-Analysis-
PARIS — Shortly before the European elections, a diplomat friend pointed out to that we had little political visibility on a global scale beyond November 5 — referring, of course, to the date of the U.S. presidential election, and the radical choice that voters will have to make between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Since last Sunday, that horizon has shrunk even further, with the announcement of decisive snap legislative elections in France, on June 30 and July 7. Such is the backdrop of the G7 being held in Italy.
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The last time the world experienced such uncertainty, this diplomat reminded me, was the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. A world of negative certainties vanished, with all the risks that an unprepared liberation entails; borders, nuclear weapons and ethnic minorities are all issues that posed risks. But this time of vast uncertainty was managed by sufficiently reasonable leaders — François Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush, father, Helmut Kohl — and had a positive outcome.
“Global directorate” no more
Today is different. The world is plunged into uncertainty amid two major wars, in Ukraine and Gaza, and the great powers are in engaged in full geopolitical rivalry. There is no longer a pilot in the plane.
The G7 has fallen from its pedestal.
There was a time when there was debate over whether the G7 had become the “global directorate”: the seven countries represented there had a monopoly on power, facing an economically struggling communist world, and an underdeveloped Third World — not yet called the Global South. In 1989, the G7 marking the bicentennial of the French Revolution, held in Paris, was one of those triumphant moments, welcoming as it did Mikhail Gorbachev as a guest star of sorts, on the verge of gaining a seat at the table.
Today, with the rise of China and India, the G7 no longer gathers the world’s leading economies (the group’s share in the world economy has fallen from 50% to 30% in four decades). It has become an exclusively Western club, still rich and powerful, but fallen from its pedestal.
An unprecedented moment
The declining hegemony of the G7 is now also challenged by revisionist powers, China and Russia, and by the egalitarian demands of the South. The Western model itself is contested from within.
And this is what’s at stake in the upcoming American and French elections, with the rise of sovereignist forces, breaking away from the liberal, internationalist model that dominated until recently.
We are not in 1989, with walls falling all around us.
Donald Trump, Brexit and now the far-right surge in France and Europe all have in common — although in different contexts — a desire to end the dominant model of globalization. G7 leaders realized this too late and are yet to respond convincingly to this dual challenge, both internal and external.
This is what makes the aforementioned uncertainty so perilous: Assaults from authoritarian or dictatorial regimes are only met with a loss of internal legitimacy. We are not in 1989, with walls falling all around us; but in an unprecedented moment, where no one can tell what kind of world we are entering. The fragile G7 in Italy reflects this dizzying moment.
