G7 faces a test of relevance at Kananaskis

The success of the G7 depends on the fact whether the clique of these developed countries act in coordination.

By Angad Singh Brar

Canada is hosting the leadership from the G7 countries till June 17th while the situation in the Middle East is rapidly spiralling downward, and the Russia-Ukraine war is still persisting on Europe’s borders. The strain from these conflicts on the G7 gathering at Kananaskis is evident, but the hardest tests remain directed towards the host, the partners and the summitry itself.

As Canada is conducting this G7 after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent electoral victory, the summit continues to be a litmus test of his ability to undertake high skilled realpolitik and deliver a consensus-based ​​leaders’ statement. Carney has been the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance since 2020 and finding a working consensus on climate change is one of his top priorities for the summit.

A parallel priority for Canada remains in bilaterally engaging US President Donald Trump and to its benefit, Canada remained the only G7 country that officially got a pre-scheduled bilateral meeting with the American President on the first day of the summit.

India’s Centrality to G7’s Response to China

Another test that Kananaskis will face till the summit ends on Tuesday, is the ability of the G7 to maintain partnerships in a fragmented world. The 2025 summit is being attended by India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Australia, South Korea and Ukraine. Every partner country in this list is instrumental for G7’s global governance to provide tangible results.

India remains the strongest counterweight to China in the politics of the Global South. Having Brazil and South Africa along India intensifies the G7 engagement with key members of the BRICS+ grouping while maintaining distance from Russia and China. This sensitivity towards China might also manifest into a separate meeting of the Quad members as Australia will also be present in the G7 as an invitee. This also clarifies the centrality India holds for the G7 in framing security as well as economic responses to China, making an invite to India more about the collective needs of the G7 than Canada’s.

Co-ordination With G20

Beyond India’s presence from the broader Global South, the list of invitees signifies a lower country count from the African continent as South Africa is the only African country to be invited. Last year’s G7 Summit in Apulia had four invitees from the continent. Such a shift to inviting a solo player from Africa signals the prominence of South Africa, especially in light of it being the G20 President for 2025. The invite also signals a direct effort by the G7 host to establish better coordination with the G20 President and will promote policy consistency on responses to global issues that concern both groupings. Therefore, the G7 lending weight to South Africa becomes necessary in circumstances where the United States might entirely skip the G20 summit. This also brings to fore the final test for Kananaskis, maintaining internal cohesion before it coordinates with larger groupings like the G20.

US’ Positioning Makes a Consensus Harder 

The United States’ dissent on substantive issues like climate change, use of tariff barriers, defence expenditure for Ukraine has proven challenging for others in the G7. It has made the G7 host to not stress on releasing a consensus driven joint communique and just proceed with a summary note of the summit.

The hallmark of G-Summitry has been its ability to arrive at consensus through agile diplomacy that is void of bureaucracy and delay seen in conventional global governance organisations. The success of the G7 depends on the fact whether the clique of these developed countries act in coordination despite an absence of a joint communique and move towards a largely unified strategy to address deep geopolitical and economic issues on the table.

The recent military conflagration between Israel and Iran involving attacks on nuclear facilities, also made things tricky as the United States has not shied away from supporting Israel. While the G7 membership did find an agreement of stances against Iran, this agreement is not seen in the G7 partners which are set to attend the summit on its last day. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice, which accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza became a key reason for the United States to pull out of the G20 track altogether.

Canada has chosen to project to the world that the G7 in Kananaskis signifies resilience and regeneration by choosing the Canadian pine tree as a symbol for the summit, a tree that regrows the fastest after a forest fire. While the regenerative potential of the summit is immense, every country on the G7 high table has different fires to douse. The United States arrived with its own agenda as others in the G7 hope to make progress in their bilateral talks with Trump on the sidelines of the summit. Therefore, it is not just the main summit that will hold value, but the complete policy package that comes out of bilateral meetings and the outreach events which will eventually decide if the two-day Summit made or missed a mark on global governance. If the summit clears these tests, it might actually begin a pine-tree like regeneration of an early form of consensus among the most powerful countries on the planet.

(Angad Singh Brar is a Research Analyst in the Centre for Economy and Trade at the Chintan Research Foundation.) 

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.