Too much of text and too little context is the surest way of misreading major diplomatic events. Three critical long-term trends have stood out from India’s year-long stewardship of the G20. First, the divisions among the great powers have sharpened since the Bali summit late last year, but India has managed to prevent them from derailing the main agenda of the G20, to deepen coordination on managing the global economy. Unlike in Bali, Russia and China refused in Delhi to let the G20 adopt a resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion. What Delhi did was to craft language acceptable to Moscow and Beijing while emphasising the centrality of respecting the territorial integrity of states and recalling the resounding condemnation of Russia’s actions at Bali and an overwhelming majority of the United Nations General Assembly. This has helped preserve the unity of the G20, at least for now, and advance on a range of other global issues.
The second question is: Why did the West accept dilution of the Bali language in Delhi? The West recognised it was losing the narrative on Ukraine in the Global South. Although a majority of the developing countries voted with the West on deploring the Russian invasion of Ukraine and demanded its immediate reversal, they were hesitant to back the Western sanctions against Russia and advocated a greater focus on the impact of the Ukraine war on their societies already battered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than make Ukraine a make-or-break issue at the G20 summit, the West chose to work with Delhi and the emerging powers to devote considerable attention to the concerns of the Global South. The US willingness to compromise was also rooted in the appreciation that China presented a more dangerous and enduring threat to the West than the Russian challenge. A corollary to that is the importance of the US getting closer to emerging powers like India in competing with China in the Global South.
