From G20 to Apec, great-power obstinacy is strangling plans for economic recovery

Recent summits suggest the US and its allies will be in an extended tussle soon with the China-Russia partnership – an impasse that will hit geo-economic agendas across the world and doom the climate fight

C. Uday Bhaskar

Published: 3:30am, 28 Nov 2022

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Notwithstanding its raison d’être of “economic cooperation”, the 21-member Apec grouping released a statement after its recent Bangkok summit that highlighted the prevailing geopolitical tensions that have led to destruction, displacements and disruptions across the world.

This is in keeping with the discordant sentiment that animated the Group of 20 summit held in Bali just days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

While the focus of the G20 summit was overshadowed by the first in-person meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, and the thorny US-China relationship, the anxiety about the war in Ukraine was palpable in Bali, where in a rare show of solidarity, Moscow was cautioned to exercise nuclear restraint.

This censure was agreed in the joint statement despite the divergent political, strategic and security orientations of the members of the G20. There were varying views about how Moscow was to be held culpable for launching the war in Ukraine and this dissonance was noted in Bali. Apart from the host Indonesia, major nations that have not hectored Moscow in public include China and India.

This pattern was also evident at the Apec summit, as attendees deftly navigated the contentious Ukraine war issue.

The Apec statement noted that, “Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy”. But it also added that there are “other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions” – a reference to China, among others.

The concluding line of the paragraph conveyed pithily the global predicament: “Recognising that Apec is not the forum to resolve security issues, we acknowledge that security issues can have significant consequences for the global economy.”

This assertion is true. Intractable geopolitical discord is the leitmotif of current international relations, with the global geo-economic agenda held hostage to major power obduracy about remaining focused on security issues. Thus, Russia seeks to interpret the war in Ukraine not as a war of imprudent choice, but as one imposed by a mendacious US-led Nato.

But few nations uncritically endorse the “special operations” launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Along another vector, the US and China are locked in an adversarial relationship and the Biden administration has taken the Trump template to an even more severe level of economic and trade sanctions. The semiconductor chip war is a case in point.

And at another level of intra-Asia relevance, Chinese military assertiveness is seen with increasing unease by both India and Japan.

01:43

Japan’s foreign minister to visit China after leaders Fumio Kishida and Xi Jinping meet at Apec

The Apec and G20 summits point to an exigency – one in which the US and its allies or partners could soon find themselves in an extended tussle with the China-Russia partnership. Biden’s clarion call to democracies to band together against authoritarian states provides the ideological divide – despite the glaring contradictions with Washington selectively accepting some authoritarian states while ostracising others.

Speaking at the Apec summit, Xi cautioned that: “The Cold War mentality, hegemonism, unilateralism and protectionism are mounting. Acts that distort international norms, disrupt economic linkages, inflate conflicts in regions, and impede development cooperation are all too common. All these pose a serious challenge to peace and development in the Asia-Pacific.”

Paradoxically, there is a mirror image of China among members of the democratic cluster and seeking “hegemonism” is the principal accusation.

Despite challenges, China’s quest for global leadership must end in peace

In summary, all the major power geopolitical trend lines point to an impasse, wherein the geo-economic agenda will be adversely affected across the world – and the more vulnerable populations will simply have to bear the brunt of deteriorating human security indicators.

To add to the bleak scenario that shrouds the year, the recently concluded COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt drew attention (as did such earlier summits) to the planetary amber lights that are flashing on global warming and climate change.

While there was no breakthrough to the carbon emissions challenge, the slender silver lining to the very dark cloud was the agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh to set up a loss and damage fund to enable the most affected developing nations to deal with the climate disasters they have had to cope with.

03:15

COP27 delivers historic global warming ‘loss and damage’ fund, but no progress on fossil fuels

But this fund is a work in progress, and hopefully, next year’s UN climate meeting in Dubai will see the initiative come to fruition. That the geopolitical challenge, with its high visibility and emotive salience in the domestic political calculus, will always trump the more complex and long-term planetary threat is one of the depressing tenets of the contemporary period.

The war in Ukraine is illustrative. US funding support for Ukraine since the war began in end-February has crossed the US$100 billion mark and it is expected that other European nations and US allies will continue to sustain the support given to Kyiv.

Even as the geopolitical compulsion continues to stifle geo-economic aspirations, it is possible that the irreversible planetary threat, aptly symbolised by the horrifying vision of an ice-free Arctic by 2040, will doom humanity in an unexpected manner.

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi