UK Position and Future Global Influence

From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. Jones G seven, the world's richest economies. Yes, that still includes us or gathering in France The G seven summits, they're not going to win any awards for viewing figures or anything. usually they're meant to be quite stiff Katherine Philip is Times World Affairs editor They started to get a bit interesting for all the wrong reasons when Donald Trump showed up to them. And I think people will remember quite a famous picture of him being confronted by Angela Merkel at the twenty eighteen summit He later walked out of that summit and refused to sign a final communice. And he did that again last year. So yeah, certainly unexpected, interesting things have started to happen at this very formal event that only really started when Donald Trump came into the picture. what used to be a group of broadly like minded countries joining this declaration or that communique. has in the recent past, urn to open argument President Trump has decided the United States will not sign on to a joint communique from the G seven summit, reversing his earlier endorsement. The G seven also tried and failed to get Trump to back down on his opposition to the Paris Climate Change Accord desespite what the German Chancellor said best efforts of everyone else Head of this latest summit in the town of Evan Trump has already called the G seeven's help on the war in Iran irrelevant With Russia's war in Ukraine and the rise of China also causing lots of disagreement It won't just be the spring water that's icy. The story today, the G seven versus Donald Trump I think remind is exactly what a G seven is and and why on earth we have them So what we call the G seven, what we usually think about when we say the G seven is this summit that happens every year. And the first one happened in nineteen seventy five and it was actually a G six. There were only six countries in it Canada joined a year later and made the G seven But it was a group of essentially industrialized countries with free markets who had worked together since the end of the Second World War to establish what we kind of think of as the international rules based order, but with particular attention to the economy The reason this started up in nineteen seventy five was that you'd seen a collapse of the Breton Woods system when the US had the dollar to gold before and currencies traded against the dollar. And when the US decoupled the dollar, that happened around the same time as linked to the urrent current state of affairs, the oil crisis of nineteen seventy three. So essentially all these things put the global economy into a massive spin and the G seven was supposed to be a forum where they could get together and discuss these things and try and impose some order on a disordered world which I guess is very much the hope for now. Now we've got a different Energy shock if you can call it that for this GC. Exactly. Yeah it's very reminiscent of the original How exactly does this summit work? Who is involved what actually can be decided. Like with a lot of these kinds of summits, there iss a lot of the work just really in the preparation and this is something of a of a public signing Yes, that's right. I mean, we'll come to whether it's even a signing in a second. It's a get together for a bunch of pals. and there's a lot who all know each other. And those relationships are important. And you know I mean, look, Donald Trump is very much about the personalities in his relationships with people in the world. But yeah, it is a club where they all get together It's meant to foster dialogue on these big issues. Oviously starting with the economy as a springboard, but going into things like security climate. war pandemics when we had COVID, that was one of them. This year they'll be talking about artificial intelligence and the challenges that presents to the world now. So it's a place for political discussion and coordination. but it has in the past certain leaders have attempted to make it more of a power block in the sense that it has imposed sanctions in the past, but the decisions it makes are not legally binding. As we will discuss, it is harder and harder to get all the countries together to sign up to the same things. even without any legal obligation So in terms of this latest annual meeting, it's fifty second, I read What is the biggest issue facing them? would you say So the G seven has a presidency every year, One country takes the presidency on a rotating basis And this year is France And when France issued its agenda for this year's G seven summit. It was in January And so the issue that's really hanging over it most dominantly now hadn't even started the war in the Middle East and with the U.S on Iran implications that's had for obviously the global economy with the Strait of Hormz closed. So that has foisted itself to the top of the agenda It was meant to be essentially about economic imbalances and trade imbalances. and global equality. and so as is often the case, some of the leading countries in what we call the Gobal South were invited And that was sort of meant to be the agenda. and now of course, it has shifted somewhat. And I think that yeah, that we're going to see the war in Iran on the Strait of Hormuz and the impact that's having on economies with soaring fuel prices and all the knock on effects That is going to be very much part of it. And indeed, there is going to be a breakout session on the Middle East conflict because Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates been invited to a specific session on that. There will also be a one on Ukraine that's become a sort of annual issue