Incidents such as Angela Merkel's airplane technical failure, Mohammed bin
Salman wandering in Buenos Aires and his compulsory stay at the Residence of the
Saudi Embassy in Argentina, Trump's cold behavior with the President of
Argentina, mistaking the Chinese President with another by the President of
Argentina and the minor 3.5-magnitude earthquake in Buenos Aires, taking place
less than one day before the summit, were among the sidelines of this summit.
However, the main question about the "philosophy of holding the G20 Summit" and
the "outcome of this meeting" remains unanswered!
The fact is that the G20 members have been meeting several times during the
Obama presidency and after the economic crisis in the West. Even at that time
(during which there was no barrier called "Trump" at the White House), the top
20 world leaders could not come to a collective and credible solution to solve
the existing economic crises.
More than ten years have passed since the beginning of the economic crisis in
the United States and Europe, and European officials continue to call for the
adoption of austerity policies as the only way to keep the status quo. This is
in spite of the fact that many of the economists and politicians in the West are
pessimistic about the transition from this economic crisis which is ruling over
the international system.
At the moment, in addition to the underlying crisis affecting the G20, we are
witnessing another crisis called "the presence of Trump in the White House"! The
U.S. President explicitly rejects the multilateralism considered by the G20
member states and violates international trade law by unilateralism. Currently,
the main concern of G20 members is how to confront Trump's protectionist
policies and orders.
In the meantime, there is essentially no opportunity for convergence among G20
members to face the current economic crisis in the international system.
Numerous problems and damages had hardly hit the G20 member states'
infrastructure as well as their superstructure, and it should be acknowledged
that the top 20 economic powers in the world have not yet decided how to deal
with these two types of problems.
Finally, it should be concluded that the recent G20 summit has become a symbol
of the lack of cooperation between the participating members in the
international system, rather than a symbol of convergence of the world's most
powerful economic players.
The next point to be noted here is that the secret security and political
equations among some of the G20 players (including the membership of some of
these countries in NATO) has severely shadowed their economic relations. This
has led many of the G20 member states' decisions to be influenced by other
factors and relations.
At any rate, it was quite clear that this costly summit was of no significant
role in solving the economic crisis of the world today, and except for some news
stories which we heard about the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, there was no
remarkable outcome. Without a doubt, unless the tensions between the Group 20
member states are resolved, this failure will remain strong, even if Trump
leaves the White House forever!
HANIF GHAFARI
Source: TehranTimes