Russian presence at G-20 meeting reveals a fragmented global community
One likely attendee looks set to make this geopolitical party very uncomfortable: Vladimir Putin.
Following the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 and numerous allegations of atrocities committed by the Russian troops, the inclusion of the Russian president among the attendees has angered the United States and Europe. Though President Biden and other Western leaders have called for Russia to be thrown out of the event, Russian officials say that he plans to attend. It remains unclear if his critics could stop him.
Some experts believe the biggest impact of the dispute is not to Russian power, but to the relevance and function of the G-20 itself. Writing for Nikkei Asia last week, James Crabtree of IISS-Asia argued that the gathering in Bali would reflect the new reality of “a dysfunctional global order in which the West is set against China and Russia, with other major global emerging markets stuck awkwardly in the middle.”
The first test of this division was in Washington this week. Leaders from the world of economics are in town for the big International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, with G-20 finance ministers gathering Wednesday in the first ministerial meeting of the global grouping since the invasion. Moscow’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was in attendance — albeit, virtually — despite being under U.S. sanctions.
The Russian official received a frosty reception, deliberately coordinated between Western allies. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other U.S. officials walked out of the meeting when Siluanov began to talk. Ukrainian officials, attending the meeting as guests because the country is not a G-20 member, also walked out, as did officials from Canada and some European countries.
But the walkout also showed that Russia still has friends at the G-20. Beijing offered its backing to Russia last month, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin suggesting the country was an “important member” of the G-20 and stating that “no member has the right to remove another country as a member.” At least some of the finance ministers in Washington on Wednesday did not walk out.
Many countries are trying to stay neutral. Diplomats from Indonesia, the host nation this year, have offered noncommittal responses to the calls to remove Russia, suggesting it was not up to them but was an “obligation of the G20 Presidency to invite all members.” And few can argue with that.
Though Russia was removed from the Group of Eight after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, that grouping of wealthy countries was always an informal club, based more around a loosely shared view of the world rather than any firm criteria for entry. In many ways, Russia’s expulsion made more sense than its inclusion in the group in 1997 had.
The G-20, on the other hand, simply represents 19 of the world’s largest advanced and emerging economies and the European Union. There is no requirement to be a democracy or to respect human rights — members China and Saudi Arabia would probably meet neither criteria if so. There’s likely only one way that a member could be forcefully expelled: If all the other G-20 members agreed with it.
No country has ever been expelled from the G-20. Instead, they have been made to feel uncomfortable. In 2014, Putin left the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, early after facing hours of browbeating from Western leaders for his support of separatists in Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Four years later, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attended a G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires less than two months after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in Istanbul by agents from Riyadh, he stood at the far right of the traditional “family photo” of world leaders at the opening ceremony. “We don’t want him here, because of the assassination of the journalist, because of what the Saudis are doing in Yemen, because of all this death,” one protester in the Argentine capital told The Post.
Putin was one of the only world leaders to greet the Saudi prince, enthusiastically shaking his hand and laughing with him.
This sort of diplomatic discomfort is often fleeting. Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed was center stage at the 2019 G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan — literally standing in the center of the “family photo” and clutching the hands of President Trump. Saudi Arabia hosted the next G-20 meeting in 2020, though it was done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The world moved on quickly from Crimea; Putin was a key attendee of the 2015 meeting in Antalya, Turkey, in large part because of Moscow’s potential role in the Syrian war going on next door. The Financial Times noted that a meeting with the Russian president “was one of the hottest tickets in town” and that Putin had “moved from a scolded diplomatic outcast to a self-styled problem-solver the west cannot ignore.”
Russia is under far more diplomatic pressure now — more than any large nation has received in recent memory. It has faced three votes of censure at the United Nations General Assembly. Countries from around the world are donating arms to Ukraine, the country Russia views as a dangerous geopolitical foe. And it is under unprecedented economic sanctions from the United States and its allies, with countries representing more than half of the global economy.
But Russia is also a far more significant country than other pariahs. Before the hit of 2022, it had an economy roughly double the size of Saudi Arabia. It is a major military power, with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It is the largest country in the world, with the largest natural gas reserves in the world and one of the largest oil reserves.
The G-20 was formed in 1999 to create a global response to various economic crises. It’s hard to see how a truly global response to issues like pandemics or climate change could ever not include Russia. Some U.S. experts already say that the United States and its allies could form a separate grouping of countries that could tackle big issues, at least temporarily, without Russia and its allies, including China.
It may undermine the G-20. But its likely undermined already. Neither Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping attended last year’s event in Rome nor the United Nations climate summit that took place immediately after it, citing concern about the spread of the pandemic. Last month, when asked about the possibility that Russia would be expelled from the G-20, the official response from Moscow suggested a low opinion of the multilateral summit
“Nothing terrible will happen” if Putin doesn’t attend, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Sadly for the G-20, he is probably right.