G7: Valuable forum or outdated irrelevance?

An exclusive club

The G7 originated in 1975, initially as 'the Group of Six' most economically developed democratic, non-Communist states: the US, UK, France, West Germany, Japan, and Italy. Canada joined the following year, and the group subsequently met annually to discuss, initially, shared economic concerns.

However, geopolitics was soon added to the agenda, given ongoing Cold War tensions. After 1981 the EU (then the EEC) has also attended, being represented by both the leaders of the European Council and the European Commission.

Unlike Nato, the UN, or other international bodies, the G7 has no fixed home or institutions, but rather hosting duties of the three-day summit is rotated annually among the seven members. The hosts then get to set the agenda, including who to add to the guest list, such as Zelensky.

But the group has been criticised for its exclusivity, representing a closed club for the historic Western allies of the US. The involvement of Russia is a case in point.

In 1998 then US president Bill Clinton pushed to bring Russia into the group, transforming it into the G8. He believed that then Russian leader Boris Yeltsin would gain both domestic and international prestige for his inclusion and this could align Moscow permanently with the West.

However, Russia's involvement did nothing to prevent Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, from embracing authoritarianism and made a mockery of the G8's claims to be a club of leading democracies.

Moscow's seizure of Crimea in 2014 was the final straw, prompting the indefinite suspension of Russia from the group and the return of the G7 title.

Moscow's expulsion ostensibly made sense if the measures for inclusion were economic development and democratic government. Today Russia has only the 11th largest economy and is no democracy.

Yet the same cannot be said of India: the world's largest democracy and the 5th largest economy. If economic metrics were the only criteria, the exclusion of China, the world's second largest economy, is also a notable exclusion.

The inclusion of Italy and Canada, despite their economies ranking 8th and 9th in the world and only being fractionally larger than South Korea, which is excluded, adds further evidence to the charge that the G7 is essentially a closed Western club, plus Japan. 

Western leaders have tried to offset these claims by regularly inviting India and South Korea's leaders to G7 summits, but their lack of a permanent seat at the table reinforces the notion that the group is both discriminatory and out of date.

Achievements in Hiroshima

As well as controversies over membership, questions arise over the group's relevance. The communiques released at the end of each summit are not binding and are frequently discarded or overtaken by events.

A classic example was the 2017 summit when newly elected president Donald Trump refused to commit the US to abide by the Paris Agreement on climate despite his predecessor, Barack Obama, having fought hard to ensure this commitment had been made by all G7 members in the previous summit.

The current US leader, Joe Biden, and his allies will certainly hope the two signature achievements of Hiroshima have more staying power.

The first of these was not a statement in the communique but Zelensky's appearance. His dramatic arrival upstaged the other G7 leaders, who all enthusiastically posed for photos with the war leader in his combat fatigues.

The Ukrainian president gained three advantages in his attendance. Firstly, it enabled a very public meeting with the leaders of India and Brazil, non-G7 members invited by Japan, who had been lukewarm about backing Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Whether genuine or not, Indian leader Narendra Modi expressed his sympathy for 'humanity' in the conflict in his first face to face meeting with Zelensky since the war began, raising hopes from Kyiv that India might soften its stance.

Secondly, it allowed Ukraine's president more coverage for his proposal to end the conflict, which challenges a Chinese alternative that would allow a ceasefire without a full Russian withdrawal.

Finally, it allowed for a public show of western backing for Kyiv, with the G7 leaders stating, "Our support for Ukraine will not waver," while Biden used the summit to publicly announce he was permitting F-16 fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine.

Read more: Washington manages expectations over F-16s approval for Kyiv

The second achievement concerned China. Alongside statements in support of Taiwan and condemning China's perceived aggression in the Indo-pacific region, were concrete plans to respond to the Chinese challenge economically.

The G7 agreed on statements that condemned China's, "economic coercion," a reference to Beijing restricting supply chains for countries, such as Australia, South Korea or Lithuania, for their perceived diplomatic slights. 

