With their demarches against Russia, Western members of the Big 20 are demolishing the group’s purpose
By Sergey Strokan, a journalist and columnist for the Kommersant publishing house
© Getty Images / Kay Nietfeld
April 20, 2022 has every chance of going down in the history of modern international relations as the day that led to the sudden demise of the G20, which represents the leading economies of the Western and non-Western world.
The events taking place in Washington as part of the meeting – during which the finance ministers of the ‘The Big 20’, as the group is unofficially referred to, were supposed to look for collective answers to the main challenges facing the world economy – lost their meaning amid the grandiose scandal that broke out in the American capital.
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak immediately announced they would boycott any G20 events attended by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Thus, the dialogue between the leading economies of the East and West – for which, in fact, the ‘20’ was created at one time – was disrupted even before it began.
For the same reason, the finance ministers of the G20 countries were forced to refuse in advance to adopt a joint final communique on the results of the Washington meeting, as this turned out to be impossible due to the presence of Russia among its participants. The Western states have categorically refused to talk to Moscow since the start of its military operation in Ukraine, and demanded that it be excluded from the G20.
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“Russia and President Putin have shown himself and themselves to be a pariah in the world. And the president’s view is that he has no place at an international forum,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
“According to the latest forecasts, Russia’s GDP will shrink by 11%. A state default in Russia is only a matter of time,” European Commission Head Ursula von der Leyen confidently said before the Washington G20 meeting, demonstrating her determination to exacerbate tensions, despite the increasingly tangible side effects for Western economies.
Thus, by trying to enlist the non-Western part of the world in the sanctions war they have unleashed against Russia, as well as their campaign to isolate it, the United States and its Western allies killed ‘The Big 20’, splitting it into two camps.
In addition to the Group of Seven states and the European Union, the G20 includes the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), as well as a number of other countries that won’t accept the idea of excluding Russia – Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and South Korea among them.
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However, by acting in this way, our ‘Western partners’ have crossed all imaginable and unthinkable red lines. In particular, they ignored the position of the current chair of the G20 – Indonesia – and tried to deprive it of its legal right to determine the meeting’s agenda.
As a result, on April 20, 2022, the G20, which was created in December of 1999 in order to overcome the split between the West and East and engage in global crisis management, found itself for the first time in its history in a situation where its own members were engaged in generating risks, instead of containing them.
Thus, they shot themselves in the foot. The costs the current crisis will exact on the international system will only increase, while eroding the positions of the US and Western financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank within it. This includes the loss of the dollar’s central position in global finance, and the accelerated formation of new payment systems, which will make it impossible to preserve or restore the old-world order in which Washington played a central role.
First published in Russian on RT’s Telegram.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