of concern. and the French have said that is to rebuild consensus on support for Ukraine. And I think really what that means is essentially the split that we see between the US and its European allies and Canada on one side who perhaps being more strenuous in their continued supportort of Ukraine And we see a similar split over Iran, as you mentioned. So what is there for this G seven to do, do you think actually trying to sort that out or Do Joal Trum You know, with the way he sees the world and where power sits actually not put a lot of store in these kind of meetings No, that's right. And he's actually said that quite explicitly, almost as we are speaking. He's told an Italian journalist that he doesn't need the G seven's support for his war in Iran because they've already won it, which I think is a questionable claim. But I don't think the G seven was really going to get behind him in this war anyway. It's not really its role in this and he has actually taken quite a few swipes at allies in general, NATO, in particular, about its lack of material support so not getting involved in the war. So I think what Trump is signaling there is you know his irritation that none of the allies have got involved, but also that he doesn't care about such forum anyway. so it is, as he says, irrelevant to what he chooses to do And in fact, last year, He left the G seven summit early. It was in Canada and he left it because of the thenen Israel Iran War, which was the twelve day warar of last summer. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levittt made the announcement Monday evening saying President Trump is returning to Washington so that he can attend to many important matters. We didn't know at the time that actually one of the reasons for him returning to Washington was that the U.S was going to get directly involved itself and bomb the nuclear sites in Iran The fact that he did sort of sack it off early, I think you know does tell us something about his attitudes to these things. So there was no joint communicate at the end of that because he was literally wasn't there to sign it. Now in the past, in twenty eighteen I think he just just fully refused to sign it. President Trump left the summit in Canada on Saturday to head to Singapore tweeting that he would tell his officials not to endorse the communique because of what he called false statements by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and because he said of Canada's massive tariffs on the US. So last year, the final communque was put out by Canada in the name of the Canadian presidency. and it appears the French are planning to do something similar this year just to simply avoid the difficulty and the optics of not being united behind one statement And do you think this is just, you know, as lots of people debate an aberration in period of Trump. Or do you think this really is signaling a enormous fisure. in the Western Alliance which might last Well beyond Trump, well beyond this GON meeting into future future ones I think we just don't know yet what's going to happen with the U. S post Trump. like whether it's going to continue in this trajectory because it does seem very bound up with him and his personality. You know, kind of you can retro engineer an ideology and call it MAGa or something and look at how that's affected the political discourse in the US. But know even the Republican Party are very split over this people who have broken with Trump over the fact that he's gone to war with Iran and It's not about America first and it's not isolationist and they're angry about that. So I think it's really It's really too soon to say. for example, in twenty twenty one, when Biden came into office, he arrived in the UK for the G seven summit that was in Cornwall and his catchphrase was America's b the United States is going to do our part. America is back at the table as America is back to the table And he was there to sort of say, we're getting back in to these alliances and they do mean something to us. And then of course, the election cycle came around again and Trump came back and promptly pulled back. so It remains to be seen. Is this permanent change or is it an operation? But it's interesting though, isn't it that even the other Western powers who are maybe trying to resist Donald Trump's bulldozing of alliances like the G seven don't seem to have that coherent act together necessarily. Are they pulling in different directions still? I mean, you as time of recording, in the UK, there's this whole argument over whether we're putting enough money into defence when other European nations seem to have got the message on that front. There's not unity even amongst them in opposition to Trump is there really Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. I think that one thing that makes this whole defence issue in the UK so so difficult in some ways to place into that international context is it's really a conversation here about national priorities and it's very much impacted by the larger the macroeconomics so the frame for it. So if we don't have this money, know how do we spend it or do we have this money and we're just not choosing to spend it there I They're just of different orders. If you think about what John Heley resigned over It's four days' worth of the war in Iran U So we are just batting on a completely different scale to the US I think that there is sort of ideological coherence in the other allies But it's what we do with what we have. And I think that's the question about what our priorities are nationally and what we bring to the table For example, you saw in a different forum in Davos earlier this year. Mark Carney gave a very well received