How Trump and Putin have buried the G20
I dodged the snow by going with the PM to Rio, for the annual summit of the G20 leaders of the world’s most powerful nations
Although the sun was blazing, there was a chill, and not just because Putin is apparently threatening to nuke us now that we have followed Biden’s lead and allowed Kiev to fire our Storm Shadow missiles on to Russian soil.
It felt like an end, a sad one, to 25 years of consensus that global problems - global threats to our peace, prosperity and security - are best solved through dialogue and cooperation between leaders of east and west, north and south.
From combatting climate change, to cutting the cost of trade, to curbing the spread of novel viruses, to warding off financial meltdowns and limiting migration, it’s common sense that global solutions are more effective than national ones - because C02, money, microbes and desperate people are no respecters of national borders.
Common sense buried by two G20 leaders, neither of whom were in Rio.
One is Putin, who has shown contempt for the international rule of law, and stayed away presumably to minimise the risk he might be arrested for war crimes.
Keir Starmer inadvertently shone a light on how Putin has cleaved the world. The UK PM urged nations to double down - his words - on support for Ukraine, but the G20’s communique was an insipid call for peace and didn’t even call out Putin’s nuclear threats.
The other leader who has made the G20 seem like a pointless exercise in virtue signalling is the new geriatric on the block, Trump - who torched the G20 even before setting foot in the White House again.
All Trump’s core beliefs are antithetical to G20 nostrums. He despises free trade, he wants to loosen restrictions on Wall Street and crypto, he is a climate change denier, his approach to migration is to round up migrants and throw them out, his choice to be health secretary hates vaccines.
The soon-to-be-leader of the world’s most powerful nation is the living embodiment of the tragedy of our age - namely the divergence between politics and the growing risks to our way of life.
Voters want nationalists like Trump to be in charge. But his national solutions won’t even protect and enrich Americans, let alone the rest of us, from heatwaves, plagues and market crashes.
Globalisation was not harnessed enough and too many communities were hurt by it. But a return to raw nationalism will wreak serious harm to many more vulnerable people.
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