G7 - More show than relevance

This year's annual G7 summit was held in Germany's Bavaria, hosted by Germany's Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz. For him himself as well as for Japan's prime minister Fumio Kishida for the first time, for G7 for the 48th one. This political and media spectacle costed Germany approximate 170 millions Euro.

Leaders of G7 members at the summit. Source: VNA

The leaders of all G7 members - Germany as host, the US, France, Italy, Canada, United Kingdom and Japan - were there in-person. Representatives of the EU and some other non-G7-member states were invited to participate. All G7 members except Japan are Nato members and will gather again at the Nato summit in Spain right after the G7 summit. Therefore, many statements and announcements from G7 will be heard at the Nato summit afterwards.

The G7 summit agenda was very ambitious: world economic growth, inflation, high energy prices, food shortages, pandemic, climate change and of course world security, especially Russia's military actions in Ukraine and the West's response. The Group of Seven want to solve all present problems of this modern world.

The Group is full of self-confidence and firmly believe that they had enough capabilities to find resolutions to all above-mentioned problems. But it were too beautiful to be true. Going in depth with reading the summit final declaration and analysing statements and gestures of all summit participants, nobody could not be impressed by the creativity and fantasy of the G7 member's leaders. They have had proposals and solutions for every problem. They knew how to stage their polite show. And they have strategical versions for the future of our world. They demonstrated their unity. Their messages to the outside world were the West is still  alive and strong, united and capable of acting despite China's rising and Russia's challenging, despite intensifying competition of political systems throughout the world.

But it is typical and traditional in the world of G7 that all happenings at the G7 annual summit would quickly fall into oblivion. G7 always lacked determinations and concrete plans to implement what was decided or agreed upon during the summit. This year, G7 pledged to raise $600 billion in private and public funds over five years to finance needed infrastructure in developing countries and counter China's older, multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road project, relaunching the newly renamed "Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. G7 would like to impose embargo on Russia's export of gold and a price cap for Russia' oel. G7 committed to providing money for food security. And G7 declared war against Russia because of Russia's military engagements in Ukraine. All sounded very well. But their feasibility is more than questionable and the final effect is more than uncertain. For many years, G7 has been more show than relevance. This year, the G7 summit and G7 after its summit will obviously be not different.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by Ambassador Tran Duc Mau are of his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Hanoi Times.