speech about what middle powers like ours might do in the world and how we should play on the same field with outsized beasts like the US and China We know The old order is not coming back We shouldn't mourn it Nostalgia is not a strategy But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just This is the task of the middle powers The countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation. So I don't think there's such a division of values amongst the other allies as there seems to be with the US and its other G seven allies. but it doesn't mean that we are all pulling our weight in the ways that we probably need to And the problem is that the Western Alliance is under enormous strain with disagreements like the war in Iran. At the same time, you have the growing strength of a China led bloc and the alliances that it's trying to forge in a kind of rivalry with the Western Alliance of China, then, as they make their own alliances and build their own power bases, are the shifting global tectonic plates making groups like the G seven just irrelevant A more from Katherine coming up. I think we're talking about well the state of the world as the G seven has its summit in Ever in France You mentioned just a moment ago actually what is happening outside of the G seven in some of the pressures and challenges that those countries are facing. nameamely China going around and building alliances bolstering itself as it tries to in the future hopefully dwarf the United States even on the world stage What exactly have they been up to which G seven countries might be wary of So firstly, let's go back to the origins of the G seven for a second because I think it helps kind of tea things up for where China is now China was never invited to join even at a point where it essentially got rich enough to be in the club. Russia was invited to join in nineteen ninety seven, and I mean, that was obviously in a time when Russia was in transition. And know I think we all had naive beliefs that it was transitioning towards a European Chrissy. And then its membership was suspended after the annexation of Crimea and that was in twenty fourteen when really, I think we saw the true nature of the regime in Moscow As I told President Putin yesterday The referendum in Crimea was a clear violation of Ukrainian Constitutions And international law and it will not be recognized by the international community China was never invited at any stage to join simply because it didn't really sign up ever to the original principles Firstly, it kind of directly competes against the world order so on the same reasons that Russia was kicked out, it wouldn't be invited. Also, it's never been a fully free market economy and it's never shown any transition towards democratic principles. That's where you have the key difference. It is obviously now the second largest economy in the world And it's an economic rival, certainly to the US essentially what it's been doing in that place where it keeps kind of butting up against the U.S and they have their trade rivalries is that it's been essentially growing its own block, its own alliances and reaching out in a much less formal way to countries around the world and essentially getting them on side and getting them essentially in a state of certainly some economic dependence or trading dependence on China so that it isn't kind of blocked out of the global systems that the G seven is you know sitting at top of. It's got its own relationships and doesn't need to worry perhaps quite so much about someone else setting the rules. I guess because it would be in a variety of their friends' economic interests to continue to support China. if say you owe China a lot of money or you know they have helped to pay for some fabulous new piece of infrastructure where you are That's correct. and that has been the Chinese modus properandi with lots of less developed countries. They've either given or loaned money or started a project that is then built by Chinese engineers and then those countries are enmeshed in their economic systems and trading, and indeed, in some cases, they owe Beijing a lot of money. and so they're really kind of locked into that relationship Are these alliances or whatever they are that China is striking? Are they more Economic and what are they doing on the military side Yeah, they're both of those things. I mean, what they don't do is China doesn't sign a military alliance. There's no document quite like NATO or even a mutual defense pact to some countries. have with each other. It's sort of shaping this coalition of countries through security and military cooperation. So for example, they'll do joint military exercises so their militaries are oe with one another and they'll sell weapons to those countries. And then this is obviously the West does exactly the same. We have American weapons systems that tie us into that system, China does the same on its side does China sees its goal in all of this in terms of if it does increasingly get its hands on a steering wheel of the world How does their view of how the world should be operating and how international cooperation might work differ from what The G seven is pushing for Well, China would like to operate by its own rules, not by rules that have been written for it B byye. of other countries that are governed by very different principles such as democracy. It doesn't mean that They can't essentially try and get their way Three institutions that already exist. I mean, you'll have heard Trump fulminating about how China should never have been allowed into the World Trade Organization and that that gave it too much influence in the world and you know made it a competitor. China