The G20 summit: Sniping on the beaches of beautiful Bali

INDONESIA: A view of billboards for the 17th G20 Leaders' Summit in Bali's southern peninsula Nusa Dua, Indonesia on November 12, 2022. (Photo by Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The Group of Twenty, or G20, delegates to the two-day summit from November 15, have been told by host Indonesia’s leading English-language newspaper, The Jakarta Post: “Please don’t come to Bali just to quarrel.”

Kornelius Purba, the paper’s managing editor, wrote in an article that “the Indonesian people, and global citizens, hope the leaders refrain from using the precious moments during the summit simply as opportunities to criticise and attack one another.”

The newspaper’s appeal to the global leaders clearly shows the tense atmosphere in which the G20’s Bali summit is being held.

The group comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the US, along with the European Union.

G20 members account for 80 percent of the world’s GDP, 75 percent of global trade, and 60 percent of the world’s population.

The aim of the G20 is to achieve global economic stability and sustainable growth, reduce the risk of future financial crises, and modernise the structure of international finance.

“This could be the most difficult of all the G20s because of geopolitical and economic issues,” said Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi in a recent interview.

The G20 has a history of thriving in the teeth of a crisis. Born in the wake of the meltdown of Asia’s tiger economies in 1997-1998, it was upgraded to the heads of government level from that of finance ministers in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, which began in the US and spread rapidly to other parts of the world.

Now, the ongoing Ukraine war is threatening to derail not only next week’s summit but raises serious questions about its future and survival.

Issues ranging from the looming risk of a global recession to the lingering Covid pandemic, and increasing flashpoints in different countries and regions, are bothering world leaders and adding to geopolitical tensions.

One of the most prominent issues is the ongoing tension in US and China relations, that range from Taiwan to trade and technology disputes.

President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are meeting before the summit, where they are likely to discuss many of the issues and stress on a working relationship between them.

But their effort will not be able to diffuse the rising tension and division among G20 delegates on the Ukraine issue.

The nine-month-old Ukraine conflict has proved to be the most divisive issue in the G20, and it is likely that the summit could end without its customary joint communique, or statement, as leaders may not agree to the wording.

During the foreign ministers’ meeting of the G20 in Bali in July, the leaders neither issued a joint statement nor posed for a group photograph. At the finance ministers’ meeting in April, the US, UK, and Canada representatives staged a walk-out when the Russian minister was speaking.

Host Indonesia is worried that things could get worse this time, and divisions over Ukraine will be visible for all to see.

In the run-up to the event, Indonesia had faced a lot of pressure from western countries to exclude Russia from the Bali summit.

But Indonesian President Jo ko Widodo managed to convince them and invited Russia to the summit. He succeeded in doing so as he agreed to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address the leaders at the summit (as suggested by the western countries), though Ukraine is not a member of the G20.

But now, indications are that Russian President Vladimir Putin may skip the meeting and Zelensky will address the summit virtually.

Other existing tensions within the group may also play a role in scuttling any joint effort from being announced to deal with emerging global challenges.

US officials have said they will focus on the Ukraine conflict and try to convince others to condemn the Russian invasion of its neighbour. The White House has said that President Joe Biden will focus on the global impact of “Putin’s war on Ukraine.”

The US and the western countries are insisting that the G20 address and highlight Russia’s culpability for the war and its fallout. Many countries in the G20 also want to discuss the impact of the ongoing Ukraine conflict on global energy, and food and grain supplies. But not all of them agree with the effort by the west to name and shame Russia at the summit.

The Bali summit was meant to push through an agenda to revive the global economy, which has been affected by the two years of lockdown because of the Covid pandemic.

For India, which takes over the Chair of the G20 from Indonesia, it is both an opportunity and a challenge.

The challenge will be to keep the G20 together. But if it can succeed in doing so, it can also provide an opportunity to not only end the ongoing Ukraine conflict but also to pave the way for a revival of the global economy.

Observers both within India and beyond are certainly going to keep a weather eye on how the global developments finally turn out in the coming months.