Africa, a G20 member, from the meeting, nor to invite Poland to take South Africa’s place.

The refusal of some European foreign ministers to be photographed with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the traditional group photograph was not adult diplomacy.

This kind of conduct casts doubt on whether a negotiated solution to the Ukraine conflict can be seriously explored unless fissures in the EU or the collapse of the Zelensky regime change the situation.

The UK will take over the presidency of the G20 in 2027, and unless something dramatic happens on the Ukraine front, Britain’s enmity towards Russia will become a huge problem for the consensual functioning of the group.