has also has a kind of strategy where it's systematically goes around getting the support of small nations because everyone's vote is equal in the UN General Assembly, if everyone's voting to appoint the head of a particular agency in the UN Fij' vote is the same as the U.S vote. And so if you, for example, if you do some kind of deal with the Solomon Islands or Fiji, then that's just as valuable in that particular Forum as anyone else's vote. So you see China making a lot of those relationships. It's partly about legitimacy. So for example, there's the one China policy under which most countries don't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and they say there's only one Chinese government and that is the one in Beijing Most countries do adhere to that certain countries who hadn't essentially made that leap or that decision. or indeed we're already backing Taiwan. China has peeled them away. and so it's sort of got their vote in its box and Do you think that the G seven is on top of this problem as they would see it and are working effectively to try and counter that and protect their own values that they're trying to protect around the world, their own control as they would hope of the world I think it's very difficult because of this fact that it is a forum. I mean, it's attempts to function like a steering committee, but there's nothing that binds anyone to these rules. I mean, we're talking in a time where we feel like the existing international law is under assault and people are simply acting the way that they want. So for something that has even less force behind it, the G seven a policy making machine. No, it is very vulnerable to the kind of shocks that about with something like the Trump presidency. But there's also let's not forget the world has changed a lot since nineteen seventy five when this first came into being. The G seven then accounted for about seventy percent of GDP It's much less now. It's well under fifty percent just in in pure dollar terms. And I think if you take it down to purchasing power parity, it is under thirty percent It's also got less people because we're aging in our part of the world. So it's gone from fifteen percent of the world's population to under ten percent now So in that sense, you can argue that whether it's our shrinking or the growth of the rest of the world, we're simply less wealthy, dominant and important a bloc as before And if I was listening to this in Argentina or in India or in you know other part of maybe the global South, you'd say, well, that's a good thing. Sbsolutely you would, because it would mean that your economy had grown And it would mean that you were a bigger player on the stage because you know, it's the same side stage. It's everyone's relative strength to one another So one of the, I think most interestnteresting players within this is India which is coming to the G seven and often does. I think it's been coming every year for over maybe twelve or fifteen summits India is part of a loose alliance called the Bricks, which are emerging economies The acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa And it's not a formal alliance the same way that the G seven is, but it's certainly a way for those countries to put their stamp on the world You know, India iss one of those it calls its strategic autonomy. It kind of keeps all these relationships in the air in the name of strategic autonomy. So it essentially wants to be everyone's friend and is having relationships with all sides. So there's a few countries like that, but I think it's the most interesting and significant of them and Just fine, I guess, Catherine, stepping into all of this is our own embattled Prime Minister with his plans for investing in defence still not announced, but being criticized not least by his outgoing defence secretary and one of his defence ministers who' resigned in protest to all of this Are we again turning up on the world stage even more diminished than this broader downownward trend would suggest we should be Yes U I mean this is very bad timing that this be happening now that it's not, I don't think it's that the world cares who the British defense minister is, but Allies care about whether we're pulling our weight on the global stage. And if we're not investing in defense at such a perilous moment, it's very bad timing that this shines a spotlight on it and that we to have to show up But this has been a trajectory for some time because of course, we're also not part of the European Union and we're not in the necessarily vaunted position of the special relationship that we might have hoped we would be because Trump is such an unpredictable ally. So we're sort of neither in one place nor the other. We're somewhere in between. and that's not a comfortable place for the UK and hasn't been since we find ourselves in it The hope is we'll have our r together by the time there's the NATO summit, speaking of summits at the beginning of July in Turkey. Do you think that's the case Well, that will certainly be a much more significant the defense issue and spending will be much more significant then yes. and if we don't have her out together by then, that will be much worse Katherine Philip, World Affairs editor for the Times That is it from us. If you've got anything you'd like to add, The story at thetimes. com is our email address. we always like to hear from you. Do subscribe to this feed and if enjoyed the episode, why not send a link a friends so they can enjoy it as well That's it from us todayoday's producer was Michkaela Arnon. The executive producer was Edward Drummond. Sound design was by Dave Creasey and theme composition was by Malocetto I'm Luke Jon See you soon