Now that the United States and its allies are locked in a zero-sum power struggle with China, Russia, and others, achieving an international consensus on most issues has become increasingly difficult. The question now is whether the world's premier multilateral organization can still find common ground.
PS Quarterly regularly features predictions by leading thinkers and uniquely positioned commentators on a topic of global concern. At a time when great-power rivalries are intensifying and frustrating international efforts to address shared problems such as climate change, pandemics, forced migration, and debt distress, many are wondering if consistent, effective multilateralism is still possible. With this growing concern in mind, we asked contributors to respond to the following prompt:
A decade and a half after emerging as the premier forum for coordinated policy responses to global problems, the G20 is no longer fit for purpose. Agree or disagree?
I disagree. The G20 is the only diplomatic game in town. One obvious reason for this is that the United Nations Security Council has completely failed to get its act together on a broad range of issues (and not just the war in Ukraine). Other UN agencies such as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice, and the Human Rights Council tend to fare only slightly better.
Whatever its shortcomings, the G20 remains the most representative grouping in the world, and that feature bestows on it a degree of legitimacy that others lack. The group emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 global financial crisis with the widely accepted mission of facilitating international macroeconomic coordination. Since then, its brief has expanded to include a host of issues such as sovereign debt, the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, and food security – to name just a few.
Even on political and security issues, where the G20 does not have a direct remit, it has served as an effective platform for making governments’ views known and occasionally building a consensus. The November 2022 G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration was a case in point. Remarkably, it included a clear-cut paragraph condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and demanding a “complete and unconditional withdrawal” from Ukrainian territory. That is far more than the UN Security Council (where Russia wields a veto) could ever accomplish.
If the international community could ever muster the political will to reform the Security Council and its membership, the outcome inevitably would look like what the G20 already is.
Saying that the G20 is unfit for purpose is correct, now that the consensus needed to make it an effective forum no longer exists. When great and rising powers clash over national security, fundamental foreign-policy goals, and the shape of globalization, collective action becomes all but impossible, stalling any forward momentum established earlier. That describes the situation today. Now that the United States, Russia, and China are so at odds, one can hardly expect a G20 consensus on anything substantive. Against the backdrop of a trade war, a tech war, a new cold war, and a shooting war, the G20 becomes merely a series of meetings, with each producing ever-longer and more torturously worded communiqués.
Make no mistake: this is a worrisome development. We need world powers and other influential actors to advocate a return to coordinated, cooperative, and inclusive solutions to shared problems such as pandemics, climate change, migration, and much else. Ultimately, however, the G20 can work productively only when leading powers concur on goals and outcomes. At a minimum, there will need to be peace in Ukraine and a marked improvement in US-China relations before the G20 can lead effectively again.
We may be waiting for quite a long time. Meanwhile, many global problems will get worse, and the associated costs will continue to mount.
Sadly, there is a strong case that the G20 is no longer fit for purpose. This is a depressing conclusion for someone who celebrated the group’s arrival on the scene in 2008, owing to its role in bringing China and other so-called emerging economies to the center of global policymaking. Having created the BRIC acronym, it was easy for me to see the rise of the G20 as an eminently logical, mature, and overdue development. Though the G20 is large and comprises many divergent interests, I saw it as a vast improvement over the G7. The Western advanced economies comprising the G7 may include some important countries, but their combined GDP as a share of the global economy was already heading below 50% back at the turn of the century.
Moreover, despite its large membership, the G20 made some big, important decisions in its 2008-10 heyday, when it seemed poised to address all the world’s biggest problems, including by creating the Financial Stability Board and pushing through a reallocation of voting power at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Yet even before Donald Trump appeared on the scene in 2016, Xi Jinping was beginning to take China in a different direction, and Vladimir Putin’s belligerence had already resulted in Russia’s ouster from the G8. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have curtailed the G20’s effectiveness even more radically.
Somehow, the international community must figure out a way to revive the G20. Ideological differences notwithstanding, it is still the best option we have for balancing representativeness with policymaking effectiveness.
The G20 is the premier global forum for economic-policy cooperation in pursuit of strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth. That is what the group committed to at its Pittsburgh Summit in 2009, and its basic mission still stands. Cross-border problems simply cannot be addressed without policy cooperation, and we need a forum where the leaders of the world’s largest economies can meet in a relatively unstructured setting to discuss and propose solutions.
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Over the years, the G20 has succeeded in providing a space for candid dialogue and even rapprochement. Recall that last year’s Bali summit also served as the occasion for Xi Jinping and Joe Biden to hold their first in-person meeting since the latter became president. This small but meaningful breakthrough was not the first of its kind. At the Cannes summit in 2011, G20 leaders threw out the carefully crafted official agenda to concentrate instead on Europe’s exploding sovereign-debt crisis. The G20 is at its best when it is managing international emergencies.
Yes, the group has been less effective as a permanent forum for economic affairs. But that is because it was established in response to crises – the Asian financial crisis and then the global financial crisis. Furthermore, its agenda is reset every year when a new country takes over as rotating president. As the war in Ukraine has put a wedge between member states, it has become more difficult to reach a consensus even on basic terminology. Does this mean that the G20 has lost its mojo? During this period of heightened geopolitical tensions, the fact that member states’ leaders are still willing to engage with each other and meet once a year suggests that the forum still has an important role to play.
I disagree with the proposition. The G20 is imperfect but necessary, and it can be improved. Its main task is to be an orchestrator, a job that has become more important as countries’ biggest problems – including climate change, food insecurity, pandemics, and migration – have become increasingly interlinked. In this context, solving one problem requires complementary efforts to address other problems, too. The G20 is uniquely positioned to conduct the orchestra of international agencies working toward solutions, because it does not have an organizational staff and form of its own. Rather, it sits above existing organizations, and it has proven capable of bringing together the countries that are essential to making multilateral efforts work.
The G20 was formed two decades ago because greater representativeness had become indispensable: G7 leaders recognized that they could not resolve emerging-economy financial crises on their own. They needed a broader range of information and perspectives, and that meant engaging directly with the countries that were most affected. This process currently involves ad hoc invitations to national and organizational leaders, but it could be systematized to link regions and country groupings (such as the African Union) without making meetings too large and unwieldy. While many observers tend to focus on who has been invited to each summit, a more important question is whether all those who are included can play an equally meaningful role in shaping outcomes. African countries, for example, must first forge a common position. The rest must then listen.
Finally, there is too much focus on who wins the contest to lead multilateral global-governance organizations. But how a leader performs (and at whose behest) is far more important for the international system. Here, the G20 could monitor performance, reporting to all countries on how heads of organizations are doing, and recommending whether they should be reappointed. Again, this outcome would not be perfect; but it would be better than leaving such decisions to one or two countries. Such a change would reaffirm the G20’s usefulness in this age of “polycrisis.”
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PS Quarterly regularly features predictions by leading thinkers and uniquely positioned commentators on a topic of global concern. At a time when great-power rivalries are intensifying and frustrating international efforts to address shared problems such as climate change, pandemics, forced migration, and debt distress, many are wondering if consistent, effective multilateralism is still possible. With this growing concern in mind, we asked contributors to respond to the following prompt:
A decade and a half after emerging as the premier forum for coordinated policy responses to global problems, the G20 is no longer fit for purpose. Agree or disagree?
Mohan Kumar
I disagree. The G20 is the only diplomatic game in town. One obvious reason for this is that the United Nations Security Council has completely failed to get its act together on a broad range of issues (and not just the war in Ukraine). Other UN agencies such as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice, and the Human Rights Council tend to fare only slightly better.
Whatever its shortcomings, the G20 remains the most representative grouping in the world, and that feature bestows on it a degree of legitimacy that others lack. The group emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 global financial crisis with the widely accepted mission of facilitating international macroeconomic coordination. Since then, its brief has expanded to include a host of issues such as sovereign debt, the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, and food security – to name just a few.
Even on political and security issues, where the G20 does not have a direct remit, it has served as an effective platform for making governments’ views known and occasionally building a consensus. The November 2022 G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration was a case in point. Remarkably, it included a clear-cut paragraph condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and demanding a “complete and unconditional withdrawal” from Ukrainian territory. That is far more than the UN Security Council (where Russia wields a veto) could ever accomplish.
If the international community could ever muster the political will to reform the Security Council and its membership, the outcome inevitably would look like what the G20 already is.
Stuart P.M. Mackintosh
Saying that the G20 is unfit for purpose is correct, now that the consensus needed to make it an effective forum no longer exists. When great and rising powers clash over national security, fundamental foreign-policy goals, and the shape of globalization, collective action becomes all but impossible, stalling any forward momentum established earlier. That describes the situation today. Now that the United States, Russia, and China are so at odds, one can hardly expect a G20 consensus on anything substantive. Against the backdrop of a trade war, a tech war, a new cold war, and a shooting war, the G20 becomes merely a series of meetings, with each producing ever-longer and more torturously worded communiqués.
Make no mistake: this is a worrisome development. We need world powers and other influential actors to advocate a return to coordinated, cooperative, and inclusive solutions to shared problems such as pandemics, climate change, migration, and much else. Ultimately, however, the G20 can work productively only when leading powers concur on goals and outcomes. At a minimum, there will need to be peace in Ukraine and a marked improvement in US-China relations before the G20 can lead effectively again.
We may be waiting for quite a long time. Meanwhile, many global problems will get worse, and the associated costs will continue to mount.
Jim O’Neill
Sadly, there is a strong case that the G20 is no longer fit for purpose. This is a depressing conclusion for someone who celebrated the group’s arrival on the scene in 2008, owing to its role in bringing China and other so-called emerging economies to the center of global policymaking. Having created the BRIC acronym, it was easy for me to see the rise of the G20 as an eminently logical, mature, and overdue development. Though the G20 is large and comprises many divergent interests, I saw it as a vast improvement over the G7. The Western advanced economies comprising the G7 may include some important countries, but their combined GDP as a share of the global economy was already heading below 50% back at the turn of the century.
Moreover, despite its large membership, the G20 made some big, important decisions in its 2008-10 heyday, when it seemed poised to address all the world’s biggest problems, including by creating the Financial Stability Board and pushing through a reallocation of voting power at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Yet even before Donald Trump appeared on the scene in 2016, Xi Jinping was beginning to take China in a different direction, and Vladimir Putin’s belligerence had already resulted in Russia’s ouster from the G8. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have curtailed the G20’s effectiveness even more radically.
Somehow, the international community must figure out a way to revive the G20. Ideological differences notwithstanding, it is still the best option we have for balancing representativeness with policymaking effectiveness.
Paola Subacchi
The G20 is the premier global forum for economic-policy cooperation in pursuit of strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth. That is what the group committed to at its Pittsburgh Summit in 2009, and its basic mission still stands. Cross-border problems simply cannot be addressed without policy cooperation, and we need a forum where the leaders of the world’s largest economies can meet in a relatively unstructured setting to discuss and propose solutions.
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Access every new PS commentary, our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content – including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More – and the full PS archive.
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Over the years, the G20 has succeeded in providing a space for candid dialogue and even rapprochement. Recall that last year’s Bali summit also served as the occasion for Xi Jinping and Joe Biden to hold their first in-person meeting since the latter became president. This small but meaningful breakthrough was not the first of its kind. At the Cannes summit in 2011, G20 leaders threw out the carefully crafted official agenda to concentrate instead on Europe’s exploding sovereign-debt crisis. The G20 is at its best when it is managing international emergencies.
Yes, the group has been less effective as a permanent forum for economic affairs. But that is because it was established in response to crises – the Asian financial crisis and then the global financial crisis. Furthermore, its agenda is reset every year when a new country takes over as rotating president. As the war in Ukraine has put a wedge between member states, it has become more difficult to reach a consensus even on basic terminology. Does this mean that the G20 has lost its mojo? During this period of heightened geopolitical tensions, the fact that member states’ leaders are still willing to engage with each other and meet once a year suggests that the forum still has an important role to play.
Ngaire Woods
I disagree with the proposition. The G20 is imperfect but necessary, and it can be improved. Its main task is to be an orchestrator, a job that has become more important as countries’ biggest problems – including climate change, food insecurity, pandemics, and migration – have become increasingly interlinked. In this context, solving one problem requires complementary efforts to address other problems, too. The G20 is uniquely positioned to conduct the orchestra of international agencies working toward solutions, because it does not have an organizational staff and form of its own. Rather, it sits above existing organizations, and it has proven capable of bringing together the countries that are essential to making multilateral efforts work.
The G20 was formed two decades ago because greater representativeness had become indispensable: G7 leaders recognized that they could not resolve emerging-economy financial crises on their own. They needed a broader range of information and perspectives, and that meant engaging directly with the countries that were most affected. This process currently involves ad hoc invitations to national and organizational leaders, but it could be systematized to link regions and country groupings (such as the African Union) without making meetings too large and unwieldy. While many observers tend to focus on who has been invited to each summit, a more important question is whether all those who are included can play an equally meaningful role in shaping outcomes. African countries, for example, must first forge a common position. The rest must then listen.
Finally, there is too much focus on who wins the contest to lead multilateral global-governance organizations. But how a leader performs (and at whose behest) is far more important for the international system. Here, the G20 could monitor performance, reporting to all countries on how heads of organizations are doing, and recommending whether they should be reappointed. Again, this outcome would not be perfect; but it would be better than leaving such decisions to one or two countries. Such a change would reaffirm the G20’s usefulness in this age of “polycrisis.”