G-20 Now Eclipses G-7 Giving Putin and Russia a Victory at Low Cost, Khubiyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 29 – The just completed summit in Japan shows that the G-20 has eclipsed the G-7, a forum that had declined in importance since the expulsion of Russia, and is now the major meeting ground for a far more representative group of countries than its predecessor Ruslan Khubiyev says.

            That represents a significant contribution toward the formation of a truly multi-polar world and gives Russia an important victory at very little cost to itself, something Moscow can both be proud of and exploit as Vladimir Putin did in his meetings with US President Donald Trump and other leaders (iarex.ru/articles/67431.html).

                “The G-7,” the Rex news agency commentator says, “is a survival of the past,” one that allows Washington to maintain the illusion that it is still in charge. “’The Twenty,’ on the other hand, is in essence ‘the board of directors’ of the multi-polar world” as was demonstrated in Japan.

            Putin’s meeting with Trump at the G-20 was especially important, Khubiyev says, the first in 2019 and the first since the end of the Mueller investigation. Trump was in a position to talk more freely because he is no longer under that constraint, although no broad agreements could have been expected or achieved because of opposition to Russia in Washington.

            Moscow “perfectly well understands that the Trump Administration is full of shifting members of ‘the fifth column’ and traitors and that therefore information about any serioius deal would instantly reach the press or the Congress. And considering that such deals are going to be compromises, Moscow would be accused of betrayal and Trump of a deal with the enemy.”

            The Putin-Trump meeting was important, therefore, not for any specific deal but for the personal discussion of problems and also for the fact that it took place at the G-20, a format which “yet again showed that the planet is standing on the brink of a transition to a multi-polar world.”

            “With each passing year, Trump is carrying out the intentional destruction of the existing model of American foreign policy, putting pressure on allies, conducting a cold war against China, discarding agreements like the Transpacific accord, ‘burying’ in this way globalization, and so on.

Russia is “the primary beneficiary” of all this, the result of its own careful policies of course but something that would have been impossible to achieve without these major steps by Trump, Khubiyev continues. American dominance has been reduced, the world has been decentralized, and Russia is not isolated any more. 

“And all this has happened without any particular concessions by Moscow,” the commentator concludes with barely suppressed glee.