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The G20 Bali Summit: Coping with Geopolitical Crisis and Saving Global Governance
Published November 29, 2022
Publication Source: IFANS
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Global leaders from 20 countries met in Bali, Indonesia, for the 17th G20 Summit from November 15-16, 2022. The G20 Summit deserves attention for two reasons: First, it plays a significant role in finding effective solutions to the challenges of our time, and second, it affirms the principles upon which international relations operate. Since the G20 countries account for 80 percent of the global GDP, the resolution of global economic crises in today’s interdependent world relies on their capabilities and cooperation. And the G20 Summit reaffirms the principles, leadership, and the alignments and divisions among countries that shape the contours of international relations. If G20 countries could cooperate under shared goals and coordinate efforts to resolve an array of global economic crises, the G20 Summit can produce desirable outcomes and remain relevant as global premier governance.

For the past 15 years, the G20 Summit has recorded both successes and failures depending on the combination of its substantive effectiveness and operational principles. The G20 Summit was, at first, successful under U.S. leadership and rules-based multilateralism in preventing the 2008 global financial crisis from morphing into a crisis as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s. On the other hand, as President Trump refused to assume the premier forum’s leadership in 2017, the G20 Summit itself and the rules-based multilateralism were destabilized and the summit failed to function as a crisis management mechanism during the Covid19 pandemic.

It appeared that the G20 Summit returned to normalcy in 2021 when President Biden took office with his favorite campaign tagline, “America is Back.” However, the G20 is put to the test again in 2022. Since February, international relations have been plunged into crisis, a situation being dubbed Cold War 2.0. The 2022 G20 Summit was held in the face of unprecedented global crises, and its process and deliverables signaled a possible change in the principles upon which international relations have operated thus far.

This paper was published by IFANS. IFANS retains the copyright to this paper and invites readers to share and cite the work with attribution to both the author(s) and IFANS