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U.S., Western Agenda for G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting Doomed To Fail

July 7, 2022 (EIRNS)—In typical arrogant fashion, the U.S. and its Western allies had every intention of barreling into the July 7-8 meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia, to lay down the law (or, better, “rules”) and try to align developing nations against Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine” and against China as well. Indonesia, as this year’s president of the G20, is hosting the meeting, strongly backed by India, which will take over the presidency in December for 2023. Also attending are other developing nations that have remained neutral on the Russia/Ukraine conflict.

Indonesia and India have indicated that they want the meeting to focus on multilateralism and the real challenges they and other developing nations face—economic dislocation and food and energy security among them. A number of bilateral meetings have already taken place today, including between Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and between Wang Yi and Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to discuss these and other crucial issues, reported in this issue.

However, at a special July 5 briefing on Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s planned trip to Indonesia and Thailand, State Department officials had blustered that the G20 foreign ministers had better not be prepared for a “business as usual” summit, given Sergey Lavrov’s presence and Russia’s alleged crimes against humanity in Ukraine. These officials reported that Western governments had decided not to boycott the ministerial so as not to give Russia the floor “unopposed.”

Instead, they said, since Russia is responsible for the global food crisis, for blocking sea lanes and grain shipments and causing starvation and malnutrition around the world, the U.S. and its allies will urge the G20 countries to “hold Russia accountable and insist that it support ongoing UN efforts to reopen the sea lanes for grain delivery.” In this scenario, Secretary of State Blinken planned to have a “candid” meeting with Wang Yi to convey what the U.S. “expects” from China regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict and other matters.

In a July 7 article, Global Times warned that the U.S. and Western allies will fail if they think they can turn the foreign ministers’ meeting into an anti-Russia fest, quoting one expert who stated that the G20 “is neither an exclusive club of the West nor a platform possessed by the U.S. A majority of countries across the world did not join the West-led sanctions against Russia, and the G20 is composed of many developing countries that don’t dance to the U.S.’s tune.” Unlike the G7, Global Times added, the G20 represents emerging powers “that seek solutions to challenges such as economic turbulence and food crisis, rather than divide the world by creating more geopolitical conflicts.”

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