On the first day Justin Trudeau (Canada) vaccinated the entire planet and made sure that there would be no more pandemics; the second, Yoshihide Suga (Japan) eliminated carbon emissions and solved the problem of climate change; the third, Joe Biden (USA) succeeded in making democracies prevail over autocracies everywhere; the fourth, Mario Draghi (Italy) made large corporations pay the corresponding taxes; the fifth, Emmanuel Macron (France) put an end to poverty and injustice; the sixth, Angela Merkel (Germany) stopped the expansionist designs of Russia and China, and eliminated the danger of cyber attacks … But since the G-7 is not God, there was no rest and Boris Johnson had to work also on the seventh day reluctantly, and resolve the dilemmas of Brexit and peace in Ulster.
Dreams are one thing and reality is another, as much as Johnson yesterday, in his role as host of the Cornwall summit, set himself the goal of “building a healthier, greener and fairer new world”, and the leaders world congratulations on the commitment to donate one billion vaccines to the Third World. About thirty kilometers away (the distance allowed by the police), protesters were protesting the carbon emissions generated by the movements of the leaders, their teams and hundreds of journalists, which would have been avoided if the meeting had been through Zoom.
But one of the messages of the summit is that face-to-face diplomacy has returned, in which it is possible to study the gestures and body language of the interlocutors, and that’s good for Zoom. Thus, US President Joe Biden, who until now had not had any face-to-face meeting with other colleagues, has invited Chancellor Angela Merkel to Washington to speak, among other things, about the German dependence on Russian natural gas and the controversial construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
GEOPOLITICS
The United States asks Europeans for a more aggressive policy towards Russia and China
“It is essential to learn from the mistakes of our response to the 2008 financial crisis, to combat inequality and to achieve a better balance between rich and poor countries,” proclaimed Johnson, extrapolating his successful electoral tactic of offering money and projects to the entire planet. of infrastructures to the regions of the English north. The problem is that Bury residents do vote in English elections, but Zimbabweans do not vote in Iowa primaries.
While with one hand he cuts the foreign aid budget under the pretext of the pandemic, with devastating consequences for countries such as Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia or Afghanistan, with the other he announced yesterday the donation of one hundred million vaccines (Biden put on the table five times more), and 500 million euros for educational programs aimed at girls. “It is about our responsibility, our humanitarian obligation. The economy has to be more feminine or gender neutral ”, she stated without specifying what she meant by one of her typical successful phrases but without much meaning.
After taking the family photo, around the fire on Carbis Bay beach and over an opulent dinner of melon and turbot gazpacho (which had to be explained to the Americans what it was) with potatoes, local mushrooms and garlic pesto, the G-7 leaders addressed the issues on the agenda, such as the need to take concrete measures once and for all to combat global warming, stop Russia and China, and implement the decision of their finance ministers to apply a tax. minimum of 15% (considered very low by France and the United States) to large corporations. Johnson tried unsuccessfully to get City of London businesses an exemption from that rule amid general surprise.
TAXATION
G7 members seek ways to make big companies pay more
“The time has come,” said Biden, “to show that we are capable of responding to the great challenges of the moment.” But the idea of building a new world, less polluted, sick and unjust, no matter how beautiful, can generate considerable skepticism in view of the precedents (other G7 summits, innumerable meetings, speeches, electoral promises …). Even the Atlanticist, multilateralist and inclusive message of Biden, in contrast to the Trump era, does not generate fervor among European diplomats. “In the end it is always a question of interests – in the words of one of them. The United States wants a more aggressive attitude from the EU towards China and Russia, but we have Putin at a stone’s throw, we need his gas and Germany sells six million Volkswagens to Beijing, while the Americans increasingly look towards the Pacific ”.
The dividing lines of geopolitics are a tough nut to crack, international relations are not rebuilt overnight and a better, greener, healthier and just world is not built in seven days. Although they join the task, as was the case yesterday, Queen Elizabeth, Princes Carlos and Guillermo and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to lend a hand. It is a task for gods, not humans.
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