by Thomas S. Axworthy

The G20 was a very important advance in world governance. The initial concept of an annual meeting of leaders was championed by Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of Germany, and founder of the InterAction Council, and the G7 proved its worth by coordinating responses to emerging issues but it was too limited in its largely European membership. Leaders from nearly 200 countries in the United Nations attend the fall meeting of the General Assembly but this is too large a number for meaningful coordination. The G20 has the right number of key countries to keep the intimacy necessary for trust but large enough to include the key countries in world affairs.

This summit meets in the midst of trade wars initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump, a great threat to the world economy, and spiraling climate change, demonstrated once more by the huge fires in California. Trump once again has done the world a disservice by taking the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change.

China is among the handful of the most important countries in the world with key links to Africa, South East Asia, and South America through trade and the Belt and Road. China must not only defend its own interests at the meeting, like every other power, but it must ensure that the needs of those nations not at the G20 will not be forgotten. Nobody wins in a trade war and the poorest countries are affected the most if the world economy stalls.

Thomas S. Axworthy, secretary general of InterAction Council and former principal secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau