https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-17-2024
"Leaders from the Group of Seven (G7) met for their fiftieth summit in Italy
from June 13 to June 15. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United
Kingdom, and the United States formed the G7 in 1975 as a forum for democracies
with advanced economies to talk about political and economic issues. The
European Union is also part of the forum, and this June, Ukraine president
Volodymyr Zelensky also attended.
This summit was a particularly fraught one. When it took office, the
Biden-Harris administration, along with the State Department under Secretary of
State Antony Blinken, set out to reshape global power structures not only in
light of Trump’s attempt to abandon international alliances and replace them
with transactional deals, but also in light of a larger change in international
affairs.
In a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in
September 2023, Blinken explained that the end of the Cold War between the U.S.
and the Soviet Union had promised a new era of peace and stability, with more
international cooperation and political freedom. But while that period did, in
fact, lift more than a billion people out of poverty, eradicate deadly
diseases, and create historic lows in conflicts between state actors, it also
gave rise to authoritarians determined to overthrow the international
rules-based order.
At the same time, non-state actors—international corporations; non-governmental
organizations, or NGOs, that provide services to hundreds of millions of people
across the globe; terrorists who can inflict catastrophic harm; and
transnational criminal organizations that traffic illegal drugs, weapons, and
human beings—have growing influence.
Forging international cooperation has become more and more complex, Blinken
explained, at the same time that global problems are growing: the climate
crisis, food insecurity, mass migration and mass displacement of populations,
as well as the potential for new pandemics. In the midst of all this pressure,
“many countries are hedging their bets.”
They have lost faith in the international economic order, as a handful of
governments have distorted the markets to gain unfair advantage while
technology and globalization have hollowed out communities and inequality has
skyrocketed. “Between 1980 and 2020,” Blinken noted, “the richest .1 percent
accumulated the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent.” Those who feel the
system is unfair are exacerbating the other drivers of political polarization."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
