Meeting in an atomic bombed city, the G7 Summit ominously warned Russia not to resort to nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Ironically, before that bomb was dropped on September 6, 1945, a retreating Japan even discussed peace with the Soviet Union (based on a 1941 agreement both signed). That bombing had at least two intentions: to warn the world not to attack the United States ever again; and deter the Soviet Union, which was expanding across East Europe, from invading West Europe. The new superior U.S. weapon threatened the adversary for sure and cajoled Japan, but bombing unarmed civilians was still barbaric.
Identifying China and Russia as villains, the G7 Summit unfolded against Japan’s most belligerent foreign policy platform since World War II, something at odds with the September 2, 1945 surrender agreement. Japan doubled military spending from 1 per cent of its GDP last year to 2 per cent this year. With 50+ billion USD more in the kitty (that is, a full one-quarter higher than in 2022), a defeated World War II country now boasts the world’s third highest military budget.
The G7 Summit also coincided with the U.S. economy tanking. President Joe Biden had to postpone a QUAD meeting and visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea to return home to negotiate a deficit budget ceiling extension beyond the June 1, 2023 deadline for the world’s largest economy. Though a compromise has been reached, the problem has only been deflected: today’s deficits of 31 trillion USD (almost the size of the annual GDP figure) are expected to double by mid-century (the projected annual GDP figure will also double by then since senior-citizens will also grow from 60 million to almost 100 million in the world’s most expensive country for medical treatment). Since the near-1 trillion USD spent on military expenditures last year was the largest item in federal spending, the 1.4 trillion USD deficits this year feed the Republican ire against expenses for Ukraine.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) growth is slated, given how it now eyes the Pacific Ocean by wanting to open an office in Japan. Since Japan and China hold 2 trillion USD of US debts (that is, over one-quarter of U.S Treasury securities), any eastward NATO expansion may be not only economically suicidal, but militarily catastrophic. When it expanded towards the Ural Mountain, an alarmed Russia seized Crimea. Created in 1949 to protect the Atlantic seaboard, NATO interests are now global. It is scoping Japan, red-flagging China, and by permitting two defeated World War II countries, Germany and Japan, to spike military expenditures, also making military alignment the global sine qua non of ‘western’ cooperation.
This is what the ‘democracy’ call was utilised to do once the Cold War ended, especially against dictators who helped the United States win the Cold War. Many were Muslims: Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Where is democracy in these countries now? Conjoining unsatisfactory democratisation consequences with climbing military expenditures only pushes the world from bad to worse. We already see pre-emptive NATO policies displacing traditional defensive orientation for offensive posturing, while pre-conditioning democracy to ‘western’ cooperation seems to only breed more populist governments.
If China’s Belt Road Initiative posed the economic threat from 2013, why could this not have been tackled through the self-advertised instrument of market competition now that China has embraced neo-liberalism of sorts. Likewise, must Japan militarise to counter the creation of South China Sea islands without even sitting down for negotiations? With China, Japan, and the United States being each other’s major trading partners, should not negotiations have been fully explored before drawing the guns? Punishing China for supporting Russia raises another question: why is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, another Russia supporter, being treated more royally? Added up, the fraying post-World War II order established under U.S. leadership suddenly resembles the chaotic World War I aftermath.
As in the 1920s-30s, populism is growing in leaps and bounds in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States today. Bred partly by uncontrolled immigration, populist pressures now carry a spillover effect, making each day more unpredictable than the one before. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s bed-rock low popularity recovered from the moment his foreign policy became more aggressive, nationalistic, and militaristic this year. In short, idiosyncratic domestic politics have never been known to produce a global leader.
Outside the ‘west’, old and young populist leaders ignore G7 mandates. It is not just the long power-grip of Bashar Assad, Recep Tayyab Erdo?an, Narendra Modi, and Mohammad bin Salman in Syria, Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia, but new entrants like General Munir in Pakistan (crusader against Imran Khan), or strewn across conflict-ridden African countries, also rock the boat. Volodymr Zelenskyy, the Ukranian President could be added. He takes the Holywood touch to summits and ‘western’ capitals as President Ronald Reagan would do, but his battle-ground leadership is being questioned by other populist leaders, in Prague, Warsaw, and other East European countries in a way Reagan’s was not. The bottom-line is this: more domestic pressures than global will have to be navigated to make global issues relevant against the growing proportion of economically and socially disenchanted people. If the Hiroshima mandates become a subset of restructuring NATO membership, global leadership will vanish.
Too many contending and urgent global issues need experts or a commanding figure for resolution. Originally this was anchored upon pivotal economic issues. Created by the breakdown of Bretton Woods and the petroleum price quadrupling of the early 1970s, the key mandates today are non-economic, predatory, and punitive for long-term cooperation to survive. Even the Hiroshima G7 Summit acknowledges this: more than 7 seats were needed on the discussion table since other ‘friends’ were needed to clinch issues: the European Union leaders, Modi, Zelenskyy, and so forth were invited. In the presence of Russia-supporting Modi and Zelenskyy fighting Russia, the structure of peaceful accommodation was there, but stomped by Manichaean expectations and end-reports. Sounding like the 1920s, again?
At that time, in spite of a number of Briands, Chamberlains, Clemenceaus, and Kelloggs pitching high-velocity diplomacy, war-drumming prevailed. Tojo Hideki in Japan, Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Benito Mussolini in Italy ruled the day. Manchuria and Munich became the Rubicon, Poland and Pearl Harbor the casus belli. G7 leadership, Hiroshima, and Ukraine may be today’s equivalents.
Globalising the Ukrainian War projects Russia’s underlying fear of NATO membership extending to Crimea (where it had fought ‘western’ powers for two centuries before), adds Finland and Sweden as NATO neighbours in Russia’s north, fans extant European populism through East European refugees, and spikes both global fuel prices through gas-supply denials to Germany and food prices through Ukranian grain export controls. Is the pathway to the 1930s Depression being resurrected in other ways today? G7 prescriptions may be a bridge too far for an increasingly reluctant rest-of-the-world.
With elections coming up between now and 2025 in pivotal countries (Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, India, and the United States), rhetoric obscures palliatives, jingoism camouflages harmonising efforts, and a ‘cry of the wolves’ substitutes for an impotent lead-wolf. Take it or leave it, but world leaders could have done much, much better.
Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, Department of Global Studies & Governance.
Independent University, Bangladesh.
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