Biden insisted the G7 would seek to 'de-risk' rather than 'decouple' from China's economy, ensuring sensitive areas like the tech sector edge away from a dependency on Chinese manufacturing.

This agreement, in theory, is a breakthrough given the different G7 members have had different views on how to respond to China. 

The US has been the most aggressive, while the UK has recently increased its rhetoric, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling China, "the greatest challenge of our age." However, others such as France and Italy have been more reluctant, with Italy a signatory to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

However, in a sign of the changing geopolitical climate and the relative success of the G7 members in forging a united stance, Rome announced just before the summit it was looking to exit the BRI.

Limited results

Yet it is one thing to attend a summit and make a statement, it is quite another to action them, and the risk for the G7 leaders is that Hiroshima's perceived achievements end up discarded or ignored like so many past communiques.

There is little doubt of the G7 members commitment to Ukraine's fight with Russia but, for all Zelensky's showmanship, it is possible that his appearance made little difference to the policies of the non-G7 attendees.

India, for example, has increase its imports of Russian oil since the war began, helping Moscow make up for income lost due to western sanctions. For all Modi's bonhomie with Zelensky, it is unlikely the encounter will force Delhi to make such a significant shift in its trade policy. 

Similarly, Russia has jumped from being Brazil's 11th biggest trade partner before the war to its 5th today, showing how Brasilia has benefitted from filling the gap left by Europe's closed markets. As with India, it seems unlikely the G7 or Zelensky will persuade new president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to change tack.

China policy is even more of a challenge.

It is notable that the G7 statements on China were very specific – focused on Taiwan, economic diplomacy, and certain aspects of the economy – rather than the more sweeping confrontational language of either Sunak or Biden.

Divisions remain among the G7 allies about the extent of the threat from China and the extent of the economic sacrifices they're each willing to make.

France, especially, under Emanuel Macron, has tried to walk a fine line between the US and China, and Beijing has been keen to drive something of a wedge between Europe and the US, by hosting both Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the lead up to the Hiroshima summit.

The carefully crafted G7 statement is an indication, perhaps, of the limits to Paris and Brussels' hostility to Beijing for now and illustrates the challenge Washington will have if it wants to increase anti-China actions in the future.

The elephant in the room for both the G7's Ukraine and China policies is, of course, who was not in the room. Biden and other leaders are aware that for China and Russia to be successfully challenged they need more buy-in from the non-G7 powers.

As Zelensky acknowledged by recently attending the Arab League summit in Jeddah, for Ukraine to successfully face down Moscow, it needs more support from the non-western 'Middle Powers' who have currently taken a neutral stance on the conflict.

Read more: Unpacking al-Assad and Zelenksy's participation in the Arab Summit

Similarly, if the G7 wants to limit China's global power, they need to make more effort to win over the many 'global south' countries that have become economically dependent on Beijing via decades of investment and, more recently, the BRI.

Beyond the G7?

Yet by limiting the invitation list for the G7 summits, vital players were not in attendance in Japan, hampering the ability for such countries to be persuaded and won over.

Indeed, this seems a flaw at the very heart of the G7 structure.

In 1975, the G7 countries shared 63% of the global economy, but today that number has dropped to 44%. In short, more than half of the world's wealth is absent from the conversation, limiting the effectiveness of any measures that are agreed upon. 

Arguably the G20 in Delhi in September, which will see most of the world's most powerful economies gather in one place will prove a more effective forum, even though western leaders must deal with the presence of both Russia and China.

Enthusiasts for the G7 would argue that it is only because Western leaders were able to meet and agree on common positions at Hiroshima that will allow them to then lobby other leaders more effectively in Delhi. However, Western leaders are not lacking in opportunities to coordinate their positions.

Nato, the Quad, Aukus and a host of other alliances and forums already exist to hash out shared strategies and approaches. The G7, which now consists of neither the seven largest economies nor the seven most prosperous democracies, feels increasingly out of date to a world that has moved on.