US wants to expand G7 by including India and Russia, hoping to encircle China. How will the two hold their own?

At any other time, US President Donald Trump’s call to expand the Group of Seven (G-7) would have been seen as reformatory considering it has gone past its sell-by date. Formed in the 1970s, its main objective was to ensure the supremacy of the Western democratic and liberal economic model in the Cold War era. But with emergent economies, China and Southeast Asian powers coalescing around G-20, it lost clout with only five of its members — the US, Germany, Japan, UK and France — figuring among the top seven global economies. Italy and Canada have been upstaged by China and India. So now Trump’s move to invite India, Russia, South Korea and Australia into the club is not just about correcting geo-strategic realities of the contemporary world but to stifle China for the COVID-19 outbreak by encircling it with a comity of nations and diminishing its global dominance. And though he has been attempting this for quite some time, considering that both Russia and India didn’t want to upset China too much given their market dependencies, the US President wants to make a show by postponing the summit to September, when hopefully the COVID-19 crisis abates. The intent is clear, capitalise on all reports emerging that Beijing hid crucial information, play upon collective anxieties of affected nations and make them allies in the larger US design to isolate China. Already, he has gone ballistic with the World Health Organisation (WHO) for allowing itself to be taken in by China’s versions of the truth, withdrawn the special status to Hong Kong in response to a new Chinese security law there and is limiting Chinese students above undergraduate level from enrolling in US institutions. It is also trying to cut off China from global supply chains, hoping to cripple it in the long run. In fact, soon after Trump’s announcement, the UK Government said it wanted a group of 10 countries to develop its own 5G technology and reduce dependence on China’s tech major Huawei.

For India, this is an opportunity to be a key player in the Western bloc. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has established a rapport with Trump and the recent 25-minute phone conversation between the two did dwell on Chinese incursion in Ladakh with the US administration being sympathetic to India’s predicament along the Himalayan border. Modi also took up race riots, hoping that the US hypocrisy on the violence would blunt the stereotypical edge of its propaganda on India’s rights situation. But India needs to walk the line carefully without appearing to be endorsing a polarising move that runs counter to its multilateral worldviews. It has, therefore, rightly refused the US offer to mediate in Ladakh and upheld bilateral mechanisms. It cannot afford to be played by both China, which is into heavy duty posturing to intimidate us against being party to any anti-China narrative, or the US, which dangles trade tariffs now and then to get things done its way. Besides, India still doesn’t have the manufacturing edge to cut off China and is dependent on its factory floors for sourcing. But India can certainly negotiate better for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, considering that it has surpassed France and the UK in terms of the GDP, both of which hold a permanent seat on the global panel. India has support from France, too, as its President Emanuel Macron had invited Modi to the G-7 Summit at Biaritz last August as a special invitee. The entry of Russia, though it has given an in-principle nod to the idea, is also going to be complicated considering that it has grown closer to Beijing ever since Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama expelled it from the original grouping following its takeover of Crimea. But Putin and Trump have an equation going and preliminary reports indicate that Moscow has shown its interest in accepting the invitation to attend the G-7 meet but will confirm only when the agenda is decided. Besides, it stayed away from joining the global defence of human rights in Hong Kong. This is one of the reasons why existing G-7 members, particularly Canada, have reservations. But Trump is pushing Russia, without which it would be difficult to isolate or even censure Beijing. Australia, for example, features high on Trump’s scale of preferences simply because it called for an impartial investigation into the Wuhan outbreak. Trump may want an expanded G-11 in this new age cold war with China but its success will depend on how the new hopefuls leverage their power.