PETER APPS: Would the world be a better place without the G7?
'Unless the G7 states – or those who live in them – can pull themselves together and define their values in the years and decades to come, they may be surprised by how much they still have to lose'
Meetings of the G8 group comprising the world’s richest nations used to be an exercise in well-choreographed consensus. The largely technocratic, centrist leadership of major countries would discuss how to tweak the global economy, help those they believed were being left behind and generally congratulate each other on their overlapping progressive and largely democratic values. The June 8-9 gathering in Quebec of the now G7 – Russia was suspended for annexing the Crimea in 2014 – could hardly have looked more different, much to the alarm and irritation of its host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. U.S. President Donald Trump alienated the other six nations by effectively starting a trade war, plus the meeting was be overshadowed by the growing worry that the new populist Italian government would throw the euro back into crisis.
It was unclear what could genuinely have been achieved at the summit. The Canadian agenda was in many respects a throwback to more predictable ...
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