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This year's G20 summit is in Indonesia — and Russia's invited. What'll happen? Will the US and its allies walk out of rooms when the Russians show up?
The G20 consensus has been fragmented over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati says during a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft.
She explains that unlike the World Bank or the IMF, where power comes from voting rights depending on your cash contributions, G20 governance has been based on consensus since the club was established in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.
But the conflict in Ukraine has made that consensus almost impossible now, responds GZERO Media President Ian Bremmer, who believes Russia's actions are "ripping up the fabric of geopolitics" for years to come.
"The G20 stage has the potential to help drive that into a much greater rift, with the wealthy democracies on one side, Russia and China on the other, and a bunch of middle-income economies that are saying: we want no part of any of this."
If that happens, he fears, we'll accomplish the opposite of what we set out to achieve in these fora, which are supposed to offer global responses to global crises.
Watch more of this Global Stage event: Live from Washington, DC: Financing the Future
COVID had few silver linings. But perhaps one of them is that it upended the labor market in ways that, for once, favored workers over employers. The switch to virtual meant that recruiters were forced to urgently find people with the right digital skills instead of waiting for those that had gone to the "right" schools. "The talent market became a little dry," Jonathan Rochelle, VP of Product Management, Learning Content & Instructor Experience at Linkedin, says during a Global Stage livestream discussion.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations' Environment Programme, issued a dire warning about climate change in a new interview with GZERO Media. In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the world as standing “at the edge of an abyss,” and that next steps on climate were urgent and critical. “I think if you ask people on Pacific islands whose lands have been lost, they've already fallen off,” Andersen told GZERO. “Or even if you ask people in California whose houses got burnt in a wildfire, they have fallen off.”
Does Vladimir Putin have any real friends left? In a Global Stage livestream conversation, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer says that the Russian president is losing China and India, who are telling him they're worried about the war in Ukraine dragging on. Not even the Kazakhs (!) are on his side anymore.
How do we respond to crises and keep people safe when the internet is abused by terrorists and violent extremists? How do we think about prevention? How do we future-proof Christchurch Call to Action (a political summit initiated by New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern) as the internet changes into a more immersive environment? Paul Ash, PM Ardern’s Special Representative on Cyber and Digital, discussed with GZERO Media in an interview at the United Nations.
Kai Sauer, Finland’s Undersecretary of State for Foreign Security Policy, told GZERO Media that as Finland awaits NATO membership his nation is already contributing to the alliance. “We are a security provider. We are investing in stability and security in our region,” Sauer said. “We are bringing a lot of capabilities to the alliance. So, it's in everybody's interest, also in Turkey's interest, that Finland and Sweden will become members.”
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has launched a discussion about how the UN Security Council works, and how it is dysfunctional – especially when Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, is the invading country, said Melissa Fleming, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications. In an interview with GZERO Media on the sidelines of the 77th General Assembly, Fleming reflected on the return to in-person diplomacy after years of disruption caused by pandemic. "There is this real feeling that the UN is the only place for global cooperation,” she said. “We cannot solve the world's intractable problems of climate change, of war, of refugees without multilateralism, and multilateralism is the UN. It is nations working together to solve problems.”