G20 Summit: Meeting Opens Under Long Shadow of Ukraine War - The New York Times

G20 Live Updates: Ukraine War Shadows Summit in India - The New York Times

Leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered on Saturday to discuss ways to ease burdens on poorer nations, opening a Group of 20 summit whose Indian hosts hope will advance a global economic agenda even as it is overshadowed by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the absence of the Russian and Chinese leaders.

India, a growing diplomatic and economic power that has stuck to neutrality over the Ukraine conflict, has painstakingly tried to limit discussions about the war to the economic distress it has caused, with energy and food prices rising around the world.

Atop the G20 economic agenda in New Delhi is the issue of global debt and reforming institutions such as the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of mitigating threats from climate change; and the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.

But the Ukraine war remains a heavy presence, with American and European nations raising it in negotiations on every issue, and Russian and Chinese opposition making consensus harder.

President Biden arrived in the Indian capital late on Friday for a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at a time of growing ties between the two nations. Mr. Biden will be trying to present the United States as an economic and strategic counterweight to China and Russia.

On the eve of the summit, Indian officials expressed confidence that the leaders would overcome their differences and put out a joint declaration, something that has been in doubt in recent weeks. Negotiations on the declaration were expected to continue into Sunday, when the summit closes. No G20 summit over the past 15 years has concluded without a joint statement.

Here is what else to know:
Jon Finer, Mr. Biden’s deputy national security director, told reporters that among the announcements on Saturday would be a memorandum of understanding among the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to “explore a shipping and rail transportation order that will enable the flow of commerce, energy and data from here in India across the Middle East to Europe.” The announcement comes as the Biden administration has worked, so far unsuccessfully, to broker an ambitious diplomatic agreement that would help the Saudis normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Mr. Biden is expected to participate in at least two sessions on Saturday, during which he intends to condemn the war in Ukraine and call on other nations to shore up lines of credit for poorer nations in an effort to counter China’s lending power. Mr. Biden’s advisers told reporters on Saturday that he did not have meetings with individual leaders on his formal schedule and would instead participate in “ad hoc” interactions, a somewhat unusual occurrence for a diplomatic summit. The president is also expected to attend a leaders’ dinner on Saturday evening. A convoy of Indian Army trucks driving along a road in India’s Arunachal Pradesh State in 2021. Both China and India claim the region as their own, raising regional tensions.Credit...Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India tries to position his country as a leader among developing nations, his strategic calculations are increasingly being shaped by a persistent threat from China.

India’s giant neighbor is trying to contain New Delhi’s influence not just globally, but regionally, too. Beijing is flexing its muscle from the South Asian island nation of Maldives to countries straddling the Himalayas.

In recent years, the two nuclear-armed neighbors have had deadly clashes on their disputed frontier, banned some of each other’s companies and imposed visa restrictions on each other’s journalists.The hostility has increased with New Delhi’s participation in a security grouping called the Quad that includes the United States, Australia and Japan, all of which have an uneasy relationship with China.

Last week, strains worsened further when China released a map that asserted jurisdiction over the entire northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region, a high-altitude plateau claimed by both countries.The controversy illustrated how 19 rounds of military talks have failed to ease tensions over the border.

Any chance of a quick rapprochement seems to be fading, with the latest sign being the decision by the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to skip the G20 summit, taking a bit of the shine off Mr. Modi’s party.

Jabin T. Jacob, a professor of international relations at Shiv Nadar University outside New Delhi, said that Beijing, while trying to aggressively build its presence in South Asian countries, was refusing to acknowledge India as an important player on the global stage.

“China is just trying to deny India’s rightful place under the sun,” he said. “Domestically, China portrays India as a client state of the United States, and on international forums, it suggests New Delhi has nothing to add or contribute.”
Transporting water in Baidoa, Somalia, last year. Rich countries agreed last year to establish a fund to help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters.Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

The United States, the European Union and other wealthy emitters pledged over a decade ago to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate financing by 2020 to help poorer countries shift to clean energy and adapt to future climate risks through measures like building sea walls. But they are still falling well short of that promise.

Last year, rich countries agreed at a climate summit in Egypt to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by pollution from wealthy nations. But many of the details of how the fund would work were left unresolved, and the agreement said that nations could not be held legally liable for payments.

European and other Group of 7 countries are interested in reserving this money for two groups: the “small island developing states” (ones that are at risk of sinking under rising sea levels, like Tuvalu) and “least developed countries” (the poorest of the poor, like Chad). That would exclude countries like Pakistan, which suffered an estimated $40 billion in losses during devastating floods last year.

Some of the most populous countries are making the case that their citizens are among the worst-affected victims of climate change and most deserving of aid. But compensating the likes of Pakistan would leave little for Pacific island nations, most of which have fewer than a million residents.

In an article published in Indian newspapers on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India appeared to signal that climate finance would be a priority this weekend. “Ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology,” he wrote.

But a meeting of climate ministers from G20 countries in India earlier this summer failed to produce consensus on climate-mitigation targets. Among other sticking points, the ministers were reported to have differed on whether to agree to set 2025 as the year when global emissions peak and then start to decline.

A turgid “outcome document” from that July meeting said only that the delegates urged countries that had not yet aligned their emissions with goals of the Paris climate agreement to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 targets by the end of this year. (Under that 2015 accord, nearly 200 countries agreed to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions through 2030 as part of a joint promise to hold total global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to preindustrial levels.)

There was some progress on climate finance at a G20 summit in Rome two years ago, where leaders said they would end the financing of coal power plants overseas. But their joint communiqué included no new commitments on curbing the use of coal domestically.
Sept. 9, 2023, 2:14 a.m. ETMujib Mashal

Indian officials have turned the country’s hosting of the G20 into a massive campaign to show the world a transforming nation. Over the past nine months, delegations of officials and diplomats from dozens of countries have traveled to 60 cities across India for more than 200 events. “For many of them, it has been a discovery of a new India,” Harsh Vardhan Shringla, India’s chief coordinator for the summit, said.
President Biden convened an emergency meeting last year in Bali, Indonesia, with leaders over the missile strikes in Russia’s war in Ukraine.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Established in 1999 after a series of major international debt crises, the Group of 20 aims to unite world leaders around shared economic, political and health challenges. Here is a look at what the group is and does.

The G20 includes 19 countries and the European Union.

In addition to the United States, its members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. The African Union is also poised to join after an invitation on Saturday from Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

Collectively, the group’s members represent more than 80 percent of the world’s economic output.

It is a creation of the more select Group of 7, an informal bloc of industrialized democracies. Supporters argue that as national economies grow ever more globalized, it is essential that political and finance leaders work closely together.

The G20 summit is held annually.

The G20 meeting brings together finance ministers and heads of state representing the members. It bills itself as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.”

The heads of state first convened officially in November 2008 as the global financial crisis began to unfold. The summit meeting is hosted by the nation that holds the rotating presidency; this year, it’s India.

The meeting produces a joint statement.

The two-day summit usually focuses on several core issues around which its leaders hope to reach a consensus for collective action.

The goal is to conclude the gathering by issuing a joint statement committing its members to action, although the declaration is not legally binding. But one-on-one meetings between leaders on the sidelines often overshadow official business.
An African Union meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in July.Credit...Daniel Irungu/EPA, via Shutterstock

They used to be called “third world” nations, then “developing countries” — a term still in use, but fading compared to a newer catchall phrase: the Global South.

Like “the West,” it is an imprecise moniker. Many Global South countries are not in the Southern Hemisphere at all. India is one, Mexico another.

But as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India announced on Saturday that the G20 had invited the African Union to become a member of the grouping — becoming the second regional bloc included, after the European Union — the Global South seems to be on the advance. Its frustrations and ideas around flaws in great-power politics, while still coalescing, are already altering global debate.

“These countries are not thinking about ‘southern solidarity’ — they are just pursuing their interests,” said Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank. “And as they do that, it adds up to more than the sum of their parts.”

What unifies the Global South — a term coined in 1969 by an American activist writing about the Vietnam War and now used to describe a diverse group of more than 100 countries from Saudi Arabia to Guatemala — is a sense that its own priorities have been sidelined in global discussions.

At a time when India has the world’s fifth-largest economy, when economic growth in Vietnam and Senegal is outpacing that of much of Europe, many Global South countries are asking with a louder voice: Where are our interests represented?

Seeing a multipolar world already in bloom, they have rejected a return to the Cold War model of choosing a side between capitalists (the United States) and communists (China). They have also ignored and protested U.S.-led sanctions against Russia for its aggression in Ukraine, drawing attention instead to rising food prices and to long-term problems like climate change that wealthier countries do more to cause and less to ameliorate.

In January, India hosted a virtual Voice of Global South Summit as its G20 presidency began. Last month, some of these countries gathered in South Africa for the BRICS summit, where China and India both presented themselves as Global South leaders while the United States was largely absent.

Professor Shidore said these kinds of alternative gatherings would probably grow, both challenging Western leadership and adding new policies to the global mix.

“These forums matter,” he said. “They create vehicles for like-minded countries to put forward different ideas.”
Sept. 9, 2023, 1:25 a.m. ET

Damien Cave

Modi finished his opening remarks with an invitation to the African Union "to take its place as a permanent member,” effectively announcing a move that had been widely expected. The African Union's addition alongside the European Union could help India claim to have led the G20 to be more inclusive of the Global South – a point of emphasis for the host country this year.
Sept. 9, 2023, 1:21 a.m. ETAlex Travelli

Modi is delivering his opening remarks from behind a plaque with a name that was until recently unfamiliar in international contexts: Bharat. That is one official name of India, identified in the Constitution. The new usage on the world stage in the past week has been a surprise move by Modi, whose party’s name — the Bharatiya Janata Party — incorporates it. It’s a bit as if Xi Jinping were to address the BRICS as the leader of a country called Zhongguo.

President Biden greeted Modi with a handshake and a wide grin, and Modi appeared to be explaining the backdrop to him as the two paused in the entryway. The two saw each other last night at Modi’s residence for a bilateral meeting that lasted just under an hour. And, of course, Modi was in Washington for a state visit in June.
Sept. 9, 2023, 12:54 a.m. ET

Alex Travelli

Modi is receiving the world’s leaders at a new convention hall past a statue of the Nataraj, or dancing-Shiva figure, from the 10th century. It's a tangible nod to the prime minister's claim to be representing not just a republic but an ancient civilization.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has seized on the Group of 20 presidency as celebration of his country’s ascent as he seeks a third term in an election next year.Credit...Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

In cities across India, the beaming face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi adorns giant posters promoting the country’s Group of 20 presidency. A hundred national monuments, including the Red Fort in Delhi, were illuminated with the G20 logo to encourage people to post selfies. Government reading lessons inform students that India is a fitting G20 host because it is “the Fountain Head of Democracy.”

To behold the advertising and public relations blitz that the Indian government mounted as it prepared to hold the G20 summit this weekend, one might have thought that India had been anointed by its peers, rather than merely being next up in the hosting rotation.

But India, and its governing party, were primed to capitalize on the moment.

The G20 has arrived just as India is asserting itself as a rising geopolitical and economic force, courted by an array of global powers and offering itself up as a leader and model for developing nations. Mr. Modi has seized on the G20 presidency as confirmation and celebration of India’s ascent — a rise to which he has fused his own image — as he seeks a third term in an election early next year.

World leaders are trickling into the venue, and the visuals of Modi receiving leader after leader will surely be splashed across India for months to come. As he seeks a third term in office early next year, a big part of his campaign is fusing his image to India’s global rise. His party’s messaging around the G20 summit has been: Modi is bringing the world to India.