July 11, 2017
by Pepe Escobar
A future history of the G20 in
Hamburg might start with a question posed by President Donald Trump – actually
his speechwriter – a few days earlier in Warsaw:
“The fundamental question of
our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”
What initially amounted to a
juvenile/reductionist clash of civilizations tirade written by Stephen Miller –
the same one who penned the “American carnage” epic on Trump’s inauguration as
well as the original Muslim travel ban – might actually have found some answers
in Hamburg.
The G20 as a whole was a
noxious military dystopia disguised as a global summit. “Welcome
to Hell” and other assorted protests, on multiple levels, were sort
of answering another Trump-in-Warsaw question; “Do we have the desire and the
courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who
would subvert and destroy it?”
While leaders worked the
cosseted rooms, gossiped, listened to the Ode to Joy and indulged
in the proverbial banquet, outside there was burning and looting; a sort of vicious, street-level
commentary not only about their concept of “civilization” but also
about Trump-in-Warsaw conveniently forgetting to say that it’s US and
NATO’s “policies” which end up generating the terror blowback that
threaten “civilization”, “our values” and our “will to survive”.
It will get worse. Starting
next year, a Bundeswehr/NATO joint production, a ghost town built in a
military training camp in Sachsen-Anhalt – incidentally, not far
from Hamburg — will become a prime site teaching urban warfare.
Austerity is far from over, and euro-peasants are bound to continue
rebelling en masse.
Multilateral or bust
The temptation is sweet
to identify the emerging new order as a Putin-Xi-Trump-Merkel world.
Not yet – and not yet as multilateral. What we’re seeing is the trappings
of multilateralism, but not yet the real deal — resisted by Washington
on myriad levels.
Frau Merkel wanted “her”
summit to focus on three crucial issues; climate change, free trade and
management of mass global migration – none of them particularly
appealing to Trump, a believer in a Darwinian approach to global
politics. So what the world got was an unexciting muddle through – inbuilt
contradictions included.
The Boss, once again, was
Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling on G-20 members to privilege an
open global economy; strengthen economic policy coordination; and be aware
of the enormous risks inherent in financial turbo-capitalism. He duly
called for a “multilateral trade regime”.
To back it up, China deftly
applied giant panda diplomacy – offering two of them, Meng Meng and Jiao
Qing, to the Berlin zoo as a friendship gesture. Merkel’s commentary
was not so cuddly; “Beijing views Europe as an Asian peninsula. We see it
differently.”
Well, for all practical
purposes what Chinese and German business interests do see further on down
the road is Eurasia integration – with the 21st century New Silk Roads,
a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) starting in eastern China and ending
in the Ruhr valley. Now that’s a practical definition of how a
“multilateral trade regime” should work. Add to it the just-clinched,
massive trade deal between the EU and Japan. For all practical purposes,
geopolitically and geoeconomically, Germany is moving East.
The BRICs nations – China,
India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa – met on the sidelines and, what
else, called for a “rules-based, transparent, non-discriminatory, open and
inclusive multilateral trading system.”
President Putin went
one up – stressing financial sanctions under political pretexts hurt
mutual confidence and damage the global economy. Everyone knows it, everyone
agrees, but that element of Washington’s “our way or the highway”
geoeconomic policy won’t vanish anytime soon.
And then we had the
anti-globalization group Attac criticizing Merkel for staging a “cynical
production”; as much as the chancellor was positioning herself as
“leader of the free world”, the German government “is actually pursuing an
aggressive export surplus strategy”. And here we had left/progressive Attac
totally aligned with Donald Trump.
We’ll always have Paris
The sherpas in Hamburg
were involved in their own brand of “Welcome to Hell”. Merkel’s
euphemism — “tense discussions” – masked a de facto mutiny
against the US sherpas on both climate change and trade, bitterly
fighting to the last minute a US clause on Washington “helping”
countries access clean fossil fuels.
In the end we got the
proverbial muddle through. Here’s the paragraph in the final communiqué
that singles out the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the
Paris agreement:
“We take note of the
decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the
Paris Agreement. The United States of America announced it will
immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined
contribution and affirms its strong commitment to an approach that lowers
emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.
The United States of America states it will endeavor to work closely
with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more
cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy
sources, given the importance of energy access and security in their
nationally determined contributions.”
Directly following that
paragraph is this one, concerning the G-19:
“The Leaders of the other
G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible. We reiterate the
importance of fulfilling the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries
in providing means of implementation including financial resources
to assist developing countries with respect to both mitigation
and adaptation actions in line with Paris outcomes and note the
OECD’s report “Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth”. We
reaffirm our strong commitment to the Paris Agreement, moving swiftly
towards its full implementation in accordance with the principle
of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances and,
to this end, we agree to the G20 Hamburg Climate and Energy Action
Plan for Growth as set out in the Annex.”
In Hamburg, the Trump
Organization was all over the place. First Daughter Ivanka even took Daddy’s chair at the forum
for fleeting moments while he was away on bilaterals. Yet she did
perform on substance, unveiling a $300 million program at the World
Bank providing loans, mentoring and access to the financial markets
for women-led start-ups in the developing world. Both the White House
and the World Bank credited Ivanka for the idea.
Away from hellish issues,
under a sunnier perspective, wind and solar power are set to become
the cheapest form of power generation across the G20 by 2030.
Already in 2017, over a third of German electricity has come
from wind, solar, biomass and hydro, at 35% (in the US is only 15%).
So Germany is not green, yet – but it’s getting there fast.
In Hamburg, Merkel collected a
win on climate change; a relative win on trade (with the US
self-excluded); but a miserable loss on mass migration. No NATO power
at the G-20 would have had the balls to publicly connect the dots
between ghastly US/NATO wars in Afghanistan, Libya, the Syrian proxy
war generating millions of refugees for whom the only hope is Europe.
Geopolitically, Washington is
de facto cutting off Germany while England has zero power left. The Trump
administration considers both Germany and Japan as enemies who are
destroying US industry through currency rigging. In the medium term, it’s
fair to expect Germany to slowly but surely re-approach Russia.
As much as Washington’s unipolar moment may be fading fast, the Game
of Thrones in the G-20 realm is just beginning